Hi all

As you all know, with nauseous repetition, Matrix Men South Africa is launching this year (officially) I have started A blog and would appreciate if some of you could go there and view it, make comment and suggestions, and push up the click rate. So if you have a mo, please check it out and let me know.

Matrix Men Blog

Heal well all
Martin

Great Start Martin!

Keep forging ahead with this and asking for support!

Jamie

Hi, Martin.

I am not able to join the blog as I am on a shared computer that blocks the joining function.

It is wonderful to see you asking for support.

Peace,
Avery

Thanks guys

I have had quite a response and it is great to see so many people respond.

KEEP IT UP PLEEEEEASE

Martin

well done martin!

cheers

grant

I found the list of questions very informative. It's helpful to see them all together because it becomes clear how many I can click off. Thanks!!

Thanks Guys

Please keep the comments and criticisms coming, and the clicks of course.

Excellent Martin. I only had a moment to go through it, but it's a terrific site and, Wow! what a great thing you are doing.

Just a little aside, here. When I see guys like you doing these things, the first thing I want to say is I am proud of you, but that would be presumptuous of me. I do not think I have a right to be proud when I have done nothing to be proud of. My second thought, and probably more accurate, is that I am extremely honored that you would share this with me and the rest of us.

Good show!

Hey Jim

I'm proud of you man, I love watching peolpe grow and heal, and I feel that you are doing exactly that.
Keep it up and thanks for the kind words.

Heal well
Martin

The blog looks great--insightful and easy to navigate. It is open and honest. It offers resources for the survivor, partner--it is just plain helpful.

Thanks and keep it going.

Kevin

Thanks for the advice and correction, this blog is to become the basis of my web page.
I do need the clicks though to move me up in the Google search, so keep clicking away

Thanks all
Martin

Hi Guys

Again thanks for all the Clicks and thanks for the comments.
Please could you Keep the comments coming, these are after all the most important. I really appreciate the impute and wisdom of the men on this site.

Thanks all
Martin

Thanks Jeff

Ill See if I can Make it a private Blog, probably a good idea because of the nature of our afflictions. Did you enjoy the content and the tone though?

Martin

good job

Guys thanks for the posts and comments.
Please come back more and give us some feed back about the site/Blog

Read some of the content and let us know if there is more to add or if something is wrong.


Martin Matrix Men

Heal well
Martin

Martin, I used to produce web content. First thing I noticed: I would clean-up the spacing of paragraphs (full blank line between each). It just doesn't look professional and is hard for surfers to read. Web surfers will leave a website almost immediately when presented with poor paragraph spacing. Bad spelling is the next no-no.

The second issue is lack of color. The black background is commonly referred to as the "death" or "depressing" color (also used by porn sites and video sites a ton) in web design. White lettering is just too damn hard for most (90%) to read. Make it cheery and bright. Lettering should always be black. Why? Easy to read. (Blue and pink are the worst.)

The 3rd issue is no pics or clip-art. Pictures are preferred. Clip-art is so 1990s. Tons of free pics out there.

The 4th issue is "orange" links. It's very hard to read (especially difficult against a black background).

Most of this is easy to fix. Just pick a better Blogger template. That'll fix 90% of it. My opinion of course but I had a hard time just reading the home page myself. Sorry. Peace.

there are? lol. gotta watch for copyright police. ;-) well he lives in what i think is one of the most beautiful countries on earth - you know, even just taking pics at the beach or of j'burg scene, etc. would be really cool and indeed free since he took them.

i agree its a little hard to read the text.

also, martin - even though its a chore, might want to put something up everyday on the homepage whether its a link to interesting story, or a message to your guys reading/finding you. just something to keep it very fresh. i wouldn't know that the "how i feel today" link is what you updated recently.

No Problem

If I cant handle honest well intended feedback I should rather stay at home.
This is why I ask the questions

Thanks for the input.

Martin

See, you guys are amazing, thanks for the ideas and opinions I really do appreciate it.

Martin

BTW good idea on the JHB skyline and the beach shots. remember that I am an old chap and that this internet stuff is hard work for me but I will try.

Peace all

lol - any excuse to get down to the durban coast! ;-)
i'm fantasizing of course - 'cause i've not yet been to your fabulous country! but the pictures online are gorgeous! same for cape town, etc. etc.

I meant no offense at all. That would be my professional opinion back when I got paid $100 an hour to produce content and review sites. I would also put keywords (related to the post/article) at the bottom of the article to get it indexed as well. You can Google "free royalty free images" and find all kinds of stuff. Google "create free logo design" and create a logo. Peace.

No Offence taken.

I really really do appreciate the comments

Peace
Martin

Hi Martin,
that background picture is great, you are so fast !
Let us all know at first visit to blog that we are seeing South Africa!
Phoenix has told great things how to improve blog, I agree completely!
I've just realized that now it is possible for us to write some comments there without signing, that is also great improvement.
I hope that brothers survivors would write some greetings there !!!
Pero

Thanks as always Pero.

I really appreciate what you are doing.

Martin

Way better, Martin. A lot easier to read.

How to use Blogger abounds today:

http://ilovethewaysheblogs.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-to-use-pages-on-blogger.html

http://howtouseblogger.com/

Definitely would recommend the keywords function on Blogger to get Google to index. An easy trick is to link a post to itself. Basically, copy the url of the page you created, open the page you just created with edit and paste the url in the article heading (link is right below title if it hasn't changed). Yeah, you link a page to itself. Sounds stupid but indexing (popularity) of a page is determined by how many other pages out there links to a page. Backlinking is the correct term. The more "backlinks" a page has the better the Alexa rank and better the google rank.

Submit your site to Google here: www.google.com/submityourcontent/

Logo maker for free: http://www.logomaker.com/

Good luck.

Phoenix

You are a gem man, I will take the time to read what you have sent me and work on the ideas that you have given me.
I will be changing the picture to a JHB skyline, just waiting for the right sunrise.
I also need to work on some of the pages that still have orange print.

Again thanks man, If you don't mind I will call on your considerable experience again??

Thanks all you guys for the amazing input, it is really appreciated.

Martin

Martin,

Sure. Haven't done it in awhile but sure. Help as much as I can or can direct you to the answer.

Backlinks: https://www.google.com/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=backlinks

Many good sites explaining SEO on the first google page results. Getting others to link to your page really is how to make it with Google (along with quality content that is a must read to people).

You really want to make MatrixMen popular? Put the how to fix it there. Blogs that advise people on the how to do and it works get the hits. If you do that, you don't need Google because many are gonna just send you the traffic. MS has many links out there. Meet the need and SEO will run itself.

Phoenix

Martin,

I just visited your page for the second time and posted a bit about my recent experience. I am glad to see more taking on the task of creating awareness. I hope that your page takes off and that it will benefit others as it is a good cause. Thank you for adding support for us survivors as it's much needed.

Nevragan

Thanks for your support, I really appreciate men that are open and talk about their experiences. Two Promise in the AA come to mind, "We will not regret the past nor shut the door on it"
"How our experiences will benefit others"
These are two things that I base my life on, and it seems that you do too.
Again thanks for the support, and hey, I hope that you are feeling better.

Heal well
Martin

Hey Martin,
I just want to activate more this thread. I've finally joined your blog Matrixmen. I've had some technical issues - I don't use gmail and already I have so many e-mail accounts that something additional was obstacle for me. Now I've signed to AMI and I've managed to join.
Matrixmen has one more follower !!!

Pero

Thanks Pero

You are a scholar and a gent

Heal well
Martin