Its a digg like website for football (soccer) news that I launched yesterday. It allows you to gain points (like Digg/Reddit) and then wager those points on matches being played.
Built using Ruby on Rails. Thoughts?
That's a really nice idea! Good luck with it.
I guess you saved me some work :-)
I wish you a lot of success. I would love to see the site grow and become a great place for soccer fans to get their news. You can count me in as a member. I'll join soon.
Edit: alrite... I've deployed a fix to the CSS. It should fit the screen now. Can you try it out and get back to me?
I'll look at it again tomorrow from my windows machine at work and get back to you.
http://www.fanstate.com/tag/MLS maybe?
How do I make a bet?
I also think you shouldn't track 'karma' and 'points'. It is too confusing for a 'harmless bit of fun' website. Let the people bet their real karma. Why not? If they lose it they will be driven to participate more. You could display subtotals of how much karma was gained/lost due to site activity and how much was gained via skillful betting. That way someone with a lot of activity but a bad betting record could have a total like [r7000 (8 488 -480)] maybe colour-coded or something. I think if you want to make a distinction a single total with subtotals makes more sense. If people aren't betting their actual karma I don't think they'll take the bets seriously.
Just some ideas.
The tags do disappear (like Digg I believe), but they are used for the search function. So when you do search (upper right corner) you search by tags. Also, the tags come into play when finding the 3 similar articles for each link.
But the tags themselves are hidden away to reduce the clutter.
To make a bet, there needs to be a live match going on. There are no live matches right now so there's nothing to bet. Come September when the seasons start up there will be matches. Basically you follow the "Fixtures" link the navigation and you'll see a list of matches. Then you can go view a fixtures details and there will be a simple form you can use to submit your bets.
Edit: http://www.fanstate.com/main/search?query=YOURQUERY is the search function Better to just use the form.
1) it is during the downtime of the EPL and other European leagues so it gives you year-round content so users don't drift away.
2) you can have some fixtures to test your site with right now while you are trying to get some activity going and iron out the usability and the bugs
anyway, good luck
Edit: Too late lol. The game's started already. Check tomorrow when there's another match.
The email address isn't checked to be valid. I just ask for one so that if it is ever needed (email lost info, close accounts etc) I can use it.
Edit: I see. I'll change it so that instead of "Logged In" it displays the username
It looks like something that could be fun. Most soccer/football news sites suck pretty bad. The use your 'karma' to 'bet' on fixtures is pretty clever. But to be fun it will need a community.
veritas, You might want to take a look at ArmcharGM(.com), they are probably one of your bigger competitors.
What font would you suggest?