Arson

Looking good Neon, excellent work so far. I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product :) Be sure to add SoulRaider to my top list @ besttextgames.com when its open to play ;)

I made a few changes to the way the top game is displayed on the home page, looks nicer now. Also changed the game profiles to look equally as nice. Got rid of Adsense for a couple reasons... I only put it up because I figured it would show relevant ads that might actually help the visitor find a good game to play, however it started showing detergent ads, criminal record ads, etc. I've also got other plans for this banner spot that will make it much more useful for game owners, instead of gargle adwords clients. So goodbye adsense. For now, the top of the page shows a random game. I am currently working on a system to allow game owners to purchase the ad spot using the site's points system, which has already been implemented. I haven't decided if its going to be a static position or a banner rotation. I'll release more info on the coming updates as I churn them out.

I'm back to work on the new features coming to BTG. Had a little break due to open hunting season ;)

I went ahead and updated the main post since I know no one wants to read through 4 pages to get all the info on BestTextgames ;)

Witness http://www.besttextgames.com/gameprofile.php?game=3 This game has a grand total of one vote on BTG. Ever. 25 people have visited this game from Best Text Games... This one has absolutely no votes ever, and still 12 people have checked the game out: http://www.besttextgames.com/gameprofile.php?game=11   As you can see there are benefits to having your game listed on Best Text Games. So if you haven't listed it yet, do it! If you'd like, I will manually do it for you, just shoot me a PM with your game link, Ill respond with a link to your game's profile on BTG, and a username and password you can use to login and edit your listing, spend points on ads, etc. I really don't care if you don't even want to set up the voting link. I am just trying to build a good list of text based games :)

Okay so I have made some more udpates :) People can now comment/rate on each game's profile page! This is secured with CAPTCHA, and human moderation by yours truly. I also made some changes to the profiles to make them look nicer, and added stats for the last 10 days. Soon it will be a line graph instead of a list. Integrating the comments system was kind of spur of the moment idea that ended up taking longer than expected. Tomorrow (technically later today but I haven't gone to bed yet) I will hopefully get the points shop open and ready for business. Then comes integrating PayPal for anyone wishing to purchase points. Stay tuned!

Revamped the Accounts page to suit the new features to come. If you want a sneak preview, log in to the site and click "Your Account" on the side menu. I've got quite a few new features coming your way VERY SOON! Heres some details on things to come As always, your feedback is appreciated!

I have implemented a more secure CAPTCHA for voting called reCAPTCHA, I am sure you have heard of it. I guess I want to apologize first off, because I know this might make the lazy people not want to vote...but... You will just have to make them an offer they can't refuse! Don't just give them the reward for clicking on the vote link on your game, make them vote! Luckily, Best Text Games has a voting incentive system (kind of like an IPN) so that Best Text Games will tell your game when the player has voted, http://www.besttextgames.com/incentivehow.php to find out more, or PM me on here if you need assistance. I have done this because in the coming days/weeks I will be implementing some new features never before seen in a voting site (as far as I know), and votes will play a vital role in these features, so I need them to be as secure as possible. If you don't have your game listed on Best Text Games, get on over there and list it! It only takes a few minutes, and you will be able to take advantage of all the promotional tools I am working to provide :)

Took a massive 10 minutes to implement.

edit: thanks danny :D Yeah it looks rather easy...easier than the janky captcha im currently using in fact.

Anyone know of some good resources I could check out to learn how to implement reCAPTCHA (captcha.net) into my form?

Line 10 of your ajax.php file: I'm thinking your problem could be one to many semi-colons? Make it:

Is there a working download link? I'd like to check this out.

Accepted! Serious Wars is now on the list. I would recommend making a more creative description for your game, as this will make people more interested in checking it out ;)

Okay I now have it so that game owners have to upload their banners to the site when submitting a game. It will automatically re-size it to 468x60 and name it appropriately. I also uploaded all the current games' banners to the server and dropped all http calls and browser resizing for banner images. The site has sped up drastically!

Check out this mozilla firefox plugin bert, it tells you exactly whats slowing a website down, and how to fix it. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/yslow/ The http requests to get those images are why the lists load slowly, topped off with browser resizing to 468x60. It also says I need to set expires headers on the images so they can be cached by the enduser....however since they are being grabbed from other sites, my .htaccess isn't taken into account. But yes that will probably be my only recourse, making them upload it themselves..

I have realized the main cause of lag on my site is the calls to all the game banners from other sites. To fix this.... I need some help I have been working on making a cron that will grab a game's banner from wherever the game owner set it, make sure its a real image, and then resize+duplicate that image in a folder on my server. I've got it all worked out to where it uploads the game image nicely and all that, but for some reason I can't get my script to update the database with the new image location correctly. I already accidentally deleted all the games' banners once and had to manually re-enter them all..so I am done for tonight, I'll continue trying tomorrow unless hopefully someone points me in the right direction. Anyone got any ideas? This is top priority for BTG right now. Thanks!

so..... say I want: hxxp://www.besttextgames.com/GAMENAME to work in place of: hxxp://www.besttextgames.com/gameprofile.php?gameid=DYNAMIC How would I go about doing that?

I feel like a daily voting reset gives all the games on the site a better chance at being at the top of the list, even if its only for a couple hours each day. Whereas on a weekly, or as you said monthly reset yes, smaller games would have a chance to be at the top for the first day or two, but after they run out of members to send to vote, they get left behind by the bigger games. I do however record the weekly voting statistics, it would be simple to add a monthly. I think I will do that. I am also planning on adding a "Top 20 Games" section for votes yesterday, votes today, votes this week, votes last week, etc.. so i will just throw in the monthly lists as well. This would be a little more balanced than straight changing over to a monthly reset. Thanks for triggering this excellent idea BioHazard ;)

Faster than my site currently loads.

Yeah I don't know what I'm gonna do about the speed yet, I'm not sure if it's just my hosting or if the code needs re-written or what.. I agree, the footer could use some improvement, I just haven't gotten around to it yet lol. HTACCESS, like mod rewrites?

Really that's all you have to say? That's more along the lines of douchebaggery than constructive criticism.

Actually MrAnthony that won't work. Replace line 92 with this... print " [<a href=\"dpuse.php?ID={$i['inv_id']}\" target=\"_blank\">Use</a>]";

Alright I changed the lists a bit and the front page. I think it looks much nicer now, what do ya'll think?

@bert, The banners of the games are made by the game owners. I can't go in and make a 468x60 banner for every game that is listed on my site, and I'm certainly not going to redo the design to accommodate the banners. I'm going to give them a placeholder (individual box behind each listing) after I change the format of the list. I will probably just make the main page show the top 20 banners one row at a time instead of 2 side by side, then I can make the banners bigger. Yeah I need to fix the mouseover effect on the buttons yet, I noticed it. I was just too tired to do anything about it at the time. As far as the font looking childish............its a website that lists games...games!...what font would you suggest? 1001freefonts.com is my friend. As for those icons, I see now that they are from some olympic thing. I downloaded them from a "free icon" site that I guess is a little on the shady side.