BIG UPDATE ~ TutorialIndex.com - Tutorial Search Engine

[cipcip]

Hello guys,

As some of you know, I love to create search engine, crawlers and everything about this field. I had a torrent search engine, which I took down since it kind of is illegal.

So, I bought this domain here on NP, it is an 18 years old domain name and I thought I should develop it. I had the backbone of my script from the torrent one, so why not ?

Features:
- Crawlers for Pixel2life, Tuts Plus, Hackr.io (so far)
- Report broken links with reCaptcha from Google - Broken links go into the db, and from admin panel you can directly delete the entry from the DB, or you can delete the report;
- Ads management, in admin panel, you can add multiple ads, and you can select which one you want to use (want to make an ad rotator soon)
- Statistics in admin panel: how many tutorials were indexed today, this week, total.

Link: https://tutorialindex.com

What do you guys think? All suggestions for improvement are welcomed.

Thank you,

 

[Sami Ketolainen]

Hello @cipcip

It looks like you have an nice project going on. Here is little suggestions to you how to improve the usability and the look of the website better in the eyes of the customer. So, let's get started.

Home Page

Home page is the most important piece of your website because this is the first page what customer or visitor will see when they come to your website. Your current home page is pretty empty and it doesn't have much content. My first advice would be that easily identify to your customers what your website is all about, what you do and how the website can resolve their problems. Before the search engine, you could add slider or text with photo or graphic about what Tutorial Index is and what your customers can find on your website. It doesn't have to be a long piece of content, just the main points about your website.

Your section about Top-10 searched tags is really empty and it doesn't look attractive. I would suggest you to add icons to all of the tags. In my opinion, it would look good if there would be first icon, below it what is the tag and below the tag amount of the tags.

And if you are only advertising your Top searched tags, where are the less popular tags? I think you could create a "database" with similar style like my suggestion above and arrange the tags according to their style - Example the first section of the database could be Web Development, second section of the database would be Programming etc - it would make your site look much broader and give customers an image that you have a lot of useful information about different things.

Footer

Your footer looks like a copy from Google's footer. Or should I say exactly the same. My suggestion to this is to add example your contact information to footer and make it look more modern. I think this part is one the cons on your website currently. The website itself looks modern and clean, but the footer is just a box with links. It is important that the website goes flow with itself, the result is much better and the site looks much more modern.

Search Page

This page looks really clean and I think there is no need improvement to this section. Best part is that the search field is sticky and goes up and down when you scroll the page. Good work.

Advertising Page

I would add pictures, graphics and more information to people how they benefit if they advertise with you. When the page has only text, the result doesn't get same kind of impression than page which has graphics and photos. And the truth is that pictures tells more than 1000 words. Really important thing is that you can tell to your customer what you offer, but much more important thing is that you must do it with the right way. Only text of this page doesn't give photo to customer that it would be a good idea to advertise in your page.

About Us Page

Your About Us page is one of the most important pages on your website and that is the reason why it needs to be well crafted. Good stories humanize your brand, providing context and meaning for your product. What’s more, good stories are sticky - which means people are more likely to connect with them and pass them on. You must think how you can move the meaning of the website to your About Us page. If most of your tutorials are based on programming, SEO and web development, you can use it as the page to create attractive content to this page. Right now this page has the similar problem than the Advertising Page. You must add images and graphics to tell the story.

The overall result of this website is pretty good in my opinion. The idea itself is really good and I think you can build an nice website.

Thanks,
Sami Ketolainen.

 

[cipcip]

Thank you @Steven McEvoy

Thank you @Sami Ketolainen for the detailed review.

I agree with what you are saying.

For the Home page I need to specifically tell the people that this is a tutorial search engine, right now they are pretty much just guessing, or just looking at the title of the page. I am working on social network handlers and how to incorporate a site description on the home page, I was thinking writing something on a ribbon ?!

For the Advertising page, I left it with just text for now, as the site doesn't have that many visitors, so I do not have anything to show. Right now the site has about 5-10 visitors a day.

For the About page I will come up with something, but I am not that creative

Thank you,
Cristian

 

[cipcip]

Made some backend updates and here is a sneak peak to the administration panel

 

[cipcip]

Some more updates made on the site.

