Arson Posted September 1, 2011 Share Posted September 1, 2011 (edited) Introducing BestTextGames.com Now you might look at this site and think, "Oh, another top list", but it is more than that. Take a look around the site, check out the game profiles, and other features BTG has to offer. You will soon see that it is more than just a top list for text based games, its the ultimate free promotional tool! Because BTG utilizes some of my favorite SEO tactics, as well as many social mediums, your game will gain players from being on my list of Best Text Games. But don't take my word for it, adding your game is free, so do it and see for yourself ;) Does BestTextGames Work? Best Text Games is dedicated to bringing your game new players. Even though the list is still a baby, it has already done a lot for the games already listed. Even the games with 0 votes! Just see for yourself Here is a game with no votes: http://www.besttextgames.com/gameprofile.php?game=11 Yet it still has received 13 visits so far from Best Text Games!!! Still not satisfied? Exhibit B: http://www.besttextgames.com/gameprofile.php?game=6 This game has only had 1 vote on BTG so far, and 19 visits! One more for good measure: http://www.besttextgames.com/gameprofile.php?game=5 Total Votes: 3, Total visits: 23. As you can see, BestTextGames does work! Why should I add my game? As you can see from the info above, BTG works. Having your game's profile on BestTextGames.com, will help it spread like wildfire! Each game gets it's own individual profile page, with your game's banner, description, and voting statistics. From this page, visitors can vote for your game, or visit your game. They can also recommend your game through various different social networking/news/bookmarking sites like facebook, digg, stumbleupon, del.icio.us, myspace, google +1, twitter, etc...and more to come. Each profile also features a comments system where visitors can post their comments or feedback on your game. Don't worry about moderation, I've got that handled ;) As you can see, your game's profile will be packed with tons of ways to get your game out there, and there are plenty more to come! Best Text Games also has a unique points system for game owners. Points can be spent on various promotional tools, and are quite easy to get. It's as simple as adding your game, and getting votes! What are points good for? Bid points to have your game advertised in the 468x60 ad spot on the top of every page at BestTextGames.com Bid points for the featured game of the week position, which will be located right under the top game on the home page (and possibly the top of every list besides the front page, haven't decided yet) Buy ad spots on other game's that have opted to sell their vote page ad spot. Price per day set by seller. Trade 10 points for 1 vote. This is a free 10% boost to your game's votes, which could go a long way in bumping your game to the top of the list for the day! Of course there will be plenty more ways to spend those points to come! How do I earn Points? Earn 100 Points for adding your game after it is approved. Earn 50 Points for setting up our custom incentive script, which guarantees your players have to vote before receiving their reward. Earn 1 Point for each vote that each game you have added to the list gets. Earn XX points by choosing to sell an ad spot on your game's voting landing page. You will have to turn this option on in your game's settings, so don't panic if this just isn't for you, its not mandatory. You will be able to set the price per day for the ad. Or Purchase points via PayPal. Pricing to be determined. There will be more ways to earn points in the future. Will you continue to improve BTG and it's ability to get my game more players? As you can see I have been rolling out the features since I opened the site only 2 weeks ago, and already BTG has sent several players to the games on the site. I intend to always strive to improve its ability to get your game new players, so rest assured there will be many more updates to come, I'm just getting warmed up ;) So get on over to BestTextGames.com and add your game! The points system is still getting the finishing touches. For now, all earning abilities are functional, so you will earn points for adding games and incentives, as well as getting votes on your game. Spending functions will be completed in the next day or so. Update Log 09-01-2011 - Best Text Games is open! 09-04-2011 - Best Text Games got a new design! 09-04-2011 - Voting system CAPTCHA implemented. 09-05-2011 - List layout, and game profiles improved. More to come. 09-06-2011 - Game banners are now uploaded to the site, instead of called from the game's site. BTG has sped up tenfold! 09-11-2011 - Voting CAPTCHA updated to reCAPTCHA 09-13-2011 - Integrated a comments system. Visitors can now comment on each game's profile page! many more to come! I'll keep this list updated. Edited September 14, 2011 by Arson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a_bertrand Posted September 1, 2011 Share Posted September 1, 2011 First of all, good luck for your project. Now said that, let me give a few input: - Layout should be improved, currently it's a bit on the medium to low quality. - The voting system is far from being secure, it will allow any bot to vote. That will certainly put off most serious sites. - The site is really slow at least for me. Takes about 10 sec for each page load. - Also you should start to find some sites as offering one of the top sites with only 2 sites on board will hardly attract new games to it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arson Posted September 1, 2011 Author Share Posted September 1, 2011 (edited) Thanks Bert! I know the design is lacking, but I'm a coder not a designer..so that parts easier said than done. Personally I think the functionality of the site is much more important than the design. Once I get all the kinks in the coding worked out then I will move on to design, or just hire someone to do it for me ;) The only unsecured thing about the voting as far as I can tell is that there is no captcha. I have it set up so that you can only vote once per game per day. So yeah, someone could use a bot, but as far as my testing has gone they will only be able to vote with it once. So they'd be wasting their time. More security can be added with the incentivized voting system I have in place, a game owner can make sure their players are only credited for 1 vote per day or week or