****New football news site launched today!****

Xavi6

Greeting football fans,

As a shameless abuse of mod power I would like to take this opportunity to pimp a new project being undertaken by myself and Eire Dearg.

Back Page Football is aiming to be a regularly updated site for news and views on all aspects of the game, both serious and fun. We already have a number of contributors on board, as well as a first class web designer, so the content and quality will hopefully meet the daily needs of the average football fan.

We are also actively seeking contributors so whether you're a young college goer with asperations of working in the media or a middle aged Dunphy-esque armchair supporter we'd be interested in what you have to say. Obviously it's only in its infancy but hopefully with some additional hands on deck it can grow and prosper.

The site has been officially launched today so feel free to have a look and drop us some feedback. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

http://backpagefootball.com/

Average-Ro

Sounds good Xavi, good luck with it!

jesus_thats_gre

Best of luck with it.

Some script or something seems to be consuming quite a few processor cycles when viewed in IE8 by the way...

Wreck

Best of luck guys, hope it takes off for you.

Aidric

Well done on putting this together and I'd wish ye all the best with it. I'm not in love with the design aspect in terms of it not being the full width of the page but other than that it looks good.
I like that you're giving the oppurtunity for boards members to contribute and it's something I'd definately have an interest in.

ntlbell

Best of luck with it lads!

Just a few things, that background pic is a bit harsh on the eyes.

especially when scrolling.

The font of the cover stories could do with at being changed too

doesn't really suit the page.

I'll let it all slide for decent content tho

Im_No_Superman

Nice looking site lads, best of luck with it.

Tom65

Nice site. Well done lads. I'd be interested if contributing, if you need me :P

eZe^

No Espanyol in the who will win La Liga poll?? Jaysus lads, they just trounced the next champions of England last night... =P

Seriously though, great site, hope it takes off, looks good imo.

wexican

Is it just going to focus on the Premier League? IMO, the Championship and League 1 could be even more competitive this season than Prem.

(Leeds Fan!)

mike65

Xavi6 wrote: »

or a middle aged Dunphy-esque armchair supporter we'd be interested in what you have to say.

Hey I resemble that remark!

On the site, links in light grey on white are not clever (too white anyway). Too much scrolling required (peeps are lazy fuppers).

IvySlayer

jesus_thats_gre wrote: »

Best of luck with it.

Some script or something seems to be consuming quite a few processor cycles when viewed in IE8 by the way...

Use Firefox :P

Yeah good luck with it, I'll be having a view of it.

Morzadec

Looks good best of luck

jesus_thats_gre

IvySlayer wrote: »

Use Firefox :P

Yeah good luck with it, I'll be having a view of it.

Firstly, I use Opera when on my own machine.

Secondly, working for one of them big corporations generally means you use IE8 when using one of their machines.

Eire-Dearg

Hey guys, like Xavi6 said we're deligted to invite any more contributors on board, if your an armchair supporter or a media student who'd like to practice their writing. Just give either of us a shout.

And if you see anything to report, please do. Obviously there's a few kinks that will appear now and then.

RE: The background images: I've seen an influx in the amount of background images used in websites, it seems to be "in". We have 15 interchanging ones to keep it looking fresh. You can check them out by right clicking on the page and hitting "view background image".

@ Wexican - Hopefully we'll be keeping tabs on the lower leagues, as well as the Premier League.

At the moment we'd love fans from La Liga, Serie A etc. who have a bit of knowledge of the league to come and report on it.

Bounty Hunter

Eire-Dearg wrote: »

Hey guys, like Xavi6 said we're deligted to invite any more contributors on board, if your an armchair supporter or a media student who'd like to practice their writing. Just give either of us a shout.

And if you see anything to report, please do. Obviously there's a few kinks that will appear now and then.

RE: The background images: I've seen an influx in the amount of background images used in websites, it seems to be "in". We have 15 interchanging ones to keep it looking fresh. You can check them out by right clicking on the page and hitting "view background image".

@ Wexican - Hopefully we'll be keeping tabs on the lower leagues, as well as the Premier League.

At the moment we'd love fans from La Liga, Serie A etc. who have a bit of knowledge of the league to come and report on it.

dang completley forgot about this ill try and get back on doing more articles soon and ill probably have to spell check the one i did do. The site is looking good tho man

zAbbo

Looks good.

Some general feedback

- font is a little small on large screen
- links are a little faint
- no canonical url redirection (redirtect non www. to www.)

# .htaccess

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on

# CANONICAL URL
rewritecond %{http_host} ^backpagefootball.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.backpagefootball.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Would be interested to see how you're going to build interaction and community, have you considered bbpress or forums? and perhaps improving the commenting system (disqus maybe?)

Eire-Dearg

zAbbo wrote: »

Would be interested to see how you're going to build interaction and community, have you considered bbpress or forums? and perhaps improving the commenting system (disqus maybe?)

We've discussed adding a forum, but realise it will be very difficult to attract people who are already on other forums to stay actuve, and fear it may get less attention than the site.

oldyouth

Any LOI content?

Eire-Dearg

oldyouth wrote: »

Any LOI content?

Yep, hopefully. We know we've to keep all you LOI'ers happy!

oldyouth

Eire-Dearg wrote: »

Yep, hopefully. We know we've to keep all you LOI'ers happy!

I'll pass on the word to the other 3

Eire-Dearg

We love ****ty comments from nameless viewers, shame they get eaten up before they're published.

Xavi6

Tom65 wrote: »

Nice site. Well done lads. I'd be interested if contributing, if you need me :P

Feel free to drop me a PM with any ideas you have

wexican wrote: »

Is it just going to focus on the Premier League? IMO, the Championship and League 1 could be even more competitive this season than Prem.

(Leeds Fan!)

