Fishooked Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 Since the last time I asked this question I revamped the entire thing...maybe not for the better Actually, I like the layout better, I actually decided the add more boards to the main page and lose the sub-boards. A lot of the older members complained that it was too hard to find certain topics, so I left it that way. I did a lot of the image work myself, I know they probably suck, and I do know the site loads slowly at times. Just wondering if it looks strange on different browers and screen resolutions...so far it seems consisten with FireFox, Safari, and IE8. Thanks folks... RapalaNation I've also recently added a Blog and a Twitter account too for the hell of it. I do also need some ideas for promos, contests, etc etc if anyone can come up with anything. One thing we did do recently that I am proud of is we ran a raffle for a bunch of fishing lures, to support www.castforkids.org. That is the one thing about the site I am really proud of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thai Jet Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 Sorry Dude. I thought your site had to do with climbing down slot canyons with ropes. Best of luck to you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CTM Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 Looks good bro.. keep up the good work. I wish i knew what the heck rapala was so I could recommend it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Crusher Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 Just checked it out and signed up. Very nicely done man. I even had my first post. Little different for me because this and JI are the only sights I have ever been on. May take some getting use to, but seems loaded with awesome stuff. The lure package you guys raffled off was bad ass. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Crusher Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 Looks good bro.. keep up the good work. I wish i knew what the heck rapala was so I could recommend it I got an idea. Visit his sight and take a look. Im an established poster their myself. If you need help just ask. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CTM Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 Just checked it out and signed up. Very nicely done man. I even had my first post. Little different for me because this and JI are the only sights I have ever been on. May take some getting use to, but seems loaded with awesome stuff. The lure package you guys raffled off was bad ass. wow.. landing crusher as a poster is like Ahab getting his whale.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joebabyny Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 Since the last time I asked this question I revamped the entire thing...maybe not for the better Actually, I like the layout better, I actually decided the add more boards to the main page and lose the sub-boards. A lot of the older members complained that it was too hard to find certain topics, so I left it that way. I did a lot of the image work myself, I know they probably suck, and I do know the site loads slowly at times. Just wondering if it looks strange on different browers and screen resolutions...so far it seems consisten with FireFox, Safari, and IE8. Thanks folks... RapalaNation I've also recently added a Blog and a Twitter account too for the hell of it. I do also need some ideas for promos, contests, etc etc if anyone can come up with anything. One thing we did do recently that I am proud of is we ran a raffle for a bunch of fishing lures, to support www.castforkids.org. That is the one thing about the site I am really proud of. Ever think of setting up a blog site to write about this stuff and funnel traffic to your board? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
war ensemble Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 I think your banner should be a bit wider and less long, you have to scroll enough to go through the forums. All that would require a bit of resizing, nothing big. Especially to fill up the blank white on the actual screen. On Google Chrome the back button doesn't seem to work, it just says you're back at the home page while keeping you on the same page. I, personally, am not a fan of the big banners for "The Lodge" etc. because it takes three page scrolls to check each forum. Also, I think all of those "The Lodge" banners, etc. would look better if they filled in the whole enclosed area, for continuity's sake. There's a lot going on on that main page, but I don't know if it's possible to cut down on it. I don't like scrolling sideways on websites but I guess if it can't be helped... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joebabyny Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 I think your banner should be a bit wider and less long, you have to scroll enough to go through the forums. All that would require a bit of resizing, nothing big. Especially to fill up the blank white on the actual screen. On Google Chrome the back button doesn't seem to work, it just says you're back at the home page while keeping you on the same page. I, personally, am not a fan of the big banners for "The Lodge" etc. because it takes three page scrolls to check each forum. Also, I think all of those "The Lodge" banners, etc. would look better if they filled in the whole enclosed area, for continuity's sake. There's a lot going on on that main page, but I don't know if it's possible to cut down on it. I don't like scrolling sideways on websites but I guess if it can't be helped... The proportions would be off if he resized the logo in the header to be wider and thinner. But you are right that the header is too narrow. What he COULD do is make a header graphic that incorporates the logo. Either put the logo left aligned on top of some background and maybe some lure graphics right aligned, kinda like what the jn h eader up top looks like. Also, fishhooked, have you noticed the text graphics you are making look a little blurry and not as sharp as when you are creating them? This is due to you saving them as jpegs. I used to make the same mistake all the time. You should look up what the differences are between the 3 major image file formats, jpg/gif/png, it really makes a difference. But to get you started, the jpg format was created for actual photos, while gif/png are more for text and graphics. Play around with saving them as gif or png and you will see a nice difference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishooked Posted July 23, 2009 Author Share Posted July 23, 2009 Ever think of setting up a blog site to write about this stuff and funnel traffic to your board? Yes http://rapalanation.blogspot.com/ The graphics look clear to me, then again it's probably my eyes, from staring at a computer screen for over 20 years. Im amazed I don't need glasses...yet.