We know you love the Directory Journal. And do you know what? We love our visitors and customers too. We work hard to bring you great links and content. Our designer did an outstanding job at setting the Directory Journal apart in the Web directory industry. We get it. We’re flattered when people try to emulate us. But please…. Stop stealing from us! Imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery, but theft is not.

It has recently come to our attention that quite a few Web directories ripped off the Directory Journal design. The directories we’ve been notified about are listed below (although the majority of the sites have now changed their templates after being contacted by us about the infringement).

• MaxLinks.org
• LiveDir.net
• Papdir.com
• Petsdir.com

To give you a better idea of the ripped off design work, you can compare a screenshot of the Directory Journal and that of MaxLinks.org below.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Directory Journal wants to make your holiday season a little bit brighter. If you act soon, you can build new backlinks for your (or your clients’) websites before the end of this year, and do it at deep discounts! If you submit your site to DirJournal.com over the next 15 days and enter Holiday09 during your order, you can save 23% on yearly listings and get a whopping 33% off permanent listings.

Discounts apply to both regular and featured listings, so hurry before this deal expires. We don’t plan to offer this special holiday discount again! Remember, you only have 15 days to save up to 33% on your link submissions. Look how much you can save if you act now!

• $46.16 for a regular yearly listing (regularly $59.95)
• $76.96 for a yearly featured listing (regularly $99.95)
• $107.17 for a permanent regular listing (regularly $159.95)
• $167.47 for a permanent featured listing (regularly $249.95)

Don’t wait until January to start working towards your goals for your websites. The Directory Journal reaches hundreds of thousands of visitors every month, helping you not only build incoming links to your sites but also offering you targeted traffic! Not only that, but we throw in deep links for free! When you submit your site for a regular listing you can add 3 free deep links, and if you get a featured listing we’ll give you 5 deep links at no extra cost.

Don’t forget to enter Holiday09 when you submit your site to take advantage of this special holiday offer. Give yourself the gift of better backlinks and traffic this year without breaking the bank. Save 23-33% when you submit your site today!

Everyone with The Directory Journal would like to wish you and your loved ones a very happy holiday seasons! We hope to see more of you in the New Year!

*Restrictions apply. Please view our terms of use and submission policies for details.

It’s not too late to improve your backlinks and site traffic (or links and traffic for your clients) before the New Year! By submitting your sites to The Directory Journal now, you can do more than improve site metrics to reach your annual goals — you can save 20% on every submission! What are you waiting for? To save 20%, just visit DirJournal.com to submit your site today and enter Save20 during your order.

Don’t pass up this opportunity to save 20% now! The offer will only be available until Sunday, November 22nd. Still not convinced? Take a look at how much you’ll save if you submit your site today!

• $47.96 for a regular yearly listing (regularly $59.95)
• $79.96 for a yearly featured listing (regularly $99.95)
• $127.96 for a permanent regular listing (regularly $159.95)
• $199.96 for a permanent featured listing (regularly $249.95)

Why should you submit sites to The Directory Journal? Because our deal is better than ever! Not only will you build relevant backlinks and attract targeted traffic, but by submitting your sites now you’ll also get to take advantage of our rapid growth! We’ve seen huge increases in traffic from around 250,000 visitors each month to more than 400,000 visitors in October! That’s a trend you want to be a part of! To sweeten the deal even more, for every site you submit to The Directory Journal we also give you free deep links to help you direct those targeted visitors to the information they really want on your site (regular listings come with 3 free deep links and featured listings come with 5).

Just enter Save20 when you submit your site to save 20% on your order and have your site reviewed in just 72 hours! Submit your site today!

*Restrictions apply. Please view our terms of use and submission policies for details.

If you want to improve your (or your client’s) site rankings before the end of the year, now is the time to step up your link building efforts. Not only will you build quality backlinks when you submit sites to The Directory Journal, but if you submit them now you can save a whopping 30% on all of our listing options — regular or featured; yearly or permanent! Just enter SUMMER09 when you visit DirJournal.com to submit your site.

If you act now, you and your clients can take advantage of some of the lowest sale prices we offer. Review our discounted rates below and start submitting your links today!

• $41.97 for a regular yearly listing (regularly $59.95)
• $69.97 for a yearly featured listing (regularly $99.95)
• $111.97 for a permanent regular listing (regularly $159.95)
• $174.97 for a permanent featured listing (regularly $249.95)

What can The Directory Journal offer you? How about providing an audience of over 290,000 unique visitors each month? Sound attractive? Throw in the fact that our two years in business has given our team time to develop high editorial standards, and you can be sure your links will not only reach a worthwhile audience but also be in great company with our other hand-picked links! We help you build links to your primary site URL, but also give you free deep links (3 for regular listings and 5 for featured listings) so you can direct visitors to the pages on your website they really want to see.

