Topic: Starting a new website need advice (VG related)

[segagamer12]

Ok Ill be quick and to the point, some friends of mine who are all very supportive of my current work, have gotten together and decided we want to start abrand new website. This new one I cant say much about bt itd going to be a lot bigger and alot different from all my previous work. We're even spending the money on our own servers this time instead of using Yahoo webhosting.


What we are going to do I cant say yet, but what I can say is it will have lots of videos and totally video game dedicated. what I want to know is, whats the ebst way to get pictures and videos from a video game conolse to a PC? I know that Pro 666 does some neat stuff with his games bUT i dont know what kinds of equipment or programs to use.

I have to go right now Ill post more details latter and read any responses that are here. thanks in advance to all who reply.  

[segagamer12]

Ok so I was in a hurry when i typed that yesterday. So right now all I was wondering is whast the easiest way to capture screans from a video game and get them onto a PC? THe new website we are making is going to be heavy on video captures and I'd kinda like them to be the best quality there is. Since this website is going to get a lot more funding than any previous site I have ever worked on I want to make it the absolute best I can. Any suggestions?


Also I am going to be looking for off site contributions, there *may* be if not monatary compensation, perhaps material compensation if things go well enough. If the contributions are worth it of course there iwll be financial gain possible. The new site is going to be very strongly video game based but not like this here wonderful site nor any site that I have been able to find. ANywyas I cant say much else now but I have a lot of things I'd like to ask the good people here if you'd all be kind enough to help. Anyone who might wanna know more or who can maybe help with my delima please feel free to PM me or email me or whatever it takes.

Also I have questions regarding servers and hosting that I might need help with. Ive always used yahoo webshoting but they kinda suck right now and would like to consider hosting it our selves or ona better service. so the next quesion is


Who is a good web hosting service? Good being better features and stuff and cheaper than yahoo. Ok well thats all for now gota go Ill check back latter for replies but I wont be on as much as usual for a while (and I know that pleases some of you)

[segagamer12]

Ok well phase one of the sites development is nearing completion, we should begin phase two shrotly. We found away to get the videos without having to do any capturing so nevermind all of that.


Since nobody replied I guess this thread is dead, so the mods are free to lock this if they want.

Stay cool and love peace and chicken grease.  

[Caliban]

Just in case you haven't noticed, the NWR forums is on the brim of a civil war...and that's why there were no responses to your thread.

PS: I look forward to this new site that you and your friends are building...just make sure someone double-checks the spelling and grammar...take care.

[Mysticspike]

hey yea it sounds like a great place for videogamers like me. i was just wondering if there will be a forum like rats collectables.

[Mysticspike]

or maybe not like rats collectables. i just want to know if there will be a forum

[bustin98]

Civil war? I must not be visiting the right boards.

Anyway, debug units often have outputs designed for screen capture.

Another option might be a video card that accepts component input and a program that runs in the background that allows you to grab anything on the screen. I'm not doing any leg work on tracking down what that is, but I believe thats how IGN does it since Nintendo doesn't seem to believe in hi-res screen captures, at least with the Cube.

[JonLeung]

You need:
-to be serious about this
-to have someone check your spelling, capitalization, and punctuation
-to be serious about this
-to have video capture equipment and a computer with lots of RAM
-to be serious about this
-to be able to handle the bandwidth
-to be serious about this
-to have someone check your spelling, capitalization, and punctuation
-to be serious about this

...as well as
-to have someone check your spelling, capitalization, and punctuation

[Shift Key]

Quote
-to have someone check your spelling, capitalization, and punctuation

[Dasmos]

get someone else to design it.

[Infernal Monkey]

Don't bother at all.

