Looking for some peeps to do some Beta testing on my new F1 Blog

boogie man

Hey guys,

I've just started a new blog called F1Polls.com and I need some people to just start using it and give me some feedback etc - there isn't too much content up at the moment but enough to get going. It's basically a site for F1 fans to vote on the current news and events in Formula 1 and hopefully produce some constructive discussion.

It would be great if you could register and comment etc. Feel free to share to facebook/twitter etc.

You can leave your comments here or PM me or use the contact form on the blog.

I hope this isn't considered spam as it's non-commercial and has just been a project I've been working on over the last while. Mods please feel free to remove the post if you think I'm breaking any rules

Cheers,
BM

amacachi

Starting with polls is actually a good idea. If you get any decent traffic at all (whore it) then start mixing opinion pieces in with the polls and gradually make them a side-menu kinda thing. You could get rants/views etc. from plenty of people I'm sure.

boogie man

amacachi wrote: »

Starting with polls is actually a good idea. If you get any decent traffic at all (whore it) then start mixing opinion pieces in with the polls and gradually make them a side-menu kinda thing. You could get rants/views etc. from plenty of people I'm sure.

Thanks amacachi, yeah, just wanted to do something a bit different, thought the poll angle would be good for opening things up for discussion. We will deffo be doing some opinion pieces and putting forward different ideas etc, probably always backed up by a poll to gauge f1 fans opinions on the subjects.

Cheers for the feedback

BM.

freestyla

Nice stuff, good luck with it!

Actually this kind of blog, if and when gets attention of wider public (to collect more data), could be a good reference to FIA when they are going to change rules, or even when making after race decisions about incidents.

Well.. in case FIA really cares about fans and the polls get enough votes.

A suggestion.. when asking, What do you think of the new car? could have more option to choose from, to have only 3 options is not enough I think.
Maybe to include smthg like:
*innovative
*old-fashioned
maybe also smthg along these lines
*beauty but looks slow
*ugly but looks fast

boogie man

Hey freestyla,

Yeah - that's the pie in the sky outlook would love to be popular enough for FIA to take notice, but just need to concentrate on growing a user base in the short term. Then we'll see

Thanks for your feedback regarding the options - yeah - I totally agree, these were a bit hastily added! And one followed the other. It's all part of the learning curve I guess, though at the same time I want to keep it simple enough and not get too flowery with it. Especially in a racing situation when we will be hopefully adding poles in real-time to gauge reactions so need to keep them simple - ie. Who was in the wrong?: Hamilton or Massa

Cheers,
BM.

freestyla

Can i ask, what you used for creating the site? Some web templates or a software? or DYI?

Looks clean and smooth design

edit: Nah just realized it's WordPress right

boogie man

Well I'm a web designer by trade, but in the interest of me actually getting this done - I bought a nice wordpress template and modified it a bit added a load of plugins to get the functionality I needed and that's about it - there is a lot more I would like to do to it, but that's for the future

Cheers,
BM.

PJTierney

First impressions (Chrome, Windows 7):

• The site's nice and clean for the most part.
• The header's logo looks good, but there's no image/photo "above the fold" (ie: before I have to scroll) so the page appears a little lifeless. Every article should in my opinion start with an image. Doesn't need to be huge, 500 x 200 could work. See here (one of my blogs): http://theirishduelist.blogspot.com/
• The tag cloud is something that gets quit messy the busier your site becomes. I recommend changing it to a list like the rest of the sidebar.
• The border + drop shadow on the sidebar elements is distracting, even moreso considering the Register/Login have neither.
• The "Like button" in the sidebar's is well-placed, but you might want to add Twitter (and possible Google+) as well. Twitter's a big thing for F1 these days so having your work shared there is always a good thing.
• Your poll plugin works well and looks good
• The Twitter/Facebook/RSS buttons should be "above the fold". Right above the Register/Login area would be ideal.
• I posted a comment which went through okay, but this image makes me think that something else is about to happen:
• Your search bar should be higher up the sidebar, I shouldn't have to search for a searchbar (it's working fine though)

Overall it's good, a lot better than most blogs/sites when they start out. It just seems a little static at the moment. Keep up the good work though

shanemangan

I like the site, keep adding content!

One thing I would really like to see however, is a large image/header/background of some type.

Is it possible to have a large image instead of the grey area behind the main blog interface? Like in twitter how you can change the background behind the content section?

http://www.twitrbackgrounds.com/images/thumbs/cosmos-lg.jpg

Imagine say, something like this:

http://wallpaper-million.com/Wallpapers/r/Red-Bull-RB7-Formula-1-car-wallpaper_8038.jpg

It would give the site an edge I think

boogie man

Hey,

@PJ
Thanks for your comments will take them on board, yeah there are lots of design stuff that needs to be looked at, and it's this type of feedback that will give me a good direction to go in, I am a web designer but have limited knowledge of wordpress, so fining the time to tinker with it's innards is proving difficult, but will get a friend to help with that.

@shane
Hey, yeah that exactly what I would like to do - just something simple and slick - like the official formula 1 website. In the initial design I did have something like this but in the implementation it got put on the back burner - will look into it again.

Thanks for the feedback guys
BM.