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Crusher Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 wow.. landing crusher as a poster is like Ahab getting his whale.. Kiss my blowhole Chan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishooked Posted July 23, 2009 Author Share Posted July 23, 2009 I think your banner should be a bit wider and less long, you have to scroll enough to go through the forums. All that would require a bit of resizing, nothing big. Especially to fill up the blank white on the actual screen. On Google Chrome the back button doesn't seem to work, it just says you're back at the home page while keeping you on the same page. I, personally, am not a fan of the big banners for "The Lodge" etc. because it takes three page scrolls to check each forum. Also, I think all of those "The Lodge" banners, etc. would look better if they filled in the whole enclosed area, for continuity's sake. There's a lot going on on that main page, but I don't know if it's possible to cut down on it. I don't like scrolling sideways on websites but I guess if it can't be helped... I thought about the banner thing, but resizing it to make it wider also makes it taller, and too big. There isn't too much blank space left on my site anyway, so I'll probably leave it. When I had the logo too big people said it was too big, lol. I'll check on the Chrome thing, but until they get a larger share of the browser market I'm not going to worry about it. I think with FF, IE, and Safari I have most of it covered. Not sure what you mean by the banners filling in the entire enclosed area, I know they are off by a couple of pixels - is that what you mean? I thought about cutting down on it, but personally for me, I have always been "image-centric' - replacing images with text links, and sites with too many text links frankly just bore me, and I wont go through a read 30 or 40 text links. However if an image grabs my attention, that's usually what I focus on. I know the site isn't dial-up friendly, but I did also create a seperate 'skin' for those on dial-up, that disables images, sigs, and avatars. Thanks for taking a look though, I really appreicate it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZachEY Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 wow.. landing crusher as a poster is like Ahab getting his whale.. Compliment or Fat Joke? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishooked Posted July 23, 2009 Author Share Posted July 23, 2009 The proportions would be off if he resized the logo in the header to be wider and thinner. But you are right that the header is too narrow. What he COULD do is make a header graphic that incorporates the logo. Either put the logo left aligned on top of some background and maybe some lure graphics right aligned, kinda like what the jn h eader up top looks like. Also, fishhooked, have you noticed the text graphics you are making look a little blurry and not as sharp as when you are creating them? This is due to you saving them as jpegs. I used to make the same mistake all the time. You should look up what the differences are between the 3 major image file formats, jpg/gif/png, it really makes a difference. But to get you started, the jpg format was created for actual photos, while gif/png are more for text and graphics. Play around with saving them as gif or png and you will see a nice difference. Yeah. maybe I could make the logo smaller, and incorporate it into into a wider, thinner banner across the top. I guess my only concern with that is making sure it's compatible with certain screen resolution sizes. Too wide and the user is getting scrollbars, too small at it might look lost. Also Im not sure of everyone knows about using Ctrl plus make their screen larger, or Ctrl - to make it smaller... Does anyone know if .png files caused compatability issues across browsers? I thought I read that somewhere...anyway, I'll take a look at those images and modify them to .pngs... Thanks JoeB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Crusher Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 Compliment or Fat Joke? Ey my young talented friend, when your over 300 pounds the line between the two blurs. Just like the sight of my toes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonEJet Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 Not enough offshore stuff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishooked Posted July 23, 2009 Author Share Posted July 23, 2009 Not enough offshore stuff Apparently we don't have any members that fish offshore yet... We do get fishing stories from England, Australia, Germany, Denmark, and Malaysia though... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonEJet Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 You might want to consider starting an offshore section to your site The reason being is that as an offshore guy, once I see slurp baits, I bail Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vicious89x Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 Yo Fish, I dunno what I would have to do on my end but my company should be going live with an online store. We have a whole fishing clothing line, shirts, shorts, vests, sandals, etc. I don't know if your users use your website for reviews of products or what not and as a source to buy things but I could send you the link of that when it's up and running. http://www.columbia.com/Search.aspx?keyword=By+keyword(s)&viewAll=false&top=0&cat=0&prod=0&topCatSearchId=0&activityId=7&activityName=Fishing&topCatSearchName=All+Categories&searchType=activity Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishooked Posted July 23, 2009 Author Share Posted July 23, 2009 You might want to consider starting an offshore section to your site The reason being is that as an offshore guy, once I see slurp baits, I bail What exactly do you mean? