This is a free craft site aimed toward educating children about snowflakes and snow crystal formation.
With nearly 300 different snowflake patterns, many designed from photographs of actual snow flakes, this site is popular with educators K-12, and crafters looking for design ideas and patterns for crochet, woodworking, embroidery and stenciling. As a totally Kid Safe web site, puplic, private and parochial schools and libraries are linking to Paper Snowflakes more and more - and I'm having a blast! Please honor my work with a site review - and loads of reciprocal links!

http://www.papersnowflakes.com

<Mod edit to comply with Site Review Rule #1 - Masterpeace>

Hi snowflakegirl;

A great site (sites) you have here, very educational. It's interesting how you link the other sites together.

__________________
Home Business Blog
Healthy Living Products

Tested in IE6 56k modem 800x600. Graphics are a little slow to load. Slightly too wide for 800x600. Otherwise, a very nice design. Good luck with it.

Nick

Wow great job snowflake. Your site has more information on making snowflakes then I thought possible lol.

Just curious though, why did you choose to do this? For fun? Charity? Either one, you can't feel bad if you link to affiliates to make some money :> You could probably make a couple hundred a month on snowflake books and etc.

It got started because my brother wrote a snowflake pattern book and we thought we would put it online just to see what would happen. After a year or so of no discernible sales activity he got impatient and yanked his designs off the site. I didn't want to give up so I created my own designs and made the site more educational oriented and free.
I don't make much income though and that's why I'm here tasking part in this forum because I think the sites SHOULD be making advertising income and it's frustrating not knowing what to do to improve things.

1.I look into your code, quite smart and readable code for SPIDER. I bet you use Dreamwaver, how about putting a newsletter box for your reader to subscribe to receive news and updates? You can get free DW extension at macromedia site.
2.Sitemap should be devided into multi lever for readers to follow easier
3.I agree with Nick, I checked the your average graphic size which is almost optimized. However, pageload is quite a problem.You know, kids are not much patient like us. Cutting down the number of imgs/page and splitting pages can be a solution.
Just small 3 things I can find,overall great site!

I think your main target market should be teachers and school officials. You could start an email campaign for every school in USA if you wanted, letting them know of your site. Advertise in magazines, newsletters, etc. for teachers, and you should see a dramatic increase in sales.

I spent most of the months of March and April sending individual email messages to k-12 teachers and librarians and elementary school webmasters all over the world. The response was underwhelming but the few who did return response were all favorable so I'm crossing my fingers that when October comes round the hits will start coming.

a Google Linkto search is still very dissaponting resulting in 2 pages (17 sites). Alta Vista LinkTo search results in 17 pages of links (95 sites) - I don't understand why Google isn't picking those sites up.

My site was mentioned in a Christian Science Monitor article a few years back, http://csmonitor.com/2002/1226/p11s02-stss.html

and I've scored a few sweet high profile links which I'm very proud of and did mention when asking for links in my messages - but :

United States Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service, Oregon http://www.or.nrcs.usda.gov/snow/links/

Incorporating Holidays with Instruction
http://literacy.kent.edu/~illinois/quicktips.htm"

Pratt's Reciprocal & Viewers Educational Links
http://www.fastq.com/~jbpratt/educat...werslinks.html

Lesson Plans Teaching Resources
http://www.teaching-resource.co.uk/t...essonplans.htm

Kindergarten Activities
http://www.rdale.k12.mn.us/ple/kinde...n_websites.htm

Topsail Elementary School http://www.topsail.k12.nf.ca/wwandks.html

Muskegon Public Schools
http://www.muskegon.k12.mi.us/nims/Sprecken/snow.html

I LOVE your patriotflakes, those are great.
Try turning your science section into a free printable lesson plan (or a few). Then submit it to all of the free lesson plan sites, and request a link from the ones that link them. That will boost your links. And offering something free always helps traffic. You've already done all of the research, you just need to make it into the same format as the lesson plans.

__________________
Melissa French - Chronic nitpicker, but I mean well.
http://www.NetCastles.org/

Ok,

I like the design and feel of the site. I'm not sure what I think about the floating snowflakes in the background, but this is a fun site so maybe that's what needs to be there.

The navigation on the site is great. It's very easy to see where to go and to follow through. I wouldn't change a thing there.

Overall I really like the site and good luck I think the idea is cool.

Chris

Great site, you put some work into it!

Ok this is my first critique of a site, and I'm not an expert. Yet I did spend months looking at hundreds of sites to get a feel for what I wanted on my site.

I like the falling snow flakes.

Kind of like you said about my site, I wasn't quiet sure what type of site I had clicked onto. Mind you the graphics were eye catching.

Everything on the page doesn't fit onto my screen, I have to scroll over to see the rest of the page. Maybe it's my browser, I'm not sure.

I'm curious why I have to scroll down so far on a page to see text or pictures. I would think some of those great pictures would be closer to the top of the page, where they can be seen. I first thought thought nothing was on the page or perhaps the text was the same color as the back ground.

one of the very first links I clicked, came up a dead page.
http://www.papersnowflakes.com/5side...structions.htm

Looks like you put alot of hard work into your site!Keep up the great work!

Now we all should realize how valuable a second set of eyes are!

There is no such ting as a 5 sided snowflake. That was a typo and I thank policecrime for his great detective work ;-)

Hey kids, I'm doing my part handing out reviews and asking for reciprocal links! Where are you?!?

Just thought I'd make that reminder nag.

