Antesup.com soft launch! feedback welcome...

DeVore

As most of you are probably aware (cos I wont stop giggling to myself about it) Mike Lacey and I are off to Vegas to cover the WSOP. I leave with Oscar and the boys next Monday and Mike follows for the main event.

We've been working hard behind the scenes to make a site that we can be proud of and focus on the Irish and British players who often dont get the coverage they deserve in the US media.

So, despite a few minor tweaks that still need doing, I thought we'd let you guys in and have a look around and give us your thoughts.

We hope this is the start of something big for Irish Poker online.

http://www.antesup.com/wsop is the link.

Known Issues:
1.The american's dont know about the Euro. So we need to fix our Euro symbol.
2. The page titles need correction.

Other then that, let me know what you think!

DeV.

Dub13

A couple of points from me.

Your top priority should not be Shaver. Laptop. Sunscreen. Firewire Connector. Credit card PIN...or even money,before you go the number one thing you need is a good Long Haircut nobody wanted to say it to you but well I steeped up to the mark.

And this Media/Celebrity tournament you are playing in....I am sure we all want to know are you Media or a Celebrity....?


Also...how the hell did you two get press passes...?


The site is looking very good,keep up the good work.

RasTa

Not mad on the design of the site to be honest. Looks a bit cheap. Change the font for the main logo and the toolbar and it could look nicer

Hectorjelly

What is loating?

ionapaul

Feedback from a marketing POV: it looks pretty good, but loads fairly slowly for some reason (hi-res images?) I think you need a bit of space between the scrolling bar at the top and the 'Live from the World Series!' text below it. Use a consistant font?

You have got 'It's' and 'Its' mixed up on the front page I'm sure my post is full of grammatical errors too, but just trying to help.

Colour scheme is nice, looking forward to reading the profiles when they're up. The PPP ad with the reflection in the sunglasses is damn cool...

dangerman

graphics are a bit pooey. clean up the antialiasing, get them sitting well on the green background.

A scrolling marquee rolling across the top? I thought we saw the last of them in 1997! It's distracting! And without links to the player profiles on the names it seems a little pointless.

The font choice and logo is very amateurish. The whole site needs to shake off the amateur feel.

However, the content looks good, and that's easy to access so thats good.

DeVore

Corrected some spelling mistakes on the front page. The logo font is Viner Hand and the rest of the site is in Verdana. I like both so I'll probably stick with them.

I'm going to review the image sizes as the site seems sluggish but I'll see if I've made the images too hi-res.

DeV.

Einstein

Cool content I totally agree and the profiles section will be great to read (Try and get pics!) faces to names is always good!!
Kinda agree with the blog text bit, it could look a bit slicker like the rest of the text on the main page

Keep it up

D..

DeVore

The scrolling Marquee wouldnt have been my first choice but its how we are planning to update the players chip counts and whether they are in or out of the big one live and up to the minute. We'll be linking them to the player profiles as and when we can get our hands on the players to get profiles from them!

Dangerman, I cant see what you mean about "getting them sitting well on the green background". Maybe you're seeing something I'm not? I hope to polish up the site over time but functionality and deadlines drove it. Is it the "Live from the World Series" logo you dont like or the Antesup one itself? We're married to the AntesUp one as its on the polo-shirts we are getting.

DeV.

Culchie

DeVore wrote:

its on the polo-shirts we are getting.

DeV.

Polo Shirts, Polo Shirts..... what's this about free polo shirts for boardsters?

DeVore

The blog text bit was in Times New for some reason, thanks for spotting that. I've corrected that now.

DeV.

Vamos

The "Paddy Power Poker.Come Play..." link is not tagged for the last few letters in.
Maybe an upward scrolling link box at the side like on some news sites, instead of the marquee. And the "Welcome to the Antes Up World Series Of Poker live coverage!" text would look better in the same greyish colour as the rest of the text on the page.
Otherwise looks good.

roryc

this link

Irish players at the WSOP

doesnt seem to be working

califano

Looks pretty sweet. Fair play.
Pictures and a few short mpeg interviews perhaps?

DeVore

roryc wrote:

this link

Irish players at the WSOP

doesnt seem to be working

You're quite correct RoryC, that link *doesnt* seem to be working.

</smartarse>

Ok, I'll fix that tonight. Thanks for spotting that.

Dev.

Waylander

Just a suggestion, and I know there will probably not be any Irish involved, but you could also include the League table for players, I think Toyota sponsor it

Doc Farrell

'We hope this is the start of something big for Irish Poker online. '

I think so. I like the look of it. Looking forward to seeing a comprehensive listing of all tournies in Ireland and maybe a few in the UK.

Good luck with this, I'm sure many pro's and talented amateurs like Bernie MacMahon and her layabout son will be using this site as much i intend to.

best of luck in Vegas ladies.
D.

DeVore

Urk? Whats this now?

I'm open to including absolutely anything that the players find useful or interesting. I know not everyone is going to like the site design and what have you but I really think there is a huge gap in the Irish internet for Irish poker players to get info and to promote Irish poker.

I'm gonna stick my neck out and go one (table) further then Mike and say that I expect an Irish player (or two) on the last two tables of the main event.
Its only the size of the tournament and the increased luck-factor it brings that stops me from confidently predicting a final table placing but deep down I'd love to see it!

Oscar FTW!!! (cos I have a few quid riding on him )

DeV.

Shortstack

Thanks for all the feedback so far guys, it is appreciated and taken on board.
Doc, the tournament listings will be going up on the main site which we will have ready to rock in a short while.

As for the player profiles, run if you see me or Tom come into the Fitz with a camera! It will take some time but we want the player profiles to be as original as possible. However all you players out there that have a decent head shot and can type up a few words about yourself then feel free to email them to me. Once we are back from vegas filling up the profiles will be one of our no1 priorities.

I am interested to hear from those who do not like the design of the site, particularly the reasons behind why they don't like it. Somethings we cannot change now and whatever we do someone isn't going to like it but if we find a lot of similar comments then we would not be so foolish as to ignore it. The sharpness of the site will improve in time, we had to make sure we had it ready for the WSOP and spit and polish can be applied ongoing.

I will have the leaderboard up at somepoint over the weekend and update it after every event. The reports should be up to date by Sunday and ongoing will be up as live as possible given the time difference between here and Nevada. Once Tom hits Sin City then they should be really 'live'.

Hectorjelly

DeVore wrote:

I'm gonna stick my neck out and go one (table) further then Mike and say that I expect an Irish player (or two) on the last two tables of the main event.
Its only the size of the tournament and the increased luck-factor it brings that stops me from confidently predicting a final table placing but deep down I'd love to see it!

$50 says no Irish Player makes the final two tables. The only condition is that you have to publish a list of Irish Players before the ME starts, as Im sure half the final table will have some Irish descent!

Tourneque

First off, it's looking good and it's a great idea.

Here's some feedback that I hope helps ...

1. There alotof wasted space on either side of the page
2. i'm sure you can reduce the size of the graphics files without toning down the quality. eg. Theres no need for the pp logo to be so big for what it contains.
3. For the 'blog' links' let clicking the summary text be enough to go to the blog
4. Add links for previous posts on the blogs as opposed to just scrolling down
5. the scrolling text is jerky and looks bad. use some dhtml to for the scrolling.
6. Allow clicking on the player name as it scrolls to nav to the player profile.
7. The highlighting of the selected link from the menu list is barely noticeable and to be honest I think you should use some dhtml to hightlight text instead of alternating images. It'll save your bandwidth.

Looking forward to the reports !

Daithio

Cool site Tom, will be great once the main event kicks off.