Please Quickly Review Spud Gaming!!!

Fait

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Hello,

I am already frustrated that I designed a nice gaming site and people are still not satisfied :cry:

What am I do wrong? is it just them?

http://spudgaming.com

Please give honest feedback I want to get somewhere with this project.
 
you can make some tweaks on the landing page to make it look more attractive,

1. shrink down the slideshow size so the images don't go below the background black portion

2.You can try improving the navigation bar

3. move the sign in and sign up options on a more prominent place

4 change the logo

5. change the color of affiliate box

overall the design is good but not organized well

6. use a drop down menu for navigation links instead of the current setting which looks blotchy when you hover over nav links

7. change the theme of forums to something more matching with index page.

you can try these for start.
 
It's hard to satisfy each and every user ^^

Anyway,reduce the width(with the help of CSS) .

I guess that's it.It looks totally cool to me ^^ I am not into games ,otherwise I would have signed up there in an instant ^^
 
Ashish92 said:
you can make some tweaks on the landing page to make it look more attractive,

1. shrink down the slideshow size so the images don't go below the background black portion

2.You can try improving the navigation bar

3. move the sign in and sign up options on a more prominent place

4 change the logo

5. change the color of affiliate box

overall the design is good but not organized well

6. use a drop down menu for navigation links instead of the current setting which looks blotchy when you hover over nav links

7. change the theme of forums to something more matching with index page.

you can try these for start.

1: Great Idea I will do that 😉
2: What exactly wrong with the navigation bar? (been getting a few negative feedback)
3: Should do that maybe no one can see them
4: This is only a beta logo no need to yet but thanks 😉
5: I can agree that the colour could be improved
6: I should do that see what I can do
7: Near impossible unless you want this theme which when viewing a thread the design is awkward: http://esperdg.hol.es/index.php

Thanks for your feedback 😉
@Clar thanks I am doing my best on the overall design and there is more to come since the site is only in beta.
 
Spudster said:
2: What exactly wrong with the navigation bar? (been getting a few negative feedback)

a lot of the looks have changed recently on your site, have you made some updates ? the current navigation looks quite good )
 
The site is down so I can fix all the issues that users have been complaining about. The previous navigation had loads of flaws and bugs anyway so that's one of the improvements on the list, I rebuilt the entire navigation structure so it all should look awesome 😉

When I am finished but not too long now.

-- July 13th, 2014, 11:27 pm --

Let me know what you think now 😉
Improved a lot today

Like Claraviolet said I can't please everyone but I can do the best I can and depending how many requests I get I make the change.
http://spudgaming.com/forums/index.php
 
As has been stated, the slideshow is way too big and takes up space to do nothing but show screenshots of different games.

Your logo is so small I don't even notice it. Your entire "brand name" so to speak is forgettable when you could outright remove the logo and most wouldn't notice you did so right away.

The footer is unnecessarily big too, and personal opinion but there's all that space and yet still you manage to not cut the image off at the bottom in the right place, instead opting to let the image just cut itself off.

There was nothing to indicate on first glance you had a forum, at all. I thought this was just a website to show off a YouTube channel, and just happened to hover over Community to see you had a forum in the drop down. However, if I hadn't been reviewing this, I'd have left your site very quickly assuming it wasn't really offering anything but a YouTube channel. It's not helped when you show an image of said YouTube channel, and right below, have "What is Spud Gaming?" It makes it seem the answer was related to the image above, which didn't help in making me aware you had a forum.

On note of the drop downs, they look sloppy. It's just black boxes, and the drop down box isn't even the same width as the link that makes it appear. i.e. More is narrower than its accompanying drop down. Just doesn't feel like it was designed to blend with the site appearance.

Your social links at the bottom of the main website also need work. I can see the edge of another image creeping into them on the right hand side of both the Facebook and Twitter links.

The forum itself, really not appealing at first look. You have a huge blue header space with nothing in it.

General Gaming Revenue is a bad name for a forum area. Revenue means income, which makes me think the area is to discuss making income from video-games. Not to just discuss video-games in general. Also confuses me you put this in the consoles area, but then have an area below for other non-console related gaming forum areas.

Sony Play Station area should be Sony PlayStation.

"Discuss anything about gaming that does not fit in to any of the other forums,This may include anything that does not currently have it's own posting section."
The "forums,This" part needs fixing.

Finally, I'd say some time work on giving your forum and your website a consistent look. It's not the most important thing nor necessary to do right away, but I would suggest having some consistency to promote a stronger brand identity to users.
 
I am not sure when you had a look but I just added a feature which states that you are not logged in and want you could do if you had an account. Thanks for your feedback i'm trying my best and all of these issues will be fixed with in time, As for the navigation I only just re-designed that and don't fell like doing anything with this at this time as it can be frustrating but maybe in the future.