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonEJet Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 As an inshore/offshore guy, when I see mainly bass stuff, I leave I don;'t bass fish, nor do I lake or pond fish So unless you have a sal****er feature to your site, us sal****er guys bail Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonEJet Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 that's funny you cant type salt water because of the tw at Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZachEY Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 that's funny you cant type salt water because of the tw at Ha... was going to post that I had no idea what you were saying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishooked Posted July 23, 2009 Author Share Posted July 23, 2009 As an inshore/offshore guy, when I see mainly bass stuff, I leave I don;'t bass fish, nor do I lake or pond fish So unless you have a sal****er feature to your site, us sal****er guys bail There's a fishing thread, it doesn't specify salt or freshwater. I don't care if people are fishing farm pods, creeks or streams or bays. Rapala makes sal****er lures, I have everthing covered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CTM Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 Compliment or Fat Joke? i'm going to go with a little of both.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Klecko73isGod Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 that's funny you cant type salt water because of the tw at Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Crusher Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 i'm going to go with a little of both.. Alex... "What Crusher says when their are two choices on a Wedding Menu" for 500 Note: The little part is proof that Crushers mother made an attempt to raise him right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joebabyny Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 Yeah. maybe I could make the logo smaller, and incorporate it into into a wider, thinner banner across the top. I guess my only concern with that is making sure it's compatible with certain screen resolution sizes. Too wide and the user is getting scrollbars, too small at it might look lost. Also Im not sure of everyone knows about using Ctrl plus make their screen larger, or Ctrl - to make it smaller... Does anyone know if .png files caused compatability issues across browsers? I thought I read that somewhere...anyway, I'll take a look at those images and modify them to .pngs... Thanks JoeB Your site is already 1222 pixels wide, which is way too wide, it really should be no more than 1000 pix. What I am saying is to make a header graphic that is as wide as your site, in this case 1222, right now your graphic is just the logo and is about half that size. PNG's are compatible on all the browsers, the only issue is IE before 7 if you use png's with alpha channels. An alpha channel is a transparent layer, like if you made a graphic in photoshop that you wanted to blend in with the background of the site, you would make the background of the graphic transparent and specify transparency when saving the file in the image editor. An example of a transparent png is the header graphic i did on www.timelessdjs.com. If you look at the graphic in the header, it is made up of the TE, the oval beneath it, and the rounded box surrounding the header, all as one png file. I left the background unfilled and transparent, so you can see the site's background through it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StillerPaul Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 I checked it out and thought it was kinda annoying to scroll so much, myself. Other than that, good site and i may just sign up as i am an avid fsherman too. My favorite Bass lure is those Bass Assassin's. I've had alot of catches on them. Ever try em'? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishooked Posted July 23, 2009 Author Share Posted July 23, 2009 I checked it out and thought it was kinda annoying to scroll so much, myself. Other than that, good site and i may just sign up as i am an avid fsherman too. My favorite Bass lure is those Bass Assassin's. I've had alot of catches on them. Ever try em'? Thanks - yeah I know there's lots of scrolling, but I cant fit everything I want on one page. I did 'shorten' it for awhile, by using sub-boards, but 'the regulars' couldnt find where everything was, so I moved it back. I also need to keep everything on the front page mainly for the BabelFish translator; I get a lot of people from all over the world that visit (since they are sold worldwide). Yeah, I know them Bass Asassins, Ive used them, but my favorites lately have been 5" Senkos & Berkley Realistix Sinking Minnows, as far as plastics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joebabyny Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 Thanks - yeah I know there's lots of scrolling, but I cant fit everything I want on one page. I did 'shorten' it for awhile, by using sub-boards, but 'the regulars' couldnt find where everything was, so I moved it back. I also need to keep everything on the front page mainly for the BabelFish translator; I get a lot of people from all over the world that visit (since they are sold worldwide). Yeah, I know them Bass Asassins, Ive used them, but my favorites lately have been 5" Senkos & Berkley Realistix Sinking Minnows, as far as plastics. I know you are trying to do things on the cheap/free, but it looks like you are starting to get a little bit of traffic. Maybe you could get a sponsor or two who would pay enough to pick up the costs. You may want to think about upgrading to something you can control/customize a bit better. And the longer you put off doing something like that if that is your game plan at some point, the harder it will be to get your current google indexing to not take a hit on the move and the harder it gets to migrate over. Here is a suggestion on what i would do if i could afford it. Scrap proboards and get your own board, I prefer vb but there are free boards out there as well. Integrate it with a wordpress front end with a good seo optimized theme and design. That is what max does here with jn, a wordpress front cms and vb messageboard. Going that route would allow you to clean up your site drastically, implement a blog better than a free blgspot one, and allow you to quickly and easily set up pages to move some of that bulk of your front page. You also would then have complete control in advertising/sponsorship. I would be shocked if you couldn't swing it so that the board paid for itself. Remember, you don't need a dedicated server to run this at your current stage. Also, you mentioned babelfish, you could get plugins for wordpress that will handle