RaceDepartment.com - blurring the line between real and virtual motorsports

[Bram H]

Hi Guys,

Lurking this section of the forum for a few years and never had the guts to post :D But i am taking the step now and want your honest opinion about our community.

We are specialized in virtual motorsports (simracing for pc and xbox360) and organise massive online racing leagues for various titles. Besides that we are focussing on blurring the line between real and virtual racing. E.g: we have some real world racers amoung us that challenge the virtual tracks as hard as the real life tracks. Ultimate goal: making simracing an official motorsport.
Originally we started at the end of 2006 on PHPBB (oh god no more no more) as a little team of racers and turned into a community in march 2008 with a few members. Currently we are growing with 70 registered members a day and our totall is almost hitting the 13,000 now. Average new posts is around 1100 per day. We are very happy with the increasing interest we generating but are keen for improvements

I would love to hear your honest opinion about styling, user friendliness (can you find your way as a newbie?) and overal presentation. If you have suggestions on any subject please feel free to drop it.

Thanks for taking the time for a review, it's really appreciated :up:

vB CMS: http://www.racedepartment.com
vB Forum:http://www.racedepartment.com/forum.php

Best Regards,
Bram

[DieselMinded]

Pretty Awesome NICE JOB !

[UberDoober]

I'll offer my opinion here as a league simracer and as noob with a motorsports related website and forum of my own. (I run rFactor NAGT @ gtsimracing.com which is not my site but I'll have an ad for mine in the next AutoSimSport edition)

Technically, your site is way beyond my skill level but somehow I got lost on my first visit. I'll try to retrace my steps, hang on.......

Okay, I think I get it now? I started out on your site's home page but instead of clicking the Forum button, I clicked on Virtual Motorsports>Getting Started. Without knowing exactly where I was or what I was supposed to be doing, my very first inclination was to click My Application - Click, Read, Apply hoping to find instructions for signing up but instead I got a no permissions error and was mad that I had to register to read how to sign up.

I backed up and read your Notice, "Dear Unregistered", clicked on clicking here and got a nice pop up prompting me to register. I'm guessing this is a mod? I said no thanks again then backed up to the MY ONLINE forum and looked around to see a bunch of application posts and wondering what I was supposed to do next? I tried to view the MyRD forum even though it was marked for members only, this time, I expected to get a no permissions message but instead got an empty forurm that says "there are no posts in this forum". I was confused.:o

I suggest you do something with your Notices section to make it more eye catching and actually maybe say something about the nature of your community and the purpose of the board, even though it is obvious. If this is part of the normal vB notices system, even some basic HTML can spice it up. Your welcome message then slaps me in the face with "To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below" which, like the cake, is a lie.:)

FINALLY, I backed up to the home page, started over and things made a lot more sense when I clicked on the Forums button. As a simracer, I was like a kid in a candy store with all your forums and subforums but didn't take a whole lot of time exploring. I thought to my self, "this might be a community I want to join" and decided to start reading some posts to judge your content and quality of contributor. I almost cried when I realized I could see your threads but not read them. It's all just a big tease.

I would be your obvious targeted member and it does appear you have a successful, active community that I might even like to join? Unfortunately, without being able to read without registering, I have no idea if I might actually want to contribute. It must not be that big of a deal since you are doing well and growing but I found your policy irksome.

Beyond that, your site looks nice is clean and is very professional but for an enthusiast niche, it almost seems too sterile to me? I don't smell the burning race fuel or get much racing atmosphere or ambiance. As I said, you must be doing something right and have a strong and growing community so keep up the good work.

[Bram H]

Thanks uberdoober for the feedback.. We'll take a close look to the frontpage that is indeed confusing when you click the get started button.
Thank for taking the time to browse around and give loads of feedback, really appreciated :)

[BSMedia]

oɯı dn sbuıɥʇ ssǝɯ ʎ11ɐǝɹ ʎǝɥʇ 'ɟ1ǝsʎɯ sʞuı1 ǝʌıɥɔɹɐ ɹǝʇooɟ ǝɥʇ ɟo pıɹ ʇǝb p,ı

¡ʇı ǝʞı1 ı puɐ uɐǝ1ɔ sʇı 'ǝʇıs ǝɔıu ʎʇʇǝɹd

[Bram H]

Lol at that font :) Thanks for the feedback though, took me a while to figure it out, but reading vb.org upside down finally pays off

[Etab]

As a fellow sim racer, I must say RD is one of the most well-designed and clean-looking sites out there. Well done. :)

[Bram H]

Thanks for your feedback guys, appreciated!

[Bram H]

Beyond that, your site looks nice is clean and is very professional but for an enthusiast niche, it almost seems too sterile to me? I don't smell the burning race fuel or get much racing atmosphere or ambiance.

Did some changes on the forum theme (http://forum.racedepartment.com) to add some fuel hope you like it! Thanks for the feedback

[Bram H]

We've moved to vB4 since last December. This is the new look (http://www.racedepartment.com/) for now. This whole new stylevars thing is a pain in the b*tt for techno-n00bs like me. Nevertheless hope you like it.

[Rahstyles]

Hey ur sites taking forever to load

[Bram H]

Hehe you logged in at the wrong moment, we were restarting the dedi around that time. Please try again :)

[Bram H]

A scratch build ranking system has been implemented in our vbforum:
http://www.racedepartment.com/standings/

[metalguy639]

Looks pretty good but personally I would take the gray background from behind the login box & password boxes. Looks kinda funny when you are a guest and not logged in.

[Bram H]

Which stylevar needs to be adjust for that metalguy? Thanks for the feedback btw!

[metalguy639]

Do a search in your templates for "logindetails". Once you asses the info you can find the stylevars for it. I do not know the exact one. I think if I remember correctly that the background is related to another stylevars, so you may need to change the actual css template instead.

There is a neat little tool if you use firefox called Firebug. Its a free add-on that helps you find what the css tag is for an item.

[Bram H]

Thanks. Yes its the same stylevar as the navbar_tab_background. So for now its a no go to change it. No clue why those two are connected btw.

[metalguy639]

Same here. Check the templates sometimes (not all the time), but sometimes you can make a change in a css template for that particular area that you cannot do in the stylevars.

[Bram H]

I am a complete CSS noob so will ask a fellow admin to help me out :)

[metalguy639]

Great way to learn! Good luck hope all goes well for you.

[Bram H]

Did a redo on the style from very bright to something less contrasting on the eyes (blue :D)

[metalguy639]

Did a redo on the style from very bright to something less contrasting on the eyes (blue :D)

Looks nice I think. :)

[Bram H]

the half year chance was here :) still based on the default theme but with less borders and shadows etc

http://www.racedepartment.com/

[Rahstyles]

Good job u guys are already fully built..

check out mines