whatever they want, regardless of however many times the player chooses to vote. Besides, I am on the site all day every day. If I see a game cheating to get votes it will be immediately removed from the list. As for the slowness...I know :( I am on a shared hosting plan so there's not a whole lot I can do about it. I have been going through and cleaning up the code where it needs it to hopefully increase speed, but it hasn't made a whole lot of difference yet. I'm already working on finding sites to add to the list, hence this post telling game owners about the site lol I also created a nice little system to let me add games and create an account to put them on at the same time. Ive been hunting down games, adding them to BTG, and sending the login details to the game owners via their in-game mail. I appreciate all the valuable input :) Anymore is welcomed! Edited September 1, 2011 by Arson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a_bertrand Posted September 1, 2011 Share Posted September 1, 2011 Design could in principle be less important as usability and features, however this is what your customers (both site owner and visitor) will see and evaluate first: the design. A good design will make in their mind a better impression and will make your site look more professional. Nope you can vote many many times, for example by using proxies, extremely easy to setup and you will be flooded with votes. So for sure not the way to go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arson Posted September 1, 2011 Author Share Posted September 1, 2011 Well, what would you recommend I do to stop proxies? Besides adding a captcha.. Captchas are too much of an inconvenience. I had a much buggier version of this script running on an old voting site of mine and didn't have any issues with cheaters. And, like I said, I can easily remove games from the list if they decide they want to cheat. That quells the motivation of game owners to cheat votes. As for the motivation for players to cheat votes...there is none. I don't see a player going through the trouble of setting up a proxy bot or going through web proxies one at a time to vote multiple times..they get nothing out of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arson Posted September 1, 2011 Author Share Posted September 1, 2011 I figured out what was causing the lag issue, and fixed it as best I can for now. The problem is the banners are being pulled from the games like http://www.game-link.com/logo.jpg instead of uploaded to the site. So when a game is slow, and their banner loads slow, it hangs up my site... How would I make it so it doesn't hang up EVERYTHING that needs to load after the banner? One way would be to make the game owner upload their game banner to my server, but that will take some time. I have an uploading function from one of my other random projects I could use with a little customization here and there...but this would be a last resort. Isn't there a way to make the site call for the image beforehand, or make my site cache the image or something so that it loads faster next time? Or so that everything coded behind the image doesn't have to wait for the image to load before loading? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a_bertrand Posted September 1, 2011 Share Posted September 1, 2011 Url: http://www.besttextgames.com/gameprofile.php?game=5 Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '{' in /home/sparky07/public_html/besttextgames.com/header.php on line 23 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arson Posted September 1, 2011 Author Share Posted September 1, 2011 (edited) Hehe, I was hoping no one would catch that. Was having troubles implementing some javascript code. Its back to normal now, thanks for pointing it out to me though! As for the slow loading, and the question I asked in my last reply.. I found some javascript that preloads the images in the <head> Let me know if this reduced any lag for you. It sure made a huge difference for me :) edit: I didnt want to use another reply for this... I really appreciate your input bert, and I hope to continue receiving more! But I am exhausted (been coding since 4pm, its now 5:30am....) So I'm hitting the hay and I'll be right back at it tomorrow once I get off slave duty...errr...work. Edited September 1, 2011 by Arson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arson Posted September 1, 2011 Author Share Posted September 1, 2011 Oh JEEZE Looking at my site in IE it looks absolutely terrible, but then I look at it in firefox and all the effort I actually did put into the design can actually be seen..why the hell does ie have such a hard time with CSS? I think my site looks decent..in firefox...and looks pugfugly in ie. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShadyCoco Posted September 1, 2011 Share Posted September 1, 2011 Hey. Nice idea, with a little more work with design and as you say more IE friendly it will be a nice place to put my game. Nice job and Good luck on other projects. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a_bertrand Posted September 1, 2011 Share Posted September 1, 2011 - It is still really slow for me. - For the vote, beside having a good and yet not too annoying captcha I don't see how you can prevent bots. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spudinski Posted September 1, 2011 Share Posted September 1, 2011 If I could make a suggestion: Why not implement an API with JSON? Would be quite simple for a voting site like yours, and it works great for things you want to load dynamically with javascript(like your game images). The anti-bot system can be the game's one, and a secret key for the game owner. The only real problem with this would be if you want the traffic, and if so, the you can require the owners to link with an image on the voting page. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kieran-R Posted September 1, 2011 Share Posted September 1, 2011 Layout definitely needs improving. If I was a gamer, or a game owner, I would be tempted to leave the website straight away. I suggest you put the layout as your top priority. Good luck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ishraq Posted September 2, 2011 Share Posted September 2, 2011 does the voting incentives use GET variable or POST. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arson Posted September 2, 2011 Author Share Posted September 2, 2011 (edited) @BioHazard, it uses the GET method, only for the user's id on your game. So a voting link would look something like: http://www.besttextgames.com/vote.php?game=YourGameId&player=TheirUserIdOnYourGame You just make a script on your game, a secret script, you can password it with GET or whatever you want to do to secure it. There is an option on BTG in the game settings to set your incentive link, you would put the link to your secret script there. Like so: http://www.yourgame.com/credit_player_with_vote.php?secretpass=WhatEver12345678 When a player votes and that extra variable, "player" in this instance, but you can make it whatever your heart desires...my site will call back to your incentive script and activate it. You will want to make sure to set a variable for BTGVoted in your users table, int(11) default 0, and make sure your incentive script sets it to 1 so they can't get credited more than once, and a query will need to be added to your daily or weekly cron (depending on what you want), to reset the player's voted status to 0 so they can vote again for the new day/week. I probably over explained it, but I hope I answered your question lol. @Kieran, I know the layout is in need of improvement, but it obviously doesn't scare everyone off. It is still my top priority along with captcha. Especially now that I see how bad it looks in IE.. Are you a web designer, or do you own another top list? Just curious :) @ShadyCoco, Thanks I'm working on it :) PM me a link to your game and I'll make sure it gets on the list when I've got the kinks worked out. Edited September 2, 2011 by Arson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arson Posted September 2, 2011 Author Share Posted September 2, 2011 Just wanted to give you all an update. I've got a design drawn up and I'm starting to work on it in PhotoShop. Hoping to have it implemented by this weekend, provided there are no speed bumps along the way. Cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kieran-R Posted September 2, 2011 Share Posted September 2, 2011 @Kieran, I know the layout is in need of improvement, but it obviously doesn't scare everyone off. It is still my top priority along with captcha. Especially now that I see how bad it looks in IE.. Are you a web designer, or do you own another top list? Just curious :) No unfortunately I'm not a designer, however I own a toplist: http://bbgwebgaming.com. I think you can clearly see that the layout there is a lot more user friendly, and appealing to the eye. It may not be the BEST in the world, but it does the job. I think it was Peter W3 Theory who designed the layout. Was pretty cheap too. If you want a layout with a similar structure to mine for cheap, then give him a shout. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arson Posted September 2, 2011 Author Share Posted September 2, 2011 That's a good lookin site ya got there Kieran :) Hopefully the design I am working on will be sufficient, I actually kind of like working with photoshop :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arson Posted September 4, 2011 Author Share Posted September 4, 2011 Update I am extremely pleased with the progress of my design, although CSS is a royal PITA for novices like me...especially when you have to make it uniform over multiple browsers.. This design looks a hell of a lot better, I just need to make one or two adjustments to the code as I don't have a template system or anything so its going to be somewhat of a bitch. I am starting to implement it right now so if you experience errors, that's why. Wish me luck! lol... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arson Posted September 4, 2011 Author Share Posted September 4, 2011 The design is implemented. Obviously there are going to be a few tweaks here and there I might have missed. I'm still currently scouring the code for any flaws. Let me know what ya'll think and please let me know if you find any problems with the site!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arson Posted September 4, 2011 Author Share Posted September 4, 2011 Update The voting captcha has been implemented. Hope to get some more input from everyone! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a_bertrand Posted September 5, 2011 Share Posted September 5, 2011 The look & feel is certainly better. Yet the banners of the games look ugly. So either change the original size, or let your site resize them on the server side, or change your layout to accommodate the real size of the banners. I would also change the fonts of your round buttons and title... look childish for me. Also, when you pass the mouse over, the button moves... not really good. Images like http://www.besttextgames.com/ribbon.png should NEVER being resized by the browser, so resize them in photoshop if you need to... otherwise it will always look ugly. For your captca, it's certainly an improvement, even if I doubt it will really block all kind of abuses as I'm quiet sure I can crack it in a relatively short time. BTW, you used images which are certainly not from you... I would strongly suggest you to create your own OR take open content one... Copying images from other sites is wrong. List of images I found on other sizes (thanks to TinEy.com) http://www.besttextgames.com/goldm.png http://www.besttextgames.com/silverm.png http://www.besttextgames.com/bronzem.png http://www.besttextgames.com/ribbon.png Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
runthis Posted September 5, 2011 Share Posted September 5, 2011 (edited) Arson, The layout looks great. Might i make one suggestion. Below the categories, where it lists the actual games, mine should be there, no im kidding, below the categories, the games should have some sort of backdrop, to help distinguish content. edit: Also make sure when something is heading something like Heading -------- text text That the text Heading, is slightly bigger than the list of text there, or the text is slightly smaller than the Heading text. Edited September 5, 2011 by runthis Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arson Posted September 5, 2011 Author Share Posted September 5, 2011 @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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobbylien Posted September 6, 2011 Share Posted September 6, 2011 I know this is sort of off topic but what would be a good average page loading time for an online game? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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