translations for you as well. Like I said, i know you are trying to go the free route, those are just some counterpoints to consider. And as someone who has had to deal with complete site designs, I just know what a b#tch it is to keep goole ranking and the nightmare of outdated links in their index, dealing with redirects and htaccess files. Also, going with wordpress/vb or some other board would probably really do a lot for your google ranking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Verde Posted July 24, 2009 Share Posted July 24, 2009 I think the logo/banner is fine in it's dimensions... Not every website has to have that bloggish skinny/wide banner thing going on. I kinda like websites that don't conform to the norm. Anyway, this is what I think your problem is (aesthetically speaking).. * * * * * It's too much "stuff" crammed in between the banner/logo and forums.. I know you think it's pertinent stuff but imo it's tooooooo much, which causes your visitors to have to scroll forever to get to the boards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishooked Posted July 24, 2009 Author Share Posted July 24, 2009 I think the logo/banner is fine in it's dimensions... Not every website has to have that bloggish skinny/wide banner thing going on. I kinda like websites that don't conform to the norm. Anyway, this is what I think your problem is (aesthetically speaking).. * * * * * It's too much "stuff" crammed in between the banner/logo and forums.. I know you think it's pertinent stuff but imo it's tooooooo much, which causes your visitors to have to scroll forever to get to the boards. Maybe I'll start throwing that stuff in near the bottom...its a simple enough fix, just a table... This is what happens when you work on your site until midnight after 9 hours at the 'real' job... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishooked Posted July 24, 2009 Author Share Posted July 24, 2009 I know you are trying to do things on the cheap/free, but it looks like you are starting to get a little bit of traffic. Maybe you could get a sponsor or two who would pay enough to pick up the costs. You may want to think about upgrading to something you can control/customize a bit better. And the longer you put off doing something like that if that is your game plan at some point, the harder it will be to get your current google indexing to not take a hit on the move and the harder it gets to migrate over. Here is a suggestion on what i would do if i could afford it. Scrap proboards and get your own board, I prefer vb but there are free boards out there as well. Integrate it with a wordpress front end with a good seo optimized theme and design. That is what max does here with jn, a wordpress front cms and vb messageboard. Going that route would allow you to clean up your site drastically, implement a blog better than a free blgspot one, and allow you to quickly and easily set up pages to move some of that bulk of your front page. You also would then have complete control in advertising/sponsorship. I would be shocked if you couldn't swing it so that the board paid for itself. Remember, you don't need a dedicated server to run this at your current stage. Also, you mentioned babelfish, you could get plugins for wordpress that will handle translations for you as well. Like I said, i know you are trying to go the free route, those are just some counterpoints to consider. And as someone who has had to deal with complete site designs, I just know what a b#tch it is to keep goole ranking and the nightmare of outdated links in their index, dealing with redirects and htaccess files. Also, going with wordpress/vb or some other board would probably really do a lot for your google ranking. Thanks, I'll look into it. But you'd be amazed at how stable ProBoards is. I think my site was down 5x at the most since 2004. Their support forums are top notch, and it is more customizable than I could have originally imagined. Especially considering this is what a 'default' one looks like - They are coming out with ProBoards v5 soon, so I'm curious to see how the upgrades go and how they look, and I'll figure it out then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joebabyny Posted July 24, 2009 Share Posted July 24, 2009 I think the logo/banner is fine in it's dimensions... Not every website has to have that bloggish skinny/wide banner thing going on. I kinda like websites that don't conform to the norm. Anyway, this is what I think your problem is (aesthetically speaking).. * * * * * It's too much "stuff" crammed in between the banner/logo and forums.. I know you think it's pertinent stuff but imo it's tooooooo much, which causes your visitors to have to scroll forever to get to the boards. The logo is great. My issue is the fact that there is too much empty white space on the sides, it doesn't frame the site well from the top. The site is 1222 pix wide (which is an issue of its own) but the logo graphic is about half that size, leaving a lot of pixels of dead white space on either side. As for the skinny thing, i totally agree, I actually like longer headers myself. Ideally, if it were my site, I would probably cut the site to 1000 pixels, and at least make a box 1000 pix wide by however long and put the logo in there, just to frame the page better. Keep in mind, with a 600 pi graphic just hanging there then white space stretching out to the right, if you are on a smaller computer like a laptop or netbook and you see that and start scrolling down, you might not even realize that the page goes over more to the right as you move down. On a laptop or netbook that is going to be below the fold. I might use google images to grab some fishing images, put them in little bubbles or something and place them in the header to take up space, kinda like JN does with the players. Like I said, these are just my opinions. Fishhooked seems like he has a pretty good idea of what he wants his site to look like, and everyone is different. Oh and verde, i COMPLETELY agree with that section youmentioned as cluttered and confusing. The way he has the adds staggere with the one pic on top and the other pic on bottom, it is not very clear which add goes with which group of text. Also, the center aligned text i am not a fan of. I really like when pics are aligned right with wrapping text, it is the easiest and most pleasing to the eye. Like I said before, these are just my opinions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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