[Mysticspike]

hey im looking forward to it weather it has a forum r not cause segagamer is my brotha homie g, dont be lookin fer hate

[segagamer12]

Well I am going to be helping out a lot on this new site and pretty much letting rats collectibles go for awhile. I have actual sponsors this time and also will have help editing the pages. Plus I am not desgining it by myself I am going to have lots of help. This site is going to be HUGE once we get it going. Plus we are VERY SERIOUS about this site, WAY MORE than Ratscollectibles. rats colelctibels was a hobby site justf or the hell of it, and it keeps getting better. this new site is for REAL money so I am going to make it look the best I can.



Getting back to video capture, where could I find these programs? The PC we are running will have 2 full Gigs of ram and vista and running media center so thats shouldnt be a big problem. Bandwidth we are still shopping for. The site wont be up for a while, depending on how long it takes to get the videoss we need up and at good quality.

There will most definaltey be forums plus some form of feedback form but I will not have any part on those. I might sqeeze in as a mod if I want but I doubt I would want the headache.


Thanks for all the replies, especially IM. He motivates me now more than anything, what a good friend.  

[18 Days]

Quote
The PC we are running will have 2 full Gigs of ram and vista and running media center so thats shouldnt be a big problem.

Good luck with that. *snicker*

Quote
Also I have questions regarding servers and hosting that I might need help with. Ive always used yahoo webshoting but they kinda suck right now and would like to consider hosting it our selves or ona better service. so the next quesion is

Have any old computers lying about? Why not setup one of those as your webserver. Then you wont have any ongoing server costs other than your web connection and power bills and you will have complete control over everything. I mena do you think IGN pay someone $100 a month for hosting? Of course not, they have a stack of computers in their office doing all that.  

[segagamer12]

I know all that we have server 2003 and we are considering running everything just like that. For now we are going to continue to use the yahoo hosting plan I already have set up just because we need to get this going fast and don't have time to wait and get the servers set up.



>>Good luck with that. *snicker*<<


Well for the most part vista seams to run pretty decent for us, we have bussiness premium installed and it seams to work ok, media center SUCKS so far thats for sure, so we might refrain from using that period.

Ok so there was something else I needed to ask but I am not sure how to put it.

This site is way bigger than anything I have ever worked on so it is somewhat overwhelming at times. I have been working non stop on it and so far haven't gotten a tenth of the work I need done. Its nice that I don't have a regular job right now so I can devote my full attention to this but its very time consuming and stressful.

[Shift Key]

Quote
Originally posted by: 18 Days
]Have any old computers lying about? Why not setup one of those as your webserver. Then you wont have any ongoing server costs other than your web connection and power bills and you will have complete control over everything. I mena do you think IGN pay someone $100 a month for hosting? Of course not, they have a stack of computers in their office doing all that.

To host it from a home connection you require a static IP address, a connection with good bandwidth for streaming media and/or large files, and a computer that can be up for 99.9% of the time and handle the web requests. I wouldn't advise you to use an old computer as a webserver because it requires significant amounts of memory (think 4 GB) to deal with webpage requests sufficiently. I'm not going into huge detail about client-server technical issues with this, but if you want the most straight-forward solution look for a good hosting company - not a Yahoo style hosting solution.

Quote
Ok so there was something else I needed to ask but I am not sure how to put it.

This site is way bigger than anything I have ever worked on so it is somewhat overwhelming at times. I have been working non stop on it and so far haven't gotten a tenth of the work I need done. Its nice that I don't have a regular job right now so I can devote my full attention to this but its very time consuming and stressful.

My advice regarding this - break down the site into small components or achievable features. Implement these one at a time. Test them thoroughly before you include them in the overall website. Don't try to do everything at once, because if something breaks or doesn't work then you're in for even more pain.

If you were serious about developing the website you'd use some sort of source control software to manage the code for you, without having to worry about new features causing damage.

[segagamer12]

Thanks shiftkey, and everyone else. I am going to consider everything you guys have said. I have looked into the hosting it form here and our internet service provider doesn't offer much in the line of options. We're kinda in the middle of nowhere in a small town in the dessert.


