Feedback Please! Website Review.

[Duende]

Hey all,

I'm about finished. I have to see about cleaning up the Mingle install (a user mentioned errors, so please let me know if you find anything!), I am having an image resizing issue, and I really need to find a way to ensure certain posts go to certain areas of the front page. They all just filter down as you add right now; I need to ensure that if I want a post to be in the Photo of the Day section, or the Spotlight section, etc, it'll be there.

Really curious any bugs, suggestions, etc you might have. A new logo goes up next week, and please note I only put enough content up there to fill the framework so I could troubleshoot. So the content is "dummy" at this point.

MMA.BS - Global Mixed Martial Arts Community

Thanks guys!

 

[Open Tibia]

Wow, looks very cool and professional. I certainly like your domain name. I didn't even know "bs" existed.
Everything looks perfect. Color scheme, structure and so on. Good job!

 

[andr69]

I like the design of your webpage, but can't catch the main idea of your source - what is it dedicated to?

 

[johname]

many pictures look too squeezed, aspect ratio wrong

 

[Duende]

Yeah, for sure we noticed the image issue, we think we've got that figured out. Taking the time to fix the old posts/images is a priority.

andr, it's a mixed martial arts website. Cagefighting?

 

[johname]

you need to figure out the size you want the pics to be on the site and work backward, like for example the pic of the couple is displaying at 144x75 pixels. The go to a picture edit and edit the pic to be 144x75 pixels in size while staying normal (no change in ratio of height to width) Then reupload the new pics with the same name

 

[Duende]

That's exactly what I'm working on doing, haha. Thanks for breaking it down a little for me. I've noticed I need pictures to be a little wider than tall, but figuring out the resolution/size that works best is still something I'm unclear on.

That has been my 'fix' the few times I've tested new pictures... Looking for pictures a little wider than they are tall, haha. And not huge full-screen affairs...

Thanks a bunch for your feedback!

 

[johname]

what you do is increase and decrease the total size of the original(perfect looking) picture until you like how it fits in a 144x75 pixel "window frame", then you crop (cut) the picture.

dont take a squeezed picture and try to unsqueeze it with your eyes

 

[Duende]

Okay, are you saying 144x75 pixels is the size I need to fix this, the size I should ensure all my images are? Or is that just for the size of the smaller pictures down in the section you're talking about? Because this theme makes them appear in that large window in the upper left as well when they're first launched, that featured stories section, so would 144x75 work there too? Just across the board.

Tons of thanks for helping me out with this, I know it's an easy concept for a lot of people but I've been banging my head on figuring out what size I need these images to be before I upload them..

 

[johname]

in your code:

<a href="http://mma.bs/2010/02/wec-girl/" rel="bookmark"><img src="http://mma.bs/wp-content/uploads/cache/90_134.jpg" alt="Sexy photoshoot w/WEC girls! thumbnail" align="left" style="border: 0px; padding: 0px 10px 0px 0px; margin: 3px 0px 3px 0px; width: 134px; height: 75px;"/></a>

but the pic you trying to fit in there is 144x75 This is why it looks like a hammer hit it


so you need to redo the pics to be 134x75 BUT:

you could redo your code to fit the pic, change 134 to 144, that would be the easyest thing to do as i see changing the height from 134 to 144 wont mess up your site. (there are cases where its better to just change the size of the pictures, but you look good at just changing the code)

the "diaprham pic" is a diffrent size so it has a different height to be changed then the standard 144 as most of the others

 

[Duende]

I probably need to just make my pics that 134 size prior to uploading. This theme has a 'Viva Zoom' plugin that it automatically uses for images; basically I upload and close the window.

So it's on me to provide the right size images, messing with code is above my level. I just upload large images, as long as they're wider than they are tall they seem to be OK. Just need to figure out a more exact formula at determining whether they'll look normal, the theme makes DELETING that image a PITA. So it's kind've a one shot and hope it worked or it takes forever to fix.

Like the picture in the featured story, about the cards or whatever, that's a 550x274 image and appears okay. But if I resize it to 134 to make sure it'll look OK, it's way too small to be used as the featured story image, or photo of the day image...which it'll eventually cycle through..

 

[web11]

it`s very clean and nice.
the main advantage is video i think
my congratulations))

 

[Duende]

Thanks much.

I'm thinking about switching domains to a .com. I love the MMA.BS and it's quick and easy, but as far as starting out and getting traffic trickling in, I feel like the .BS might be holding me back and not showing up in results where a .com might...

I don't know, I'm new to this, I just feel like a good .com might be good to start with, generate traffic, then maybe move to MMA.BS.. Same site and everything, just a new domain.

 

[pcp]

My personal opinion is that if you are really committed to developing this site, use a com, net, org, info or a decent country extension. Unfortunately, I think bs will make a lot of people think "bull s***.

I don't think it would be too hard to find a relevant hand reg.

However, this will most likely cause duplicate content issues. But if you are going to change domain name, it's probably better to do it sooner rather than later as you are trying to build a brand.

 

[Duende]

Geez, I didn't think the bullshit thing was such a no-no haha. Bullshido.net did well, and I didn't think something as simple as MMA bs would be taken as meaning, oh, must be crap. More as a place to catch up on all the bs. Kind've two meanings to the word, doesn't have to be taken literally.

But still, I guess I'll just go with a .com. Seems everyone suggests that.

 

[Duende]

My choice besides MMA.BS is 1on1fights.com, which I'm happy with, and I have 1on1fight.com also...but I'd rather use fights, though 'fight' shows up as being 'worth more' for SEO and stuff... So I don't know how much I'll be handicapping myself by wanting to use the 'fights' dot com instead of just 'fight,' singular.

Anyway. I think I should generate a little more trickle in traffic with this domain, rather than MMA.BS... This is just my thinking as a newbie, so any thoughts are appreciated.