When is there enough "site" for the site to go live?

[Perfection]

I've been working on an informational site for about a month now, and I am extremely eager to get it up already. I feel it's quite unique and I so badly want to be in the "check out what I made!" stage. Ya know, traffic building, promotion, and generating "buzz."

The thing is, I'm not sure if there is enough content yet to go live. The main purpose of the site is a 3 step/3 page how-to. This is what the site was created for. This is what people will come for. In addition to that, I will be writing articles on this subject on a regular basis.

Currently the key 3 pages are done and ready, as is index.html. Then I have the usual about/contact/site map type pages. And then, I have written 6 articles that get broken up into 2 article categories (3 for each). Total there are 16 pages.

The nav structure looks like this:

home
how-to part 1
how-to part 2
how-to part 3
articles-A
article1
article2
article3
articles-B
article1
article2
article3
about
contact
site map

Technically there is more than enough content on this site as is. However, when you go to the articles-A page and see just 3 articles there, it sort of looks... unspectacular. I was thinking of putting a "This site is new. Expect to see many more articles here shortly" type message, but I'm not sure how great that sounds either.

I mean, when the site goes live and I'm in the showing off phase, I will be adding content on a regular basis. What I'm trying to figure out is if I should put it up and start promoting and then add more content with the site in a live state, or, hold out on putting it up (which is driving me nuts) and take the time to add more content.

What do you guys think?

[stapel]

Do not put an "under construction" or "return for new content" sort of message up. It's so 1990's.

When to "go live" is a decision that only you can make, and it will vary according to the topic of your site and the usefulness of what you have up.

Don't be afraid to "go live" "early". You can then take the time, while you're "small", to generate in-links and traffic. Join forums on your topic, and post helpful replies, only discreetly and occasionally referencing your site. (Never post an off-topic link to yourself; it looks like an ad, and can tick off your potential users and collaborators.) Find similar "small" sites that have lists of links, and politely request to be added. ("Politely" means "don't be rude if they say 'no' or never reply at all".) Go through your logs, finding the search strings people used to find you, and see if you can gear more pages toward what people seem to be wanting. Use this time to write more content, tweak what you've got, and re-organize, as necessary.

Given time and good content, the in-links and search-engine traffic will grow. It seems to be an exponential thing, if you're willing to provide useful information and be patient. Soon enough, you'll "take off". At least, the above was my experience.

Good luck!

Eliz.

[Essex_boy]

I go lvive from day one, even if its a just a home page.

The sooner the better, the quickewr its spidered

[monkeythumpa]

1 page is the criteria. The sooner you go live and are hit for the first time by the Search Engines, the sooner their "new site" penalty will wear off.

[MatthewHSE]

I might start by adding a small notation beside each article for the date it was written. Estimate if you need to, just so the dates are different and have a little time between them. A short notice at the top of the page for "New articles added weekly!" or some similar text (notice that's an announcement, not an apology) will discreetly let people know there will be more. Remove the dates and the announcement when you have ten articles per category. Get up to the ten as quickly as possible.

That's how I'd do it, at least! ;)