I value your feedback and will consider some of these suggestions 😀

-- July 14th, 2014, 2:27 pm --

ALso why would you not sign up over a few bugs :/

You will expect these issues in BETA<br /><br />-- July 14th, 2014, 4:24 pm --<br /><br />I fixed some of the issues you reported let me know what you think now 😉

http://spudgaming.com
 
Website:
The first thing I notice is the slideshow and it's massive, taking up a lot of space for no reason. I think it should maybe be slimmed down to 400x150 instead of the 900x3050 that it currently is. Maybe if it had some information on each slide, the size could be justified but there's not and the text on it makes it look kind of sloppy. I like some of the background patterns used on the website but there's no real flow to any of it. The sign in/sign up buttons don't match the rest of the website, the footer is really massive, the affiliates could be organized better and more attractive, etc.

Forum:
I like the overall look of the theme but the massive empty header is unnecessary and personally I don't really like the mixture of blue/red. If the background was a dark gray or dark red that was easy on the eyes I think it'd look very sleek and be more appealing. I don't know if I'm missing it, but you should really get your logo on the forum somewhere. Might help with that empty space as well if it can't be removed. I also noticed that your website and forum have two different favicons, I recommend both being the same.

I'm a bit confused by the layout of the forum. When I go to a general gaming forum they usually use one of two layouts; organizd by gaming genres or gaming companies. You have both. If I wanted to post a topic about GTA5, would I post it in the "PS3" forum or the "Shooter/Free Roam" forum? That confusion probably prevents a lot of people from posting. To me it also seems like you have 2 forums for general gaming discussion. "General Gaming Revelation" and "Individual Discussions Arena"; by the description and the topic in each - I can't tell the difference.

I think you should decide on one layout; companies or genres, and have one forum for general gaming discussion or at the very least make their purposes more clear.

The rest of the layout is alright. I'd maybe merge some forums to begin with, like "Music & Media" and "TV Shows & Movies" - at least for now until you have the posts/topics to justify having them separate. And maybe move the "Forum Games" down to the "Entertainment Fun" category.

Lastly I think the descriptions could use some work. They could use some rewording and some still have the mistake that MoonFace pointed out with the commas and periods.

I'd also like to note that when I tried to register, I received an error.

Good luck! ;D
 
Thanks for your feedback I do agree with you there I should take some forums around and try to replace them.

Also when you tried to register what error did you get? can you supply me a snapshot

-- July 15th, 2014, 5:34 pm --

Thank you a ton for reporting that error I am on to it now<br /><br />-- July 16th, 2014, 12:31 am --<br /><br />A few bugs have been fixed please check the forums out now 😉

As for the main site I was busy today so I get to that tomorrow.

If you encounter any other bugs report them here if you decide to sign up 😀
http://spudgaming.com/forums/Forum-Request-For-Support
 
The header area and the background looks a lot better, and so does the layout so far 🙂 Nice work. I'll message you about a banner when I get back home and will probably register too 😀
 
A quick suggestion I would give is that move the "Sign in" and "Sign up" buttons to the top right or to the right of the login notice widget, they will be more visible there in my opinion.

A second suggestion I have is that the index page looks a bit too long, you can shorten it by completely removing the "What is spud gaming" part and instead just below of above the login widget place a nice button by the name "What is spud gaming" and when users hover or click over it then a popup style image to appear with the current what is spud gaming part on it.
 
Thanks for the suggestions 🙂

I try to apply these suggestions over the next week or two I am busy with a few family issues right now.
 
Clan feature coming soon 😛

Offering the ability to create your own gaming clan packed with loads of features!

I am releasing an Alpha version soon and one great feature is ability to have your own custom vanity URL (eg: spudgaming.com/yourclan)

When I think its stable enough for an Alpha release I post it here for you all to try it out and this will require A spud account.
 
Thanks 🙂
Ive worked hard to get it to look perfect.

Its a waste of time sometimes I don't even have good promotion skills, I have tried promoting on fb groups does not work wouldn't be surprised if there spam bots and most gaming forums don't allow promotion.
 
I love the clan feature,
Also maybe have a posting contest for members,
I have seen sites whose post counts majorly due to a posting contest.
 
Yeah sounds like a great idea 😉

I am always low on money as I am still looking for work (just finished school a good few months ago)

But I see what I can offer that won't cost as much but will be good to earn.

Thanks for the feedback and we are designing the clan feature so users can have there own clans for official gaming companies,for fun or anything else.

Thanks for the feedback! thanks for also becoming a member and partnering with us we hope to see you around the community 😉
 
Hi Spud,
a few issues or minor changes

main site

I would have the background the same colour, not blue and black, i think the blue background looks pretty good, i can see that the slideshows are now smaller and you can cleary see the navigation and its clearer that there is a forum too.

Forum

Are site announcements and feedback about the forum not important?

why are they at the bottom of the forum?
 
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