Improvements to the Website

[Sharky]

Hi davelong and theknifemac, welcome to the site.

Theknifemac, I think I know what you mean - you're talking about the user control panel which you can get to from the link on the community dropdown menu called "Your Profile" (bit confusing that - will probably change it to "My Control Panel"). Or the direct link which is: http://www.trade2win.co.uk/boards/usercp.php

Subscribing to forums and threads is one of the features of the bulletin board, but I'm not sure how many people use it, and to be honest I've very rarely used it myself. But certainly as the number of forums have grown and the number of daily posts, it does becoming an increasingly useful way to manage all the information at your disposal.

Theknifemac, were you thinking of having an icon in the header of every page that takes you straight to your control panel? Or some other clever way of navigating back to it?

 

[Sharky]

Well John,

Thanks for the support! What can I say!?! Nice picture!

There is a facility to make a donation to the site, which is provided through a link on the About Us page - http://www.trade2win.co.uk/about/

To date I've received, I think maybe two donations - but its not well publicised and has always been a purely voluntary contribution.

In terms of the amount of time and effort required to run a site of this size, you're right it's no small job. But as long as things are running smoothly and the competition doesn't keel over, or some other travesty like me deleting the journals - then the majority of time is spent responding to emails, and thinking about what next to add to the site.

It helps a lot that my full-time job is as a web developer, and I have a keen interest in the financial markets and have always enjoyed the challenge of being at the reigns of a project. I love the idea of a community website because I get immediate feedback and a sense of creating something more than the sum of the parts - a bunch of static html pages.

I can't imagine the site becoming any less independent or introducing some sort of a charge for using it. Donations are extremely welcome, not just financially but because it shows how much people value the site.

You will have noticed there's more advertising on the site in recent months, and this has proved to be unavoidable without subscriptions in order to enable the site to grow more - for example I'd like to upgrade the data feed and display ftse charts/indices, but there are all sorts of license fees that the current budget simply doesn't allow for.

You may see more regular partner offer emails (up to two a month) - although its easy to unsubscribe from in your control panel) - and although some people find this intrusive, being able to send these to our members helps us pay for the running costs and future improvements. And you never know they might even be of interest!

I've been keen not to plaster advertising across the site, shying away from large banners and skyscrapers. For the first time next month we will be running some pop-ups, but these will be capped and even though I'm no fan myself of them - if it helps to push T2W forward I hope members will appreciate that without compulsory subs there's just no other way.

Getting back to donations, there may be a case for highlighting them and I think those that do should be rewarded with suitable recognition on the site.

Well this has become quite a long post, so I'll leave it there for now.

Thanks once again John for all your support.

Paul.

 

[FTSE Beater]

Hi Sharky et al

I'm going to throw myself in the firing line here - Don't worry I'm ready to duck.

Please please please no pop-ups. I don't know about everyone else but I HATE them with an extreme passion!!! I think it makes any website look tacky, and I've yet to see any pop-up that is of any use.

I know T2W needs to raise funding to progress further, but pop-ups IMHO are not the solution.

Ok I've had my say. Fire away peeps

 

[Helenqu]

Hi Paul,

Rather than the dreaded pop ups how about I donate the excess funds from the traders day to the site? Most of the people who attend and present are members here anyway and since we've raised £600 for BHF on the previous two days maybe £300 to T2W is fair? What do you all think?

 

[Guesty]

Sharky,

how-about giving folks the choice to either donation a tenner to trade2win, which in turn, for a given length of time, buys the right not to have pop-ups .....or suffer pop-ups ?

If I had the choice, I'd gladly start the ball rolling.....

 

[Sharky]

Thanks for the response folks. Looks like there's real anti pop-up sentiment - yes, I find them really annoying myself (though perhaps not as strongly as FTSE, but I understand you're dislike all the same!), but I also accept for the most part they're an unavoidable source of income for websites.

Thanks for the offer Helen, it's very kind of you to offer - but I'm sure the money could be put to better use organising future events.

It's not too late to pull the pop-ups and if members feel that strong about them then I will. Certainly some sort of voluntary yearly membeship would go some way to taking the pressure of finding alternative (less esirable) revenue sources. Whether this would mean banning popups and other intrusive ads altogether or just for those members you donate. Perhaps we could offer some free branded merchandise as an extra incentive. I'm certainly open to suggestions.


Paul.

 

[theknifemac]

Skimbleshanks, I was meaning the panel you get with the list of forums which I have subscribed to, easiest way to get to it is from the top level menu, click on Community then Your Priv Messages, then at the top of the page displayed, click on Trade2Win Boards -> User Control Panel for XYZ

I liked this page and have added a bookmark to it, this one page shows me everything I want to see..... Not to worry.

