My suggestions for the website

Hi,
thought I would write down what I feel can improve this website. Need to say that it's already a great website, but with everything, there is room for improvements, should never stop looking for improvements.

- First thing i notice is the "Football Manager News" section on the home page, this is a very static and limited use of space for what I want to call self-advertisement. For this I suggest having stories rolling, where you can use the same space for 5 stories(for example). On a condition, that it doesn't slow down the website, people run away from slow websites.

- The two segments on the home page "FM2012 Essentials" and "Football Manager 2012 - Featured" does contain some of the same stories, would be more efficient to free up some space by either making one new one or placing new links in them so that they don't overlap.

- Stories is a big part of this website, many use the website because they have a good website to have their stories in. So giving them a more visible part of the site might be an idea, even giving the user a possibility to have a small photo and its title rolling on a small part of the home page, with leads me to the next paragraph.

- Story page, giving the user a different way of making their story, having a whole page for it in comparison to the forum will give the user more creative freedom in making their story and maybe it's something that isn't found anywhere else? I haven't seen it anywhere else at least, but if it does, just make it better. This feature will need to be good before released since I can see frustration coming from something not working well.

- BBcodes - Show the users how much BBcodes he/she actually can use, the guide with BBcoes that is here now is limited, even tho the average user have all needed there, there are members like myself who likes to use features that this brings. In terms, an easier way of letting people be creative by showing them right here. At the same time, having the small thumbnail photos like the red card, yellow card etc. is something I like, if more of this comes it will surely be more used.

- With all the information on this site, making it easy to find will be very essential, like myself, I didn't find everything I wanted here on this site first, I found it on other sites even tho it was right here, even if it was originally created on this website. What this site need is a "guide page" where if your looking for something you'll find it, today I find that things are a bit hidden around things that could be put somewhere else.

- Many people ask how they post photos in the forum, a guide that explains it step by step very easily, so that everyone can do it.

To sum up, the biggest points I would say is making the website more accessible and easier to find its features and the making of story pages where users get freedom with their stories.

I'm sure i got more, but this is what i remember at the moment.

Alright, have some new ideas that has come to mind.

First one I have is that it would be great to be able to have an RSS feed for an individual forum thread. For example, Windows 7 has a desktop gadget that shows your RSS feeds(yes, know there are better alternatives out there for feeds), if we could have feeds for individual threads we would see them right on our desktop when new posts are made in the stories we subscribe to. I can probably make a guide on how to if this is implemented, is complicated without the function implemented in the website itself, so few would use it if they knew how to now without the implementation.


As I mention in the post above, the "Football Manager Forums" part on the front page, making it interactive. To explain more what I mean here is to make the headlines "Unread Posts" "Today's Posts" "Forums Home" interactive without sending you away from the home page, also add a tab for "Manager Stories", as a news feed.

Perhaps also look into how to get your site higher up on google searches, are many ways of doing that and lots and lots of how-to's if you search on google.

Lastly, having a way of rewarding good stories, for example, story of the week, month etc. I'm sure there are many great ways of doing that.


That is what i have for you this time.

There was a great site, where the owner just stopped... in fact, of all the FM forums, his site was probably the best: playfootballmanager.com

In any case, the owner of the site shut it off because he was upset with SI giving a bunch of random FM forum sites (today here, tomorrow gone) official SI supporters or something like that, which was the same thing that he was getting, and it really didn't make any sense, because of the difference in quality in the two sites.

My favourite part of the site was "featured stories" site. Basically, if you went to the stories part, there were 4 stories on the header, one more prominent and three others, which were the best, or most updated stories of the month. If your story was good, you'd end up there quickly, if you stopped updating: goodbye. I thought it was a brilliant idea, because it kind of gave you an incentive to update your story, and it gave better stories higher visibility... a reward.

2012-09-28 17:26#66838 tbendis : which were the best, or most updated stories of the month. If your story was good, you'd end up there quickly, if you stopped updating: goodbye. I thought it was a brilliant idea, because it kind of gave you an incentive to update your story, and it gave better stories higher visibility... a reward.

Yes, I agree, but, don't like the idea of the most updated one, rather go for quality rather than quantity. Having the stories with most frequent updates as a "top story" will lead to many updating just to get posts in their story without making it interesting. For example just making posts for every result without doing much more than that.

Basically quality before quantity.