We already began building in on yahoo using bage builder. If i was to switch over to a better service would I be able to save my existing pages as htm files and upload them using publisher? Supposedley Yahoo lets you do this but I have never figured out how to make it work.


It would seam that thier best plan is still far lowerer than our needs so we will definately have to switch over eventualy and maybe should consider doing so before we get too deep into this. For those that are curious what we are doing if you PM me I can provide a link to the stuff I am working on and see what you think.

I have tried shopping around for webhosting services but haven't really any clue how to find a good cost effective service. For now we might stick with Yahoo until the need to move arises and hoefully by then we will have the money to upgrade. Truth be told, Yahoo hosting sucks and if I wasn't already using them I wound't have even started it with them but i already had a plan I was able to upgrade.

[segagamer12]

Ok well the site is starting to come along. It still has a little ways to go but we won't rest until its ready. We found a way to get the videos on the site without wasting to much bandwidth, thanks to a nice little clause in the youtube policy. Although we won't use *just* youtube we have other methods we are contemplating.

The site isn't ready to show off just yet, but its getting closer each day. I would like to thank everyone who has replied, I am taking all your advice seriously and doing my best to make this site really good. Well I keep everyone post how it goes. Im not going to reply this thread anymore cuz it's likely to get locked soon. Stay Cool everyone.  

[segagamer12]

Ok the site is ready for viewing but it still has some progress to be made. Thanks to each and everyone who gave us feedback and I hope you all can enjoy the site. Special thanks to PGC/NWR for being a such a cool site and a major inspiration in like every area. Stay cool everyone.  

[Dasmos]

ugh, that design is horrible! honestly I like the rat's collectables better.

[18 Days]

Ok.
I had made pictures for this but my FTP host is being disagreeable and not uploading my screencaps so words will have to do for now.

1. Right now, those advertising banners show more artistic flair and baptivate more interest than your site's banner. FIX THIS. Also why isn't your banner anti aliased? Get somethign ANYTHING that makes nice text. Honestly some auto genrrated rubbishf rom flaming text would do better at the moment.
There are way too many show off losers on graphic design boards or even regular gaming boards who would happily make something better for you, for free.

2. The left menu is terrible. Why is the stuff up the top in caps and the rest not? Why is it pushed RIGHT TO THE EDGE of the table? Why is it in Sans Serif font while the main text is serif?

3. Which brings me to the main text. I LIKE the way your site has a nice simple, friendly explanation on the front page. In fact as far as front pages go, this one is great, it has a bit of info, a featured content peice and yeah. But WHY DOES ONE PARAGRAPH OVERLAP THE OTHER? Maybe it's jsut my browser, but it is CARDINAL SIN to have text overlap other text ok. The second paragraph is written over the top of the last line of the previous one. If you take any of my advice, please fix this and please ensure compatibility for all browsers.

4. The far right edge. WHAT IS GOING ON! Look it jsut needs to be neatend up. Right now the top row of empty banners, the second row of ads, the ad for Rats colelctables and the colum advert DO NOT LINE UP. You will be AMAZED how much better the site would look overall if that all aligned properly. Resize your banners, check your spacing, anything. There are millions of ways you could fix this.

5. Colour scheme: What is going on. There's nothing wrong with black, it's cool. What I'm talking about is, why is the subhecding for the featured video green? Nothing else is. Why are links in the body text blue and links on the menu white? You need to sort out a consistant theme.

6. That background picture. It does not repeat smoothly. Fix it or get rid of it.

7. Hit counter. I want you to work this one out on your own. Think carefully about who is interested in the number of hits your website gets. Think carefully about the importance of this infomation. Once you have that, think about whethor it belongs on your front page. Finally thinka bout what sorts of websites have hit counters on them, and what sorts of websites dont. What catagory do you want your site to be in?

8. "MORE..." is written in the menu. But there is nothing more. What the hell?

