New Site

Nice theme, I like the wood background.

I’m not much into hunting anymore except with a camera. It’s a popular sport thought, especially with the use of dogs. We have a site dedicated to hounds and I see a lot of hunting activity with them. That and gun dogs too.

Are you using retrievers or pointers during your hunts?

Best of luck with your site,
Nick

I don’t personally have a hunting dog, but many of my friends do and generally there is at least one with us while hunting birds (Duck, dove, quail, etc.). Labs are the most common for bird hunting, but hounds are commonly used for stirring up the deer while “dog hunting.”

Thanks for the feedback, your site is pretty clever/unique. Looks like you generate a good bit of traffic as well. This particular site has only been active for a couple weeks, still trying to tweak the format. Any tips on increasing traffic?

A couple tips for increasing traffic…

First, get the All in One SEO Pack plugin. The only frustrating thing about using it is it takes about a week before you start to see keywords and descriptions in search results. I know when I started with it it took a bit of time before I could figure out what worked and what didn’t. Once you get a feel for how to write the descriptions and keywords it’s easier to tweek it for better results. I constantly do Google searches to make sure our site continues to climb the page results.

Second, and I believe more importantly, is content. The more content the more information the search engines have to include in results. And I’ve found, for our site at least, the more images you have the better. More than half of our visitors get there by way of an image search. Make sure the image files have good file names and to fill out the alt=”” image title with good keywords.

Nick

Very nice site. It takes me back home (the mid-west) where hunting is common place. I found a few other suggestions you might think about. In your post (https://localhuntgallery.com/archives/203) the picture exceeds the margin and starts to run into the sidebar. You might consider a lightbox for the photo. (The lightbox allows you to show the image in a normal format to fit your website but when clicked it dramatically increases the size of your photo to its full size for better viewing – see this link for more information and suggestion https://lab.netchillies.com/plugins/extend-wordpress/shortcodes/images/ and scroll down to the Image with lightbox support section).

Another to consider is turning off your comments section in certain pages. For example, I would not allow comments on the Contact or Upload page. If you need to add additional information, then I would add it in the page and not in the comments.

I was a little confused by the Local Directory > Hunting Clubs page. (https://localhuntgallery.com/local-directory/hunting-clubs) it seems to be repeating?

You might want to replace the “Menu” name on your main menu and change it to “Media”. I think it would get the point across a little bit better.

Also, you might (optional) want to include some text with the photos. Like who is in them, about where they were hunting, etc. Especially, if someone submitted the photo to the website, I would at least say “courtesy of John Doe”.

Also, what about a copyright notice at the bottom of the site (like “Copyright ? 2011 localhuntinggallery.com. All rights reserved.”) And I would follow it up with a simple terms of use/service and privacy policy pages. (Basically explaining the rules of the website.)

I got an error on the Trophy Gallery Page (Menu > Pictures > Trophy Gallery)

That is it, I promise. Please know that everything above is just to help you make the site better. It looks really good and I think you have a good idea. Good luck!!

Thank you very much for your thoughtful input. The media I have on the site at this point was submitted by friends and other hunters that wanted to provide some content to get the format started. As people begin filling out the form to submitting their pictures directly through the site, I have planned on having some basic information about the image to post as it’s title and description. (Thanks for noticing this)

I have wanted to change the page/map structure into a more clearly organized manner like you suggest with the menu page, but the last time I witched up the permalink structure something went a little haywire and messed up its sync with google analytics. I have been filtering which posts appear on each page with the page association plugin to organize them by category. Do you have any suggestions on how to improve this?

As far as the lightbox goes, I have the photoQ plugin active so that I can have the content update automatically, and all of the images I have on the site were uploaded via photoQ and not the media library. I have the lightbox active, but I cannot seem to figure out the method to use the shortcode to activate this option. I would like to be able to utilize a “shadowbox?” (similar to facebook) image for viewing the image on our site without linking it to an empty page or redirecting the users location. Is NextGen photo gallery a good option to use?

As for the trophy gallery, I have not had any images submitted to that section yet, but I am working with taxidermists to showcase their images of animals they have mounted to have a constant flow of quality content and another method of promoting/marketing their business and our site.

I know these are very basic questions for most wordpress users, but I am trying to make the best site I can with my limited knowledge. Thanks again for your input and help.

Jason

Also, I am having problems with the format of my post pages. If you look at the picture pages, they appear to flow as one post with the title “pictures” in a format which is different than how they were posted.

I am sure it has to do with my page and post association plugins, but I am unsure how to revert these pages to the archives of the posts.

I think your site is very good. The photos and videos are the real highlight. Never seen one for hunting before! Good luck with it.

Good site, I like your blog.