Well its good that you are following your own plan, thats what its all about. Keep us updated. I'd like to see where you end up.

Well, let me know if you want a new theme :)

I rearranged some stuff and updated the poll block so it only shows the most recent poll, which was a space saver. The result is a bit less clutter and a more visible amazon ad.

On thing that had surprised me was with a good 1000 hits, nobody had clicked on the amazon ad with all of the cool cavs stuff it's showing most of the time. I'm not surprised nobody has bought anything in just a couple of days, but I would have thought someone would have at least clicked on one of them. Perhaps it was too far down the page to see the pictures.

It would be nice if the site at least generated enough revenue to pay for the expenses of running it. Thus far it doesn't look like Google AdSense is the answer. I've had nearly 2000 ad unit impressions and haven't made the first penny yet. It's only been 3 days, but each morning I ask my wife - do you think I'll make my first penny today. ;)

Maybe there's a better solution than Google for advertising. I'm surprised there aren't blocks for managing side ads the way the top banner ad works. It's no big deal to add the html to a page, but you can't rotate through multiple ads to see which is going to work best that way.

I have bookmarked both sites for when I do want to build a new theme. I know I don't have the artistic talent to do it myself.

Well, i knocked up the attached as a header image :)
here

wow! that looks fantastic! I'm going to have to rework my whole site now. For a quick change, I shrunk it down to the size I can use for a signature because I didn't have the foresight to store my old simple logo in 2 places, so I'd violate rules on various sites had I used it full size.

My wife designed a new logo for me that I think came out great. I needed to make the text larger so it would scale well if I used it for other purposes. Also, I changed my slogan slightly - from the unofficial web site to "the unofficial home of.."

I've also made many improvements since I started this thread, including tweaking a few modules, and have 3 primary changes left to make to get the site where i want it.

- fix the polls module so it shows results for people who already voted instead of the voting block.

- fix a problem I'm having where windows users start to get things centered for some mysterious reason.

- design a new theme around my new logo. Actually, with the tweaks I've done, my current theme is adequate on a mac, but looks awful on windows. Is there a faq or manual online for how to design a theme?

Check out my evolving site and let me know what you think.

Also, any ideas on how to improve things to encourage people to sign up, post, and click on my advertising links? According to my logs, I've had nearly 2000 unique visitors from all over the world, but under 20 people register.