GridironFans.com

[SBlueman]

Seeking: I am trying to go for a clean look and as lightweight a feel to the site as I can get. We recently went to a new redesign and I am completely open to ideas and suggestions on how to improve my site. I also am looking for suggestions on improving ad placements to help increase revenue. I have to admit that I am not the best when it comes to html and css.

Site: GridironFans.com
URL: http://gridironfans.com/
test username: test
test password: password

[Marvin Hlavac]

Hi SBlueman,

Seeking "clean look and lightweight"? Here are a few suggestions just from looking at your forumdisplay:

- Remove the log-in block from the right column (you have two log-in blocks)
- Remove the top 10 stats (do people really need it, like it, or use it?)
- Remove the forum stats block in the right column
- Remove the "What's going on" module on the bottom
- Remove the 376 links from the footer

[SBlueman]

Hi SBlueman,

Seeking "clean look and lightweight"? Here are a few suggestions just from looking at your forumdisplay:

- Remove the log-in block from the right column (you have two log-in blocks)
- Remove the top 10 stats (do people really need it, like it, or use it?)
- Remove the forum stats block in the right column
- Remove the "What's going on" module on the bottom
- Remove the 376 links from the footer

Done, done, done, done for guests and done.

Any other thoughts, suggestions that I can use? I am open to any ideas of improvement.

[Marvin Hlavac]

Wow, that was quick! Looks cleaner now!

Still looking only at the forumhome, I see two items I'd change (remove):

- AdBright auto-linking of text. If you can live without the income generated by it, I'd suggest to remove it completelly from your site. If you do want to keep it, then at least limit it by a conditional to just postbit. Don't show it on forumhome, etc. Currently, on forumhome, I see it in your "Welcome" block, linking two words (and likely confusing people who want to register), and also I see it in the last forum section of the page, linking two words (one of which is actually the F-word, the word which perhaps you could consider removing at least from your forum home).

- Consider removing the full-screen popup by AdBright which appears when a visitor first enters your site. When I first saw it, it actually made me think I was redirected to a different site and I was going to close the window. It may contribute to you losing some visitors.

[SBlueman]

I have removed both the AdBrite auto-linking and AdBright full screen pop-up that guests saw. I am concerned about the revenue I will lose. What is acceptable to put up from adBrite when you have google ads?

[Marvin Hlavac]

I'm not familiar with AdBright products, perhaps others may give you suggestions.

Still looking at just your forumhome, I see another issue that should be addressed; all your PNG and GIF files are referenced in your html as:

http://www.gridironfans.com/image.gif

and then they are 301 redirected to their non-www version of:

http://gridironfans.com/image.gif

Every such redirect costs you precious milliseconds, and on the forumhome alone I see 19 such unnecessary redirects.

Also, I see the following image URL which returns error 404 (file does not exist). The link to the controlbar4.gif should either be corrected or removed. This also costs you precious milliseconds.

http://gridironfans.com/YOUR-PHOTOPLOG-DIRECTORY/highslide/graphics/controlbar4.gif

[SBlueman]

How would I go about correcting these issues?

[Marvin Hlavac]

Somewhere, perhaps in the AdminCP, the path to your images includes the www.

Check AdminCP > Styles & Templates > Style Manages > Image Paths, to see if the paths there include "www.".

The issue regarding the error 404, the path of:

http://gridironfans.com/YOUR-PHOTOPLOG-DIRECTORY/highslide/graphics/controlbar4.gif

should be changed to:

http://gridironfans.com/forums/photoplog/highslide/graphics/controlbar4.gif

It is likely related to a plugin (Photoplog?), and the correct path may need to be set somewhere, either by an entry to a control panel of by editing a file. Check the manual for the plug-in.

[SBlueman]

Somewhere, perhaps in the AdminCP, the path to your images includes the www.

Check AdminCP > Styles & Templates > Style Manages > Image Paths, to see if the paths there include "www.".I am not finding this on my end. I am using 3.8.6. Would this be the StyleVars option in 3.8.6?

I did find a setting for post icons to point to a www. url so I edited that in the AdminCP.
The issue regarding the error 404, the path of:

http://gridironfans.com/YOUR-PHOTOPLOG-DIRECTORY/highslide/graphics/controlbar4.gif

should be changed to:

http://gridironfans.com/forums/photoplog/highslide/graphics/controlbar4.gif

It is likely related to a plugin (Photoplog?), and the correct path may need to be set somewhere, either by an entry to a control panel of by editing a file. Check the manual for the plug-in.

Would disabling highslide be a viable option? I disabled it from the photoplog general settings.

[Marvin Hlavac]

On your forumhome, I see the following image URLs which redirect to the non-www version:

http://www.gridironfans.com/forums/images/forumicons/nflnews_logo.gif
http://www.gridironfans.com/forums/images/forumicons/nfl_logo.gif
http://www.gridironfans.com/forums/images/forumicons/nfc_logo.gif
http://www.gridironfans.com/forums/images/forumicons/smack_logo.gif
http://www.gridironfans.com/forums/images/forumicons/basketball.gif
http://www.gridironfans.com/forums/images/forumicons/announce_logo.gif
http://www.gridironfans.com/forums/images/forumicons/boxing.gif
http://www.gridironfans.com/forums/images/forumicons/hockey.gif
http://www.gridironfans.com/forums/images/forumicons/nascar.gif
http://www.gridironfans.com/forums/images/forumicons/soccer.gif
http://www.gridironfans.com/forums/images/forumicons/wrestling.gif
http://www.gridironfans.com/forums/images/forumicons/othersports_logo.gif
http://www.gridironfans.com/forums/images/forumicons/postwhores_icon.gif
http://www.gridironfans.com/forums/images/forumicons/gfx.gif
http://www.gridironfans.com/forums/images/forumicons/gameday.gif
http://www.gridironfans.com/forums/images/forumicons/ff_logo.gif
http://www.gridironfans.com/forums/images/forumicons/ncaa.gif
http://www.gridironfans.com/forums/images/forumicons/baseball.gif
http://www.gridironfans.com/forums/images/forumicons/fightclub_logo.gif

So it seems that the path to the /images/forumicons/ folder should be amended by removing the www.

[SBlueman]

I have the Category Icons (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=127426) modification installed so I went into the forum settings and amended the url path for all the forum icons so there's no www. in the urls anymore. Thank you for your help. If there is anything else you see that can be tweaked, by all means let me know. I am open to fixing this site up and can use as many sets of eyes as I can get!

[Marvin Hlavac]

Looks good now. :-)

[Alfa1]

The homepage looks confusing to me. But this depends on screen resolution. On a low resolution it looks good. But on high resolution the slider has a lot of whitespace around it, article summaries have a lot of empty space, and much of the content is out of sight when opening the page. For your current home page fluid width is not optimal. If you want fluid width, then you will need to define maximum dimensions for each div.
http://awesomescreenshot.com/07dt4av20

[SBlueman]

What fixed width would you recommend for my site?

[SBlueman]

I upgraded two ad units on the site. The first post in the NFL News and NCAA forums now have a 300 x 250 text/image ad and the sidebar has a 160 x 600 text/image ad in place.

So any more suggestions on how to improve the site from the .org community? I am open to suggestions that will help deliver the best community to my members.