Would Appreciate Feed-Back on this New Live Casino Site

[live]

I am 2 months into working long hours on this new site. It is my second. The long hours are a bit hard because I am older now. The first one I worked on too much with no feed back. It was slots. The live casinos I am really identifying with. I wana get good at web mastering it. So I thought I would try and see if I could learn something from you guys here.

http://www.livecasinodirectory.co.uk/

I see myself as a perfectionist which many times leads me to solutions taht are too complicated and complex.

I am with Godaddy but on a DED. I am trying to keep the site's loading time down. That has always been difficult for me. If someone has the inclination could you tell me how it loaded for you. In that same line of thought I am trying to decide if I should place a video at the top of every Live Casino Review like I have done for AllSLots. As it is they are all at the bottom. I felt in this way I could post my videos but keep the load time down. Or the apparent load time down.
http://www.livecasinodirectory.co.uk...no-review.html
I enjoy creating videos and feel that between serving them myself for my own pages for a SERP boost and loading them up on youtube with a link, it would be part of the SEO work needed.

So-wat-da-ya-say?!
General Feed Back??

Do or Die,
Live Dave

[baldidiot]

Looks pretty nice - I particularly like the world map.

It did load quite slowly for me though, plus it feels like you're wasting space at the top of the page.

[ocreditor]

I think it looks well but I agree with Baldidiot's comment about the space at the top of the page. It loaded fairly slowly. Also the two paragraphs of text under Live Casinos/Live Software Platforms are very dense and wordy; I think they could be cut down to be a little more reader-friendly. Good luck with your site!

[live]

ocreditor,

I simplified the Home page text and for faster loading I eliminated the world map you liked... oh well!
I will need help eliminating the margin at the top. I have tried to do it before. I have a guy but he costs Money. Light budget because I have not landed any money yet with my site. Some times the coders from India are bit out of my culture set as well. Cultural programing is a real issue when workin on the net.

Thanks again
Live

I think it's obvious. To feel alive, play at a Live Casino.
Funny i had this link above not work on another post. But In this one it did. Maybe it was the "go advanced" that I clicked before posting.

[davemerry]

What is this live casino thing I keep hearing about?!

I've made a few notes below, although differentiation from my live affiliate sites isn't exactly a bad thing, it's what I have found works over the years:

1. I agree with the comments about the space at the top, this is doing nothing at the moment. With the current space available it looks like a logo should be there but it is missing, even though it is below.

2. The navigational elements of the site weren't really clear enough for me, if anything they are lot less prominent than any of the white on page text. This is how the user gets around your site so it should be big, clear and simple... I'd look at increasing the size, changing the colour or bolding them.

3. Perhaps you have over-complicated the categorization of the navigation as well, although that may just be my personal opinion as I have this argument with people all the time. Do you think you need all them pages in the navigation to convert a player? Or are they just for search engines? I think there is a fine line between a lot of choice, and to much choice.

3. New players are attracted to live casinos as it offers some excitement with the real dealers, yet when I arrive on your site I don't get any excitement at all. Throw some dealer images on the homepage, give the potential player some encouragement to continue and make that all important click through.

Overall I like the site, it is one of the better in the industry and gives really in-depth information. Much more than I have on any of mine

Keep up the fight

Cheers,
Dave

[xecutable]

I've always liked the game template from Elegant themes, nice transformation . It did load a bit slowly for me too, as it was doing too many connections at the start or something.

I just checked it and there's no gzip compression on it and that could be reason: http://www.whatsmyip.org/http_compre...J5LmNvLnVrLw==

Actual Page Size: 69.34 KB
Size if Gzipped: 14.21 KB
Potential Savings: 79.51%

Would make a difference you can count on that. Perhaps get the Wp-SuperCache plugin, because it does caching and gzip compression, instead of going for enforcing the zlib compression through the php.ini

I do believe you need some kind of logo at the very top. I love it in general, lots of content, a site with quality content!

[live]

Dave Mere,

I am getting the margin off the top with a coder as we speak.
I have copied the rest of your suggestions and placed them on my work page so I can think about them as I go. All 3 struck as true for me... excitement, complicated categorization and link visibility.
Thanks again, see you soon.

Live Dave
Some good reviews on Very Live Casinos.

[baldidiot]

Getting rid of the top margin is simply a case of reducing the height of this:

#page-center-top-ad {
height: 117px;
margin: auto;
width: 1000px;
}

BUT you'll need to edit the background image because the position of the shading appears to be fixed. You could just crop the top off the background image and move everything up if you don't have the psd files to edit.

[live]

Would make a difference you can count on that. Perhaps get the Wp-SuperCache plugin, because it does caching and gzip compression, instead of going for enforcing the zlib compression through the php.ini

Thank you so much for the informed reply. To make sure I understand... The link "whatsmycode" talks about placing a code
x? ob_start("ob_gzhandler"); ?x

at the top of all the .php files. That would be easy (i think). I believe he is saying to place them on every HTML. page and category I make. I would imagine there is wp plugin that could do that??? Or is he asking us to place it in the ,php files I see in my root such as wp-config.php and wp-app.php etc That are not posts and pages?
But then you are saying that wp-super-cache will do that so never mind?????