9. Copyright notice: Maybe you guys should read a few of these yourself. Start with youtube's user agreement.

Quote
However, by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successor's) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the YouTube Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels. You also hereby grant each user of the YouTube Website a non-exclusive license to access your User Submissions through the Website, and to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display and perform such User Submissions as permitted through the functionality of the Website and under these Terms of Service. The foregoing license granted by you terminates once you remove or delete a User Submission from the YouTube Website.

It's your video yes, but you do not hold a copyright on it.
Also, I'm not sure on the legality of recordings of video games but you might want to look that one up too, especially in regards to cutscenes, should your site include any.

Final problem, a problem I think once fixed will fix ALL OTHER PROBLEMS.
I found this, written in the source code

Quote
<meta name="generator" content="Created Using Yahoo! PageBuilder 2.61.90">

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.
no.

[Caliban]

It has an amateurish look, which is what the site is at the moment, so it can only get better with time however that involves alot of hard work spent on it.

[segagamer12]

>>1. Right now, those advertising banners show more artistic flair and baptivate more interest than your site's banner. FIX THIS. Also why isn't your banner anti aliased? Get somethign ANYTHING that makes nice text. Honestly some auto genrrated rubbishf rom flaming text would do better at the moment.
There are way too many show off losers on graphic design boards or even regular gaming boards who would happily make something better for you, for free.<<


I only have EI so I cant check out the sit eon other browsers. I forgot that they arent all compatible so tell me what browser you use and I will check it out using that browser cuz the site looks fine on mine.


>>
2. The left menu is terrible. Why is the stuff up the top in caps and the rest not? Why is it pushed RIGHT TO THE EDGE of the table? Why is it in Sans Serif font while the main text is serif?<<

I never paid attention to that. I will check it out and see If I can make it match Thanks for pointing it out to me.


>>3. Which brings me to the main text. I LIKE the way your site has a nice simple, friendly explanation on the front page. In fact as far as front pages go, this one is great, it has a bit of info, a featured content peice and yeah. But WHY DOES ONE PARAGRAPH OVERLAP THE OTHER? Maybe it's jsut my browser, but it is CARDINAL SIN to have text overlap other text ok. The second paragraph is written over the top of the last line of the previous one. If you take any of my advice, please fix this and please ensure compatibility for all browsers.<<

See that must be your browser cuz there is no text overlap when I view the site.  Except when I am the Wii the site look terrible on Wii and I am trying to figure that out.


>>4. The far right edge. WHAT IS GOING ON! Look it jsut needs to be neatend up. Right now the top row of empty banners, the second row of ads, the ad for Rats colelctables and the colum advert DO NOT LINE UP. You will be AMAZED how much better the site would look overall if that all aligned properly. Resize your banners, check your spacing, anything. There are millions of ways you could fix this.<<

Ok well the Top banners I can fix because I linked to them from other sites and will look into that, the adbrite banners I cant change because they arent mine. Wehn i view them in the editor they are just small little blue boxes.


>>5. Colour scheme: What is going on. There's nothing wrong with black, it's cool. What I'm talking about is, why is the subhecding for the featured video green? Nothing else is. Why are links in the body text blue and links on the menu white? You need to sort out a consistant theme.<<

Um the Featured video text is gold and the background is black, the text beneath the video is white just liek the rest of the site.

>>
6. That background picture. It does not repeat smoothly. Fix it or get rid of it.<<

Theres nothing I can do with that, its a flaw within  bagebuilder.

>>
7. Hit counter. I want you to work this one out on your own. Think carefully about who is interested in the number of hits your website gets. Think carefully about the importance of this infomation. Once you have that, think about whethor it belongs on your front page. Finally thinka bout what sorts of websites have hit counters on them, and what sorts of websites dont. What catagory do you want your site to be in?<<

Well I hadn't considered it that way, interesting point.

>>

8. "MORE..." is written in the menu. But there is nothing more. What the hell?<<


SHould say MORE to come, I have to fix that as well. Sorry. I onlys tarted this barely to weeks ago so its still work in gprogress but I needed to get more opinons before I start showing it off to the world.

