Website Review and Suggestions

**Andy_Wilson** · 01-29-2007, 11:43 AM

Hey my new favourite game is coming out mid-feb... armed assault!
Now duno if theres any fans but its the sequel to operation flashpoint in my opinion the best shooter to have such a vast editing community. Anyway operation flashpoint back in 2003 was what inspired me to start web designing, unfortunatly like most of my sites this one was a complete failure because the 'biggies' in the web business were far more advanced. HOWEVER...

Here I am 4 years later and the sequel arrives! Time to get in there fast

I have started building the whole website at the start of this month and I'm quite happy with the way things have gone so far. Found a decent content management system and a very nice template which I modified a bit and suits it like a glove

Added a few mods; forum, gallery, downloads page... and it works a treat.
Recently moved to another host and pointing the dns of the domain to it. Currently on Host Gator which seems to be quite reliable at the mo.

Set up over 70 news articles already from news within the Armed Assault community and Im goin to add a few heaps of downloads to the host once all the domain stuff is sorted.

Affiliated with 3 major sites already and trying my best to get the word around other sites.

Who is also in the Armed Assault News/Editing site game with us?
www.armedassault.info - The biggest of the biggies due to its large port over of support from www.operationflashpoint.info

www.armedassault.eu - Big internation ArmA site.

www.armedassault.org - Large Czech community however in my opinion quite unorgansied site.

www.armed-assault-zone.com - Big site with alot of support, my opinion dont like the colour

www.armed-assault.net - Nice layout site with large community.

OK so what I need help with, since I am a late comer to these community sites, is how do I reach their popular stage in a short period of time? I still have 17 days left to think of ideas to gain support.
Im also considering investing in adwords come the release in the UK or ArmA which I am willing to spend around £50-£70.

Tell me what you think about the site and any other suggestions. BE CRITCAL!
www.armasource.com

Thank you,
Andy

**Andy_Wilson** · 01-31-2007, 03:07 AM

bump, please, no one is answering my threads

**Hoosier_Buddy** · 01-31-2007, 03:37 AM

Nice sites, I like the design & layouts of them. One thing you might want to check into is the errors on your websites which can be viewed here:
WC3 Markup Validation Service

Another thing that I noticed that some of your sites loaded up really slow, and I have DSL. If you lowered the quality of your images from 100 quality down to 90 it will lower the size of the image by more than half. That should speed it up a bit, other than that I think you are off to a good start. Goodluck!

**Andy_Wilson** · 01-31-2007, 07:48 AM

sorry didnt explain well enough my site is www.armasource.com the others are other arma sites. What benefits does wc3 have? I have quite alot of errors.

**itscooper** · 01-31-2007, 07:54 AM

It's actually very good.

Usually when I see designers going from scratch and challenging 'biggies' the result is a bit of a mess... but I'd you're site is definately in their league at least!

As far as populating the site is concerned, just optimising your site for standard search is probably much, much more important than doing Adwrods or anything like that. Personally I'd just focus your attention onto getting good search rankings.

Also, keep affiliating with other sites! You will find nothing more useful than that when it comes to traffic. Easiest way to do this is to literally just go on the other community sites and make yourself known to the webmasters etc.

There is nothing about the site which immediately jumps out and says 'No!', but I'll mention it if I find anything.

Cheers.

**itscooper** · 01-31-2007, 07:57 AM

Following W3C guidlines and all means your site will be accessable to all (inc. the disabled), will function in all browsers, and may even load quicker if you're lucky!

**Automatic87** · 01-31-2007, 07:30 PM

The sites look nice, screenshots everywhere. You've done quite a job. Wish i could make such sites too.

**Andy_Wilson** · 02-02-2007, 01:00 PM

brilliant not bad for less than 3 weeks work?
As for slow images Im not sure whether this is my host. However some posts from the news have been taken from foreign sites so it may be due to them.

Thanks very much for the feedback!
@ Reaper Charlie
1. Im not quite sure where else to put them if not at the top of the page. However a few friends who have been on the site have said the ads are quite adictive to click on. But that may be the minority.
2. Thanks
3. OK ill have them removed and see what the site looks like.
4. I agree with you on that its a bit cramped atm, left side bar is main navigation links and important information so ill just leave the left side bar on for the forum.
The logo however i wasnt sure about I wanted something very minimal yet trendy I had made other versions of this with lots of other ingame images but it didnt really work as well with the style.

@itscooper - Ill try edit the page with WC3 but cant guarante ill get it sorted for deadline.

Btw guys the release date for ArmA in the UK is feb 14th so I dont think ill have time to bump my search results on google. Thats why I was suggesting adwords from feb 14th onwards.

Thanks again for feedback,
Andy