PLUS announce that when I ran my Alta Vista link check search today: (who links to you), AltaVista found 557 results, for links to "Paper Snowflakes for Everyone!" That's up from 117 in march 2004!!

In October when my traffic quadruples ... I can only imagine!

What I find puzzling is that Google reports a mere 42 links to papersnowflakes.com. A BIG DIFFERENCE!! I spent all day verifying all the Alta Vista links and they are legitimate. Can anyone explain this discrepancy between Google and Alta Vista search results? Is Google just over hyping their search capability?


Pat

Please review my website:
Papersnowflakes for Everyone

I will be happy to provide a reciprocal link to your website.

http://www.papersnowflakes.com
http://www.Scissorcraft.com
http://www.Papervalentines.com
http://www.Paperchrismons.com

What a kickass set of sites LOL. The web never ceases to amaze me with the fantastic things you can find on here.... I am 34 year old IT project manager and I have 5 paper snowflakes sitting on my desk... I just had to have a go LOL......

Only thing I would say is the backgrounds.. the snowflake one makes things like the mouseovers dead slow and the site with the mulitcoloured wavy lines? Can you do a pair of darkshades cut out so I can use the site?

I know they are aimed at kids but some are a bit bright. Have you tried plain white to give it a crisp clean look?

Keep it up, great ideas... and send me some paper!! I used my last few sheets doing Fernlike Crystals!! :D

I'll give the backgrounds a think. I've been redesigning these sites for years now trying to get a good look. Thought I'd get wild for a change.

Check back in 6 months - you won't recognize the place.

Try the Frosty Miniflakes. 38 pages of miniflakes! It's only paper!!

A user complained the file wouldn't open for her. I couldn't recreate the error.

snowflakegirl

Hey kids,

Yesterday as I was prowling the net looking for snowy links, I ran across a site about a little town in Wales named of all things, Snowdonia.

What a great find! I immediately decided Snowdonia is the birthplace for the little Snowflake man that I use as my logo. I immediately made a page dedicated to Snowdonia and contacted virtually every web site in Snowdonia inviting them to link to my site. What fun! Now I have an official Snowflake "Family Tree!" and several new affiliates.

Check it out! http://www.papersnowflakes.com/snowdonia.htm

Snowflakegirl

IE 6 produces double unknown error message when first visiting but didn't (I don't know why) allow debugging to see what's wrong.

top images (science etc) have light background on mouseover, on IE it's full size (box) and with Firefox it's partial (about 30% rectangle at the bottom).

Hope those help,

__________________
Lomaosake.fi, Duelta.com, Duelta.net

Thanks, I was hoping that it was just my Homesite/Browser configuration that produced the error. I get that error at home on my Homesite Browser with IE 6.02 but never independently on the local host or internet. I've tested on numerous other PC's and haven't gotten the error.

What's wierd is the code (the contact.js) script on the home page generates the error but when the identical code is used on ALL the other pages it's ok. Screw it, I just removed the code from the home page.

This is the error - approximately:

"Object doesn't support this property Line 4 Character 1. "

I don't know whether to correct the highlighting rectangles. In IE they work great on eveerything else they just look like big fat underlines, not a big issue.

But thanks for telling me about it. I really do appreciate all comments.

:-)

PS: Picked up three more snow site links last night!
One from Perdue University (cheezy grin)

hey kids, in October my traffic literally quadruples. I'm not kidding. You want a reciprocal link - now's the time.

I was doing some research this week and stumbled upon a fantastic interactive graphic showing how search engines pick up information from each other (or not).
http://www.bruceclay.com/searchengin...nshipchart.htm

If you're a visually oriented person this will really help!!


Plus I found a great keyword tool
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/

PS: Since my last posting I've picked up nearly 200 more reciprocal links - This is really GREAT

Snowflakegirl

http://www.papersnowflakes.com

Hi Snowflake girl
After you reviewed my site I added a comment saying "Your Sites are as complex and awe inspiring as snowflakes", each time I revisit I reafirm that statement. You mentioned reciprocal links, I'm a novice at this website business and would love to link but how do we do it.
A few dinks on your front page for me were; top left hand SNOWFLAKES has the word PAPER blocking the latter half of it, as the PAPER is in the same color as the background it just looks as though some of the SNOWFLAKE letters are damaged? (might just be me being non arty!) Just under this, centred are hyperlinks to News letter and Fun Search, they enchroach on the words above. It only goes to show how good the site is when one has to revert to nit picking.
Best regards
Rippoffski

Sorry for the confusion. I've been reading and incorporating too much advice in these forums lately. I got ahead of myself and inadvertently wiped out all my own linking to Scissorcraft from Papersnowflakes.

sheesh

That will be my next weekend's job. Putting the links back. The way I had it set up (and it is still that way on my other sites) ALL my reciprocal linking is made through http://www.scissorcraft.com/links/links.html
Then I link back to that page from all my websites...unless of course I wipe them all out while trying some new design thing...

Please let me know if the font still acting up from your past post? I don't see it.


PS:
Businesses out there might be interested in this:
http://www.papersnowflakes.com/snowflake.htm
I have a nice coloring graphic that businesses may affix their logo to and (as long as my copyright and website info stays put) they may print (on paper) and share to their customers.

snowflakegirl

http://www.papersnowflakes.com


PS: My recoprocal links now number 1,100 (that's up a significant number since last post)

Today I added a new game to my site - Make A Koch Snowflake. I'm impressed, really. As a Math Flunkee in highschool, this fractal stuff is getting my attention!