>>

9. Copyright notice: Maybe you guys should read a few of these yourself. Start with youtube's user agreement.

Quote
However, by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successor's) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the YouTube Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels. You also hereby grant each user of the YouTube Website a non-exclusive license to access your User Submissions through the Website, and to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display and perform such User Submissions as permitted through the functionality of the Website and under these Terms of Service. The foregoing license granted by you terminates once you remove or delete a User Submission from the YouTube Website.

It's your video yes, but you do not hold a copyright on it.
Also, I'm not sure on the legality of recordings of video games but you might want to look that one up too, especially in regards to cutscenes, should your site include any.<<

We have been given permission from Youtube to link to their videos, we contact each video director individualy and make sure we have thier permission, and we have contacted most major publishers and they do not have a problem with the site. We did our legal work before we started.



Final problem, a problem I think once fixed will fix ALL OTHER PROBLEMS.
>>I found this, written in the source code

Quote
<meta name="generator" content="Created Using Yahoo! PageBuilder 2.61.90">

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.
no.<<




It is either that or site builder, which I havent had experience using. We have Publsiher 2007 and *are* working on getting it to work with our site, but its nothing like the forntpage I learned on so Its a new experience. I sincrely thank you for yor comments I will continue to accpet all feedback, the problem is we have people who say it looks fine and they love it and then we have those who are ciritcal and those who are very critical and we have to balance all that out.

The question is does it look BAD, so bad you cant spend time there? THAT is what we need to consider. If it is easy to use and pleasnt to look at thats the most improtant aspect.

For now we have only been working on it for 2 weeks, and we aren't finished. What I don't get is why it can look fine in one browser and look terrible in another? I never did understand that, nor how to fix it. That is one erea i need to figure out. NWR looks GREAT when I use IE, but when I load Firefox it looks all scrambled and tied up in nots.

I don't know maybe its my computer. We test the site on the following computers, one with windows xp sp 2, one with linux and firefox, andone with vista and the new IE. On all of those the site looks the same, except on vista it looks stretched and has a HUGE gap on the right side of the page where we cant put anythng because it doesnt show up in our editor.


WHat Editor is most reccomended? Is SItebuilder decent? I downloaded it before but didnt take the time to learn it. I have publisher 07 but its so different from what I am used to Its not funny. I know I can upload pages saved in publisher but I iether have to activate it with Yahoo to publish the pages or I hvae to uplaod them to my servers, load them with PG and save and publish them that way.

Its a major headache. Thanks for the replies though and I do *really* appreciate your advice.

[segagamer12]

seams like someone must be sending me signs, I went to laod pagebulder today and where the link ususally is sitebuilder and forntpage lkinks where instead, I had to look for it, is that strange or coincidence...

[18 Days]

Well you *could* code the website by hand. Like in notepad. But that is asking for too much. Frontpage is good, Dreamweaver is better. I know you don't beleive in piracy but unless you are eligable for and get acquire student copies, just get a warez version.
Publisher 07 is more of a print page layout program than a WYSIWYG Web editor. That is to say, while it can make webpages, it's more for things like broshures, flyers, posters and magazines.

Yahoo site builder or whatever, pretty much isn't a real program ok, it's some kiddy tool. It's like, comparing a program that's made for cell phones to one made from computers.

The page layout problems I'm having with your site. It's coming from a Mac running Safari. I'm going to guess the reason is because you arn't using something conventional like tables. I think you're using some floating box bullshit and seriously, that has to go. It's not your fault, but basically, whoever first drafted that horrible code and had it adopted into HTML 3.2 or whatever was a fool. Same goes for layout grids.

Your site doens't look bad, it's tolerable, it's usable. But a few tweaks, mostly straightening up the ads and fixing that text overlap and it could easily move from looking "fair" to "good."

And is that featured video text really gold? I should jsut never comment on colour, being colourblind and all.