The Dead Language Resource Center

[Tetraca 0]

http://www.us.to/

This is my site, formerly for Runis Lingua, redisigned to focus on something different. It hosts tutorials for languages, dead languages to be exact. Dead is used toungue-and-cheek, though (There are endangered and living, but obscure languages as well). If anyone would like to visit it and give me an impression of what you think of it go ahead. I'm not done adding tutorials by far, but I'm working on it. It's tedious work trying to add 300 or so images scanned from a public domain book to an open office draw document, resizing the image to roughly fit the page, and the export it to PDF, especially when you've got several other sites to manage. I'm also looking for donations of scans of public domain books to learn old languages (it would have to be from approximately the turn of the century due to the overly extending copyright laws). Specifically, I'm looking for:

+ Old English+ Middle English
+ Old Irish
+ Ainu
+ Biblical Hebrew
+ Native American Languages
+ Sorbian
+ Old Church Slavonic
+ Coptic

+ Any others that you might know which I did not list.
Currently there are tutorials for:

+ Gothic+ Ancient Greek
+ Classical Latin
+ Sanskrit

One Old English book will be coming in a few days. In addition there is a forum. It's quite empty, however. I would like your opinion on the site, and your suggestions for improvement.
Edited July 14, 2007 by Tetraca (see edit history)

[up2trouble 0]

I like it. Thought it was interesting.

[ivenms 0]

Very very simple design. Looks like forum archive page. But simple pages are good for improving SEO.But to attract visitors, you need little graphical modifications.

[suberatu 0]

I agree with ivenms, you need some more aesthetic appeal. As for being a resource center however, I think you have a lot of good list of great content listed. Keep adding more, and though (unfortunately) I don't think many people are interested in 'dead' languages, the people who are interested and who do find your site will be very happy with it and thankful to you.

[Tetraca 0]

I prefer not to have a complex design. I feel they're rather ugly. Plus, fancy-looking designs don't attract visitors; easily-excessible, good content attracts visitors, and nothing shows this better than Maddox's site. A freind of mine made a site called Phat Code, and he doesn't have a fancy design either. However, he has tons of content which is easily excessible and rather cool, and that made his site popular with its community.

[suberatu 0]

I prefer not to have a complex design. I feel they're rather ugly. Plus, fancy-looking designs don't attract visitors; easily-excessible, good content attracts visitors, and nothing shows this better than Maddox's site. A freind of mine made a site called Phat Code, and he doesn't have a fancy design either. However, he has tons of content which is easily excessible and rather cool, and that made his site popular with its community.

I completely agree with you on thost points. What I said is not that you needed a more 'complex' design, merely one that is slightly more attractive. After taking a third look at your site, I think I've found that it is actually the grey content boxes that give the site design a kind of 'meh, uninterested' feeling. When I look at the homepage, it sort of feels like a very basic black/grey/white with two blue bars just stuck in there. When I look at the about page however, it looks much more clean and crisp. It still looks basic, but it seems as though that is part of its functionality, whereas the other page(s) look basic because of lack of creativity (or creative simplicity) if you get what I'm saying.
Still, that doesn't change the fact that you have a lot of invaluable information on that site. I'm actually interested in learning some old Celtic languages, so maybe once I get down with college applications I'll take a (thorough) look at the guides you have available for download and actually try to learn from them.