I just installed wp super cache. I have used it before on another site. I will need to use it today to see how it goes. I didn't install it before because a year ago when I used it on the other site, it got in the way of me checking the pages that I revised and since I am revising A LOT in the beginning months I thought I would wait.
But I do have a fairly recent impresion in my memory that it now has newer functions so I can empty a single page that is cached right at the post itself with out emptying everything by going to another place. I will activate it today and see.
So Thanks a lot once again. I went by your sports site. It is very clean and easy to read. The menus are large and easy to see as Dave pointed out mine are not.

Thanks to the both of you for your time. Good to be with other webmasters. It's a good day!
live dave
An informative review on very good Live Dealer Casinos.

[xecutable]

Hey,

Yeah that's also an Elegant Themes template. You won't have to worry yourself with the appending. It's not necessary to use the x? ob_start("ob_gzhandler"); ?x call, it can be simply done with the zlib compression via .htaccess or you can ask your hosting company to turn it on. However from what I read, this is not the optimal way to compress. I can give you all of the needed instructions if you need them, but I can't see why would you want to do that .

Just in case however, this is what your host have to have:

[PHP]
zlib.output_compression = On
zlib.output_compression_level = 6
auto_prepend_file = "ct.php"  <--- custom name of the file. It's in my root.
short_open_tag = 0

ct.php contains the following code:

[PHP]

Once again, WP-SC reported that this is not the optimal way to compress (they even had a detailed explanation why, but I cannot remember it right now)

Therefore Wp-Super-Cache does the job, with just a few clicks. Be sure you check the box next to "Compress pages so they’re served more quickly to visitors. (Recommended)" in the advanced menu, under the category "Miscellaneous".

Set the cache clearing time to whatever you want, the default is an hour. In addition I use "BWP Minify" (short for Better Wordpress Minify Plugin), which minifies css and js files. Of course to get to the extreme you can redo all images and combine them into sprites but I think that's for speed fanatics , plus things always get messed up.

[xecutable]

Hey,

Yeah that's also an Elegant Themes template. You won't have to worry yourself with the appending. It's not necessary to use the x? ob_start("ob_gzhandler"); ?x call, it can be simply done with the zlib compression via .htaccess or you can ask your hosting company to turn it on. However from what I read, this is not the optimal way to compress. I can give you all of the needed instructions if you need them, but I can't see why would you want to do that .

Just in case however, this is what your host have to have in the php.ini:

zlib.output_compression = On
zlib.output_compression_level = 6
auto_prepend_file = "ct.php"  <--- custom name of the file. It's in my root.
short_open_tag = 0

ct.php contains the following code:

... can't display the code so here's a pic

Once again, WP-SC reported that this is not the optimal way to compress (they even had a detailed explanation why, but I cannot remember it right now)

Therefore Wp-Super-Cache does the job, with just a few clicks. Be sure you check the box next to "Compress pages so they’re served more quickly to visitors. (Recommended)" in the advanced menu, under the category "Miscellaneous".

Set the cache clearing time to whatever you want, the default is an hour. In addition I use "BWP Minify" (short for Better Wordpress Minify Plugin), which minifies css and js files. Of course to get to the extreme you can redo all images and combine them into sprites but I think that's for speed fanatics , plus things always get messed up.

[live]

Getting rid of the top margin is simply a case of reducing the height of this:

#page-center-top-ad {
height: 117px;
margin: auto;
width: 1000px;
}

That did it. Wew... I love magic.Now i will go look for the psd file but it looks fine without a change of image... me thinks.

Thanks you baldidiot lol.

[live]

Therefore Wp-Super-Cache does the job, with just a few clicks. Be sure you check the box next to "Compress pages so they’re served more quickly to visitors. (Recommended)" in the advanced menu, under the category "Miscellaneous".

xecutable... so very very glad for the help.


Having a bit of a problem with it though. When I have that ticked and saved the page doesnt load... I get a message:

Content Encoding Error
The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because it uses an invalid or unsupported form of compression.

Then when you click the "Try Again" under that message above, it shows the page and loads like lightning. But I am confused because if it is not ticked that means it is not being compressed so what the heck... the whole point is to compress.

The text on the Advanced Settings in wp super cache says this:
Compress pages so they’re served more quickly to visitors. (Recommended)
Compression is disabled by default because some hosts have problems with compressed files. Switching it on and off clears the cache.

So maybe I need to adjust the server at my Godady DED to permit the compression?


Live Dave
An informative review on very good Live Casinos.

[xecutable]

Strange, the only warning I got was to disable my zlib compression. I did a check up, and I see others on Godaddy have the same problem. Perhaps something on their end. From what I have found "The main issue is that Godaddy uses Apache but without mod_gzip or mod_deflate" this could be issue.

You would have to talk to them, if this method is not supported, in what way you can compress. Your pages will be loaded faster still once your have visited your page, since they r now cached. The compression will make sure first time visitors don't spend too much time loading.

[live]

Ok Xecutable,

I will get with Godaddy and get back to this thread. I fell there is a way around the problem. If I find an answer I will post it.

Later
live

[xecutable]

Sounds good. If they don't manage to figure it out, I can look around for solutions. Don't have the time at the moment.