Suggestions For A Better Site!

[Phillyman]

I want to hear your opinions on how we can improve the Retromags website, What would make this website more interesting or keep you coming back. Please list your suggestions and why you think they would be a benefit to the members of this site.

Something like.....

Monthly Recap Emails

A monthly email sent out to all members of Retromags, that lists all the new releases for that month. This would let people know what they may have missed and would serve as a reminder to people that may have forgotten they have an account on this site.

I will point out that I do expect people to suggest having the releases available for download off this site, but due to the size of each magazine and the amount of traffic, i would say after the first 500 downloads this site would be shut down for going over its monthly bandwidth. Torrents still offer us the best way to provide releases to the public.

[Anime-niac]

A page listing everything that has been officially released would be nice. The monthly recap emails would definitely be nice as well.

As for downloads, maybe uploading the files to a free fileshare (eg. Rapidshare, Megaupload, Bravoshare, ect.) and then putting the links on a download page would work.

[MBJ]

Some type of system like google has in "spirit" that is a gauge of site participation would be cool.

[meppi]

I'd like to see an "magazines for editing" thread or something in the work in progress forum.

Philly could make the first post and update it every time someone posts in the thread stating that they are working on editing one or more magazines, and also when they have finished editing them.

So the first post should be a simple list of every magazine that has been scanned and is waiting for someone to edit.

Once someone says they will start editing a magazine, Philly could add their name in red or blue or something next to that particular magazine in the first post.

Once a magazine is completed and the poster mentions that it has been uploaded to the correct FTP connection, it can be removed from the list.

Also when someone besides Philly scans a magazine and posts it on the FTP to be edited, they should mention it there, so it can be added to the list in the first post.

This way we can easily keep up with which magazines are still waiting for an editor and what magazines already have someone working on them.

That way we will never get 2 people working on the same edit.

[felipebb]

i would suggest expanding the forum

the # of topics are too small

[racketboy]

I really like the monthly email idea.

Building up the Wiki would be nice too...

[clicked]

I would definitely sign up for that.

[Brett]

As a new user (linked from digg last night), I have to say that this site is very hard to navigate and discouraging. I wandered around for about 10 minutes before realizing that in order to actually download magazines, which to me is the entire point of the site, I had to look in an obscure location on the forum, rather than on the main page, the about page, the faq or the wiki, all of which I checked first. On top of that, it seems I can't access that forum without posting five "meaningful" posts. I'm not sure it's worth the trouble.

[Thor]

I 2nd that. I did see a link on the main page about the releases but if there was something near the top of the page to direct people as to where they can get the magazines would be a very good thing.

[Phillyman]

As a new user (linked from digg last night), I have to say that this site is very hard to navigate and discouraging. I wandered around for about 10 minutes before realizing that in order to actually download magazines, which to me is the entire point of the site, I had to look in an obscure location on the forum, rather than on the main page, the about page, the faq or the wiki, all of which I checked first. On top of that, it seems I can't access that forum without posting five "meaningful" posts. I'm not sure it's worth the trouble.

Yes It would be nice to have a download link on the portal page, But I posted "Click Here To Download The Magazines" at the top of every section of the forum and in the Shoutbox. While it may be easier for you to just have it right on the portal, it does nothing for the site to have people just come and leech the files. Since that Digg the other night I have had over 19 gigs worth of downloads and only 3 people offer there help. Its pretty sad that out of 4000+ people that visited this site since the Digg, that 3997 of those people just came to download the files and offer nothing back. Most couldn't even be bothered to register an account and post a simple "Thank You".

[Thor]

Wow that's a lot of leechers. Yeah I can see what your getting at there.

[racketboy]

Yes It would be nice to have a download link on the portal page, But I posted "Click Here To Download The Magazines" at the top of every section of the forum and in the Shoutbox. While it may be easier for you to just have it right on the portal, it does nothing for the site to have people just come and leech the files. Since that Digg the other night I have had over 19 gigs worth of downloads and only 3 people offer there help. Its pretty sad that out of 4000+ people that visited this site since the Digg, that 3997 of those people just came to download the files and offer nothing back. Most couldn't even be bothered to register an account and post a simple "Thank You".

Well at least in the Digg comments I tried encouraging people to help out.

I sent Phillyman an email to see if we can publish a useful guide on my site to help people get involved.

I know there are people on my site with magazines to donate and such as I had asked around in the past.

[elranzer]

Is there a chart somewhere that shows which issues have been acquired, scanned, and converted to PDF? I saw in the Wiki a list of acquired issues, CBR releases, but not a list of issues that are converted to PDF. I'd like to help out with the PDF side but don't want to go converting and indexing issues that have already been done.

[Phillyman]

Is there a chart somewhere that shows which issues have been acquired, scanned, and converted to PDF? I saw in the Wiki a list of acquired issues, CBR releases, but not a list of issues that are converted to PDF. I'd like to help out with the PDF side but don't want to go converting and indexing issues that have already been done.

Honestly I believe someone converted only the first 3 issues of Nintendo Power, and then they stopped. When I was creating the lists on the Wiki I did not create a "converted" list because it only consisted of 3 issues.

[racketboy]

I converted the first 6 or so to PDF.

I've been taking a break do to other obligations, but eventually, I want to run OCR on the scans so you can have searchable PDFs.

Phillyman, can you confirm that you got my email?

[Phillyman]

I converted the first 6 or so to PDF.

I've been taking a break do to other obligations, but eventually, I want to run OCR on the scans so you can have searchable PDFs.

Phillyman, can you confirm that you got my email?

I got to read about the first 2 lines of it before my girlfriend ended my Remote Desktop session

I will try to get you what you requested when I get home in a hour