Just enter SUMMER09 when you submit your site to save 30% on your order and have your site reviewed in just 72 hours! Oh, and did I mention this is the last sale we’ll be hosting until at least November? This offer expires in just 15 days (on September 18, 2009). Better act fast! Submit your site today!

To celebrate Independence Day and our second birthday this July, we’re giving you a gift! From today through July 15th, you can save 30% on any regular or featured listing in Directory Journal with coupon code DJ2Y. Listing options can be found here.

We go out of our way to create quality resources to attract real visitors who want to find your website. Don’t miss out on targeted traffic. Submit your link today, and you can get a featured listing for little more than our typical regular listing prices!

For a limited time you can get a regular listing in Directory Journal for just $41.97 annually or get a permanent regular listing for a one-time payment of $111.97. Featured links, which appears above regular submissions in our listings, are now just $69.97 per year or a one-time payment of $174.97.

Enter DJ2Y when you place your order to take advantage of this special offer. We guarantee your site will be reviewed within 72 hours to be added to our collection of more than 10,000 hand-picked quality links.* Act now before this special offer expires!

*Restrictions apply. Please view our terms of use and submission policies for details.

We’ve had an eventful couple of weeks and I’m so excited that I had to share the news with you right away. DirJournal.com is now hosted on a server that is lightening fast, we have a brand new logo and we are coming up with an Affiliate program really soon.

Check it out for yourself! I’d love to see you on the inside……

Coming to the point…

We are again offering some heavy discounts on our listings. Now you can list your website for a measly fee which is 25% Off our regular prices.

Use the Promo: May09
(Remember it will expire on May 22nd, 2009)

Please click on the link below to get in right now.

http://www.dirjournal.com/submit.php

If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please use this form http://www.dirjournal.com/contact.php

Wishing you success!

Hasan Saleem.

Directory Journal logo proposal #1

Directory Journal logo proposal #2

Directory Journal logo proposal #3

When discussing proposals, we mutually agreed that #1 has best overall mix of traditional while clear and readable masthead/newspaper title appearance.

Decision was to move on with #1 and I was asked to try few different variations with tagline, refine the thickness of logotype and possibly further emphasize the message. I wanted to portray letterpress feel further, thus #1 revisions were sent off:

Directory Journal logo design #1 Revision b

Directory Journal logo design #1 Revision c

The final decision was to finalize 1c with lighter “emboss” letterpress appearance, thus you can see final result on http://dirjournal.com

I am happy that we managed to produce what i think successful rebranding and wish all the best for the Directory journal team.

I would like to thank Mr. Saleem for the opportunity to work on this identity, and would also like to thank David Airey (http://davidairey.com) for kindly referring my services to him.

Directory Journal final logo

Bojan Stefanovic

http://logoholik.com

Phew! What a week it’s been. We are now on a new more powerful server bought from Hostgator.com and it comes with 8GB RAM. 500 GB Disk Space and 4 a Core Xeon Processor. This means much more space, speed and reliability.

However, the transition, I must say has been very painful, all thanks to Hostgator support. Our site was down for eight long hours solely due to the complete lack of co-operation from their support staff.

I sincerely apologize to all our visitors, who sent disappointed mails and to all others who may have tried accessing the site during this period. We tried our best, but sometimes things are just not in our hands. Wonder what would have happened if not for the intervention of Chad Bean and Brent Oxley who helped us get back online again.

The good news for our visitors is that the site is loading much, much faster now, which makes all the trouble worth it.

I thank you for your continued support and patience.

Hasan Saleem

Hi Friends,

We’ve been making a whole lot of changes to our directory, giving importance to convenience, while ensuring it retains its charm.

The DirJournal.com Home Page has taken on a completely new look, which you will find appealing. Regional categories have been prioritized as we felt that would make it easier for our visitors to reach where they want quicker.

Another newly incorporated and great feature is the ability to access all blog posts while viewing the latest right from the home page.

Hope you enjoy the change as much as we did creating it.

I had a talk with my several fellow designers and artists about building their own website and an interesting thing  came up, they don’t know where to start. Obviously, they want to show the best of their works, have the website clean and uncluttered,  user friendly and of course unique and speaking about the author. No need to say that simplicity sells, so in our todays post we decided to study several most popular and successful approaches towards simplicity in design of a website home page for designers, illustrators, photographers, painters and other people of art.

Tip 1. Splash page can save it all.

If you feel that your home page turned out to be not that simple and balanced as you wish, make a splash page, a very simple one. Find some of your creatives that people like most and place it somewhere on page (the less expected the location is the better). The feeling of simplicity from the splash page will stay with the website visitor once he launches on your home page. Same thing about your artwork, even if the website itself seems somewhat disappointing, the great work on the home page can save it all.

Arturo Elena. Graphic design and illustration.
http://www.arturoelena.com

Candybird. Graphic design and illustration.
http://candybird.free.fr

Read the rest of this entry »