Status of http://www.abcstrathhaven.org

Hi,

I have submitted a number of sites in early October 2004 in different categories with no noticeable results. I suspect I may be doing something wrong. http://www.abcstrathhaven.org
http://www.cuetokearney.com
http://www.davidevanson.com
to name just a few.

One specific question: is using my email address (I manage all those sites) which does not use their domain but my own domain the wrong address to use?

Thanks

Andy Shelter
Swarthmore, PA

Things you're doing wrong:

(1) Worrying MUCH too early. There is no prescribed or typical time for site review; some sites are reviewed before the electrons settle down in the submittal database -- in fact, some are reviewed long before they were ever submitted -- and some submittals have been waiting for three years.

(2) Not reading or following the instructions in the "read before posting" post. We really need that additional information to tell you anything specific, it's not just getting you to jump through hoops for the fun of it.

(3) Assuming the e-mail address is a big deal. It's not: if we could get every professional webmaster to know what sites we are interested in, and to submit those (and only those) to the ODP as they are finished, we'd have succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.

(4) Site design (and possibly configuration): you'll turn off a lot of users, especially those on slow internet connections by the gratuitous-graphics-intensive page layout (and, I suspect, something in the server that limits the number of those dozen+ little glyphs that can be downloaded at once. There may also be some bad choice of picture resolutions versus image area.) This will NOT prevent a listing -- but it may certainly delay it as the editor says something like, "I can review three well-engineered sites while I wait for all these glyphs to load." And it may well lose you visitors. (As a side note, a little significant text on the page will do you wonders with the search engines as well as literate surfers.)