Implemented a language selector, for the moment the website is translated only into English and Romanian ( my home language ).

Also, implemented an attempt to re-design the about page as per the suggestion of @Sami Ketolainen

TO DO Next:
- implement language feature to mobile version in the upcoming weeks;
- spam Twitter with a new post to each tutorial that gets indexed
- spam Facebook page with a new post to each tutorial that gets indexed

 

[cipcip]

Another update: Implementing Twitter to admin panel.

https://imgur.com/HeXyk10

TO DO Next:
- spam Twitter with a new post to each tutorial that gets indexed
- spam Facebook page with a new post to each tutorial that gets indexed

 

[Sami Ketolainen]

Hello Christian.

Changes looks good but have you made the about us page to look good at mobile version.

Attached the photo which I see when I zoom out the mobile version. But IMO the design is good when I check it in desktop version.

 

[cipcip]

Hello Christian.

Changes looks good but have you made the about us page to look good at mobile version.

Attached the photo which I see when I zoom out the mobile version. But IMO the design is good when I check it in desktop version.

Hello Sami, yes I haven't made the mobile version yet, I have to work on it. Hopefully by the end of the month it will be ready.

 

[cipcip]

Hello guys, so, what do you think about the value of this project?

Website gets about 60-70 visitors per month according to Google Analytics.

Thanks,
Cristian

 

[Steven McEvoy]

Not exactly sure how youre getting those links but I type in how to draw a dragon and i click on the first 4 options and i got advertisements, random websites, website no longer live. etc.

 

[Steven McEvoy]

I think its a hard task to keep links up to date, make sure links are correct, and also hate to see a link that I click and go to something different. like
http://www.pixel2life.com/viewtutorial/94560/how_to_draw_a_evil_dragon/ and goes to http://www.squidoo.com/photoshop-tutorial-how-to-draw-a-evil-dragon (which is broken) a different website. It would be better from a user POV to see http://www.squidoo.com/photoshop-tutorial-how-to-draw-a-evil-dragon and it goes to http://www.squidoo.com/photoshop-tutorial-how-to-draw-a-evil-dragon.


Thoughts?

 

[cipcip]

Not exactly sure how youre getting those links but I type in how to draw a dragon and i click on the first 4 options and i got advertisements, random websites, website no longer live. etc.

The results page is a Google style page. First there will always be the ads that have the AD green box next to them.
As for the results, it is entirely up to the websites that I index. I agree that possibly in the future I can add a filter to check the website status.

Thank you,
Cristian

 

[cipcip]

I think its a hard task to keep links up to date, make sure links are correct, and also hate to see a link that I click and go to something different. like
http://www.pixel2life.com/viewtutorial/94560/how_to_draw_a_evil_dragon/ and goes to http://www.squidoo.com/photoshop-tutorial-how-to-draw-a-evil-dragon (which is broken) a different website. It would be better from a user POV to see http://www.squidoo.com/photoshop-tutorial-how-to-draw-a-evil-dragon and it goes to http://www.squidoo.com/photoshop-tutorial-how-to-draw-a-evil-dragon.


Thoughts?

It is doing like so, because I index only pixel2life.com - not squidoo. If the link from pixel2life redirects to squidoo, I wouldn't know. I simply index the <a> HTML tag from that website. If the <a> tag contains that pixel2life link, then that is what it is going to the database.

Thank you,
Cristian

 

[Steven McEvoy]

I would probly only index direct links. And also have a request link option

 

[cipcip]

I added the link to producthunt as well, so if you think the website is useful, you can upvote or leave a review as well here

 

[dojo]

Tried to search for SEO it didn't bring any result. CSS... same.

Wordpress did work ...

 

[cipcip]

Tried to search for SEO it didn't bring any result. CSS... same.

Wordpress did work ...

Thank you for pointing it out, it seems it is a bug, will fix it and come back with an update.

Cristian

 

[cipcip]

@dojo

Everything is working now. I changed the servers and I forgot to re-add one important server setting.

Thank you,
Cristian

 

[cipcip]

Just as an update, I also started a blog for this.
It can be accessed by clicking here or in my signature.