We'll be definitely concentrating on the lower leagues. Might not be as frequent at first but if the interest/contributors are there then there's no reason not to.

oldyouth wrote: »

Any LOI content?

Without. I'll be sorting that in the next few days hopefully, though obviously someone actually living in Ireland might help!


Cheers for all the comments so far.

leninbenjamin

everything is nice except the background pics.

they look particularly awful on a 1080p as they fill about 50% of the screen, and make it hard to read as they are quite blurry and frequently the colours of them overpower the text. not too mention they take ages to load compared with the rest of the content.

I'd recommend using a darker shade of grey on some of the fonts aswell.

SectionF

Congratulations. Football needs more sites like this

leninbenjamin

the other thing is, i don't really see a proper navigation system to browse for articles, other than the tag cloud. I'd try and make it a bit more obvious as to how one can filter straight through to a particular category.

Eire-Dearg

leninbenjamin wrote: »

the other thing is, i don't really see a proper navigation system to browse for articles, other than the tag cloud. I'd try and make it a bit more obvious as to how one can filter straight through to a particular category.

We have an archive system in place, the link is at the bottom of the page

http://backpagefootball.com/archives/

And the cloud isn't for tags, it displays every category we have set up on it.

leninbenjamin

Eire-Dearg wrote: »

We have an archive system in place, the link is at the bottom of the page

http://backpagefootball.com/archives/

ah right, that should really be at the top of the page. way too easy to overlook the links at the bottom.

Eire-Dearg wrote: »

And the cloud isn't for tags, it displays every category we have set up on it.

no matter how you use it, them called tag clouds. category cloud is just too unwieldy.

Bounty Hunter

i posted that article i wrote a few weeks back but i dont think it went into the Forgotten Heroes section... im sure youll find it though. Ill start on another one now that my mind is on it

Eire-Dearg

Bounty Hunter wrote: »

i posted that article i wrote a few weeks back but i dont think it went into the Forgotten Heroes section... im sure youll find it though. Ill start on another one now that my mind is on it

Yep, we saw that and are going to wait to post it for now if that's alright!

Bounty Hunter

Eire-Dearg wrote: »

Yep, we saw that and are going to wait to post it for now if that's alright!

course it is, just wanted to get it up before it goes outta date, dont think hes joined a new team yet but I wrote it after he was playing in the midland masters which it refers to

Eire-Dearg

We're having a promising first day here on the site...

New Blue Zhirkov Will Shine - my piece on the new signing

The Week In Football - This week in times gone past

Pic Of The Week - Featuring Jack Wilshere

Coping Without The Constant - piece on a summer without football.

Some news items, too, involving Darren Bent - and Kevin Doyle.

wexican

Eire-Dearg wrote: »

@ Wexican - Hopefully we'll be keeping tabs on the lower leagues, as well as the Premier League.

That's great to hear. Be great to read an Irish perspective on the "lower leagues".... (still pains me to say that!)

PM me if you want a hand with it!

SectionF

Eire-Dearg wrote: »

a summer without football.

What summer without football?

Eire-Dearg

SectionF wrote: »

What summer without football?

Read it A summer without Premier Leauge football

Eire-Dearg

Just gone up on the site...

Xavi6's "New Signings XI"

Check it out - http://backpagefootball.com/columnists/players/new-signings-xi/

SectionF

Eire-Dearg wrote: »

Read it A summer without Premier Leauge football

I did read it. (The weird thing is that it's by a Shams fan). But you said it was a summer without football.

Eire-Dearg

SectionF wrote: »

I did read it. (The weird thing is that it's by a Shams fan). But you said it was a summer without football.

Simply a poor choice (or lack) of words in this case.

SectionF

Yeah. Those words can be a real nuisance sometimes.

Pro. F

Well done for getting that going lads. It's looking good and seems to have plenty of decent content. FWIW I'm viewing it on a small screen so this background that is bothering everybody isn't really appearing on my screen unless I scroll right to the top or bottom of the page.

Good luck with it all.

If I ever get around to putting my Dunphy-esque journalistic rants into an actual column format I'll give you lads a shout :pac:

Pro. F

SectionF wrote: »

Yeah. Those words can be a real nuisance sometimes.

That article is so petty and bitter.

Embarrassing tbh

SectionF

Pro. F wrote: »

That article is so petty and bitter.

Embarrassing tbh

I'm sorry. They can't all be Glory Glory Man United.

pickarooney

"He is a qualified journalist, with a penchant for all things Manchester City, including music and various other sports."

I know City are massive but I didn't realise they encompassed all music and sport

The Volt

SectionF wrote: »

I did read it. (The weird thing is that it's by a Shams fan). But you said it was a summer without football.

I wrote that during the LOI 2-week break actually. So I was indeed without a constant of League football

Mr.Nice Guy

Site looks good. Seems like you have a lot of the bases covered. I'll give it a look in future. Best of luck, chaps. :cool:

Eire-Dearg

Mr.Nice Guy wrote: »

Site looks good. Seems like you have a lot of the bases covered. I'll give it a look in future. Best of luck, chaps. :cool:

Thanks man!

We've set up a Fantasy League, you're all free to join. Code is 1493-92619.

yermandan

The site is class lads, fair play and the very best of luck to yiz

Redzer7

Fair play to ye lads, site looks class. Hope it's a real success. I'll spread the word.

The Volt

I've started a weekly tips feature if anyone fancies a look, trust me

Redzer7

Voltwad wrote: »

I've started a weekly tips feature if anyone fancies a look, trust me

Ive just seen it there, great idea mate

Eire-Dearg

Redzer7 wrote: »

Ive just seen it there, great idea mate

Linkage:

http://backpagefootball.com/features/back-page-tips/issue-1/