Mac

 

[theknifemac]

Sharky

Yes you are correct, I'd not tried clicking on my profile in the community menu, it does indeed take me where I wanted ! And with that I think it would be excessive to have a link on each page.

One feature I really liked on TMF (yes I think TMF is now in the past tense for me) was the ability to easily see what had not yet been read. When I have subscribed to forums I can easily see which forums still need to be read, but after I have read all new posts the forum stays unread until I click on the mark this forum read link at the main page for the forum. I had thought this would happen automatically when I have viewed all unread posts. Its not a major issue, just a nice to have.

Cheers

Mac

 

[Sharky]

I see what you mean Mac, let me look into the feasibility of this - hopefully I can upgrade the boards to do this - but I'll get back to you on that!

Cheers,
Paul.

 

[options]

Just another suggestion Mr Sharky sir. (And I hate pop ups more than FB does). As one way forward and also to glean a bit of revenue how about a live feed and charts and on here to start with.
Find out what the costs would be for say the LSE then for those that want this, cost it out to them at a bit more to cover costs and put some pennies in the coffers. Might even get a good deal from across the water. next step would be a direct trading platform with a broker.
You might have to take a poll to see who would be willing to pay for it. I know I would much rather keep things in the 'family'
And what happened to the 'Omega'? I know it was put on the shelf for a while. Any plans to bring it into play?
Just a few thoughts.

 

[Sharky]

Hi options,

Thanks for your suggestions. Certainly at one time there was talk of offering a data feed and charts via the site, and for those that weren't around at the time, it was codenamed "Alpha Omega" - but that idea got shelved for various reasons, and T2W continued on as a community site dedicated to active traders. With hindsight this was probably the best possible outcome.

Perhaps in the future offering additional services such as live feeds and charts would be advantageous. But at the present time I have no desire to take the site into that direction - I'm much more interested in expanding the existing features of the website. In particular I intend to start working on a definitive reference guide to all aspects of trading - available freely through a library of articles on the website. Then there's a whole host of improvements to the competitions and chatrooms, not to mention much more detailed information about the available software, brokers etc. Now once that's all in place.. well who knows!

Paul.

PS. theknifemac, I've not managed to automate the forum read link, but for the moment I've changed it so it takes you back to the forum overview page (I could have redirected to the user profile page but I suspect more people simply use the overview)

 

[jls483]

Here's my 2p worth.

I think recommending posts rather than threads would work a lot better. I expect like most people I look at the titles of all new threads and then read the ones of interest. I would like to read any post that is highly recommended, but don't have time to look at all threads. If there was a facility to search for 5* posts - I would use it.

I often don't notice that I have had a personal message for weeks. Perhaps it could flash on the home page?

I know TMF has been around for years and has enormous resources so it is hard to compete, but I think the way they have created individual home pages works really well.

On my t2w home page I would like to quick access to
- my personal messages
- responses to my posts
- all new threads (maybe just on my favourite boards when the number of threads gets out of hands)
- list of 5* posts since my last visit

Many thanks and keep up the good work.

 

[ChartMan]

In your profile, I think you can set it so that you get sent an email to your "regular" email address, notifying you of a private email waiting for you on the BB.

 

[bonsai]

Paul
great site , very nice feel to it.

I have one suggestion.
each time I enter a thread I would prefer to go direct to the last post I have previously read
even if its on say,page 4.

nevertheless, I would still like to see the authors initial post ,so it would have to be a sort of header for the thread.

I cannot find any way of doing this. Have I missed something ?

edit
as an example, I have posted 2 charts in my initial post on the
FTSE 100 thread. I would like to be able to see them every time I enter the thread.

 

[Skimbleshanks]

To the left of the thread title is a little yellow arrow - and also at the top of this page sitting on the top of the first post is another little yellow arrow. Clicking on these takes you to the first unread post - but you'll need to ensure that you permit cookies on your PC as this is what does the tracking of what's new since your last visit.

 

[bonsai]

surely, but my charts are on page 1 not page 3.

 

[bonsai]

also if I right click on a link in say 'whos on line'
it takes me to page 3. so I never see page 1 at all.

(but only sometimes )

 

[bonsai]

aha !
I think I have cracked it.

on a link that I havent used before, the url only shows the thread id.
on a link that I have used before, the url shows the thread id and the post id.
on a different link that I have used before, the url shows the thread id and the post id which is particular to that link !

so
the links will take me to different parts of the thread depending on where I went with that particular link.

and we have the position that three separate links will take me to three different places.

cant believe that was your intention ?

am I right ?

 

[Bullish Bear]

hi Sharky,
was checking out Woodies cci site...there hotcomm room is kewl.. live streaming charts from members and audio properties...just wondered if you'd ever considered it?

 

[options]

Apart from other things the fsa may be a problem.
Now, when I relocate full time to Tenerife, I have a few plans up my sleeve...