It’s been a while so I wanted to give everyone some quick updates.
I’ve been swamped. With the upcoming SCIV and release of SSII:HD has really bumped the sales to the point that for the first time I am going to hire in some help. If you know of anyone in the Tucson area that would work for cheap and enjoys this stuff, let me know :).
I am also working on some web stuff to help me stream line business a bit. I am spending a lot of time right now processing orders manually. Very soon Arcadeinabox.com will be updated with a flash page giving information about the company and the products. The store will be moving to aiabstore.com. This will allow me to concentrate more on getting the things done I want to get done.
Like the ps3 sticks i’ve been promising for months. Plus the dual PCB sticks.
The blog will also be used a lot more to help get information out there.
This brings me to something else. I’m not sure how many people still check this thread, but I am considering something and I would love some help.
Instead of going with the Flash main page for Arcadeinabox.com, I’m thinking of going with a blog (wordpress) or CMS. The goal would be to provide as much information as possible about my sticks, but also an outlet with current console information that pertains to arcade sticks. Not just fighters, but say classic arcade games on Live arcade an other systems.
Obviously I don’t have the time to keep the site updated with news and content all the time. Anyone want to help with this project? You don’t have to be near me :).
Toker, you made me think of this and I think it would be a fun way to get others involved with Arcade-in-a-box, especially customers of mine.
And now that they can it’s still not well understood how well they can crawl them and I think it even takes extra steps on the development side to tag them for the spiders.
A blog would be fine for news/information and such but it would not have the store capabilities.
I’m not a customer yet. I haven’t played in an arcade in 15 years so I don’t recall, or think I had any, preferences on stick/gates/buttons, thus I joined this forum to ask questions and learn what is best for me.
With that disclaimer I would not mind helping. I have ran websites before including ones that used word press. Maybe I could blog about my quest for the perfect stick.
Toodle, please PM me more info. I’m currently using the Hori Turbo pads. They work well, but I can only get them from Play-Asia currently. If you have a better solution I would love to hear it.
Spylon,
The webstore will be at a seperate domain linked from the main blog/cms. My goal with the cms is to bring more information to the users. When big games are released that relate to arcade stick, or a custom graphic overlay section people can browse or submit their overlays for customers to use. Stuff like that.
Then I definitely think a blog/cms would be sufficient for you. Here are the features I think you want: news, information, gallery
news and information can be blog posts. The news blog posts can have comments enable to create a discussion. The information posts/FAQs can have comments disabled to keep them clean. Also using rss people can subscribe and be notified when you post something new.
The gallery has two requirements, posting photos of your work and allowing users to upload pictures and custom artwork.
I’ve been using the blog format as a news forum and community thing for Skateboarding in my region, and I have to say that it works amazingly well, coming from a new user point of view. I know a just little bit about SEO (search engine optimization) but with the free tools that google gives you, making a blog is really easy to do, its easy to maintain, and if you use Blogger along with google analytics and google webmaster tools, it’s all free to do. As the other guy said, there is no store functionality built in, so I can’t weigh in on that, but I do think that the blog format is fun and easy to use. If you want to see what I did, my URL is right under my screen name on the left.
Blog or CMS would be good. Flash sites, ehh, not so much. I’ve tried out a ton of different systems on ultimatemk.com. You might have noticed them coming and going as I figured out what I did and didn’t like. PM me here or on UMK if you think I can be of help. I can help with setting up a blog or cms, I can help with serverside scripting, or with solid, cross-browser friendly javascript and browser compatibility in general.
I will work for quality gaming accessories (or, you know, just to be helpful :-D)
Thanks for the all the comments guys. My PR guy agreed on the Flash thing. I guess it’s a nightmare when it comes to search engines and all the seo crap.
I’m not new to setting this stuff up. Running websites for the past 12 years, I have gone through a lot :).
Wordpress would be good, but here is the issue. Currently Arcadeinabox.com is on a windows server. Now I could go through the whole process of changing over to a linux based web host and having the down time, but I prefer not too. My custom options applications are all written in ASP so it makes sense to stick with it.
The biggest issue with ASP is nothing is free like all the open source stuff out there for linux based systems with mysql.
Graffiti CMS seems pretty good so far. The cost isn’t bad and I think it will do what I want. I’ll keep playing with it during the trial period to make sure it will work well.
I know there are a few ASP based CMS projects that are open source on sourceforge.net. I’ve never tried any of them to test for security but there might be some. And if there is a specific set of options you are looking for, building one just to do those things in ASP is probably not a huge undertaking.
Couple more questions. I’ll open this up to anybody who owns a stick.
Is it easy to access the internals of the stick? I’ve read that
rotating the square gate on a Sanwa will switch it into 4 way mode.
This would be awesome for Pac-Man and I’m hoping it’s easy to do.
Would it be easy to switch the buttons around? I’m not sure if I want
AB on the top or bottom row. What do people recommend? The MS layout or the Ed layout? :wgrin:
What are peoples thoughts on the true vs the slim? Are there any videos with both of them? I’m looking for any videos at this point thou. If there is enough interest after I order mine I’ll post some videos. Just need to decide what I want first.
Ed, I know the transition from an ASP environment to Linux seems costly at the moment (considering that you already have custom-built ASP code for your store stuff), but I would still recommend moving your website to a Linux environment. Moving to a Linux environment will help you in the long run. You have access to more web applications that are either open-sourced or considerably cheaper than Windows server applications.
I have a friend who is forced to work with a Windows server environment for an application he’s supporting and he’s absolutely loathes it. Many of the things he could easily do in a Linux environment are not possible in Windows server. I say that to you because if your website becomes super successful, then hosting it on a Windows server could severely limit your expansion options or make them harder to implement than on a Linux environment. I support several websites on a Linux environment and I love the ability to easily try out new web applications that could support my web needs.
I’m glad to read that you are not going with a Flash splash page. Flash is good for embedding video, but it is not ideal for disseminating information on the web.
I appreciate the thoughts, and they are very similar to mine. I might at some point make the change to Linux if I don’t think this is going to work out. However, what I am planning is fairly simple in scope.
Here is a start of what I am going for. The Graffiti CMS is probably the best blog/cms type system I have played with too date. The cost isn’t bad, my only concern right now about a non open source solution is if the company just decided to vanish. Then I am stuck with no support.
