Question about custom recips :)
 

i have been FS for two months now, I'm doing freesites with recips from linkslist recip pages,but i've noticed that a lot of FS designers are doing FS with custom recips ( and they look better ). So i'm thinkig to start doing Fs with custom recips.

My question is what are good or bad sides of making FS with custom recips, what problems can i have with this kind of FS?


thanks

As long as you leave the actual anchor links intact, you should be fine. Given that you're still pretty new, you should probably leave the anchor text itself intact too |thumb

make sure that the text is legible, too. Don't make the font too small and watch the colors so they don't fade into the background or disappear on mouseover or on visited.

other than that, what MrYum said & you should be fine :)

Follow what MrYum says and you will be good to go.

Yes, they do look better. With so many ugly ass recips or ones that are just huge in size it makes it hard to make them look decent in a group within the 800 width you have to use.

Would be nice if the major LL came to a standard size recip like 150 wide, easy to put 4 across in table, and no more than 3 lines of text with 2 outgoing links and no scroll. This way they still can get a branding by using their sites colors and easier for submitters to group them. Just a thought that popped into my before breakfast brain.

Exactly! Biggest thing is the colors, I see that so often, cant see recip(s) because of the colors. Bad to get declined just because of colors. I guess I use to submit free sites different than many others. I use to bring up each page/mirror I was submitting to use to submit. This also helped because I could see any problems before I submitted. Far too many people build the pages and dont check them. Why would'nt you?

One other thing I've seen, while many people make real nice custom text recips, there are a few that look down right bad. It sure would'nt hurt to ask other people to check your work..:)

ronnie

To add to the important things mentioned already.....

Always read those acceptance/decline emails and look out for "listing saving tips" from helpful LL owners/reviewers. A bad recip will be spotted by a reviewer. Even if you've missed it then the reviewer for that particular LL won't!
One of the LLs I submit to sent me a friendly "we've changed our recip" email a few days ago, so make sure you read those emails and act upon the advice if necessary.

Also, just a few hours ago MrYum reviewed one of my freesites and pointed me towards an out-of-sequence thumb. He's pretty fast with reviews and it enabled me to quickly make the change before any rejections could come. (Big thanks as usual to MrYum)

Reviewers are our friends! Well that's what I tell myself, anyway!
|loony|

The good. There will be a consistent theme in color and size of the recips, that can be easily styled with css which make them great for building with templates.

The bad. You're not actually using the owners recip code, you are now using something you've modified, which may mean typos or mis-pastes. Double check every link you've created, both category and niche, it will save you from some embarresment.

Seems like all the bases are covered. :)

I agree about MrYum being a good sort. Always prompt, always curteous, and always helpful. Not too many reviewers like him. They're a submitters best friend. |thumb

As a LL owner, I prefer submitters who use custom recips; as long as they know what they're doing. A lot of other LL owners have told me the same. |thumb

Agreed 100%. I submit by hand use notepad and a few open windows, checking off each LL as I submit, so see every recip across any mirrors I make, as well as being able to make sure the category is correct.

Those mirror-makers can save time, but can also cause rejections.

Yep, I neglected to mention that previously. Please actually look at your pages before you submit...you wouldn't believe how many sites get declined because the recip is either invisible or close to it. And be sure to check the visited link color too. It's safe to assume most reviewers will have their entire site in their cache. So, while a link may look fine to you...it could very well be invisible to the reviewer.

Thanks for the kind words guys :)

Just don't get on my bad side |club| :D

Hello,

Today i was thinking of building custom recips table for my free sites and i wanted to aks here about that and i saw that topic :)

...but im still wondering... should i put all the text from recips ?
..or maybe just two visible links : link to index of LL and link to LL proper category.

And what about number of recips ? 20 recips on the page is it ok or is it to many ? ;)

when I first started with custom recips, I just stripped the table elements out of the LL's recips and left all the rest intact, including text/tags etc. Once you feel more comfortable & the reviewers get to know who you are you may want to customize them a bit. Basically, if it looks important, leave it in. I end up with some 2 line & some 3 line recips, but if you arrange them right it looks ok.

I personally think that 20 is too much, even with custom recips. I usually go with 16-18 tops. But that is just my opinion, some LLs care, some don't.

Many thanks for tips Ponygirl |thumb