I fear most would hear the term "blog" and think of buzzfeed, tumblr, and all of that crap. What I suggest would be more like a notice board with relevant useful information about the site and it's community (e.g New world record, or a major change to the site's fuctionality). I'm coming across links to speedrun.com more frequently on other sites (i.e. Kotaku) which might show off a new world record on a specific game. I would never have found that run on speedrun.com alone if it weren't for Kotaku highlighting it.

[quote]Do you have any particular suggestions to improve the games list?[/quote] Condensing a library of thousands of games is no easy task, and how they're organised can be tricky. I imagine the entire list is queried from the site's database. A simple solution might involve replacing the entire list with a small number of input fields allowing the user to search for what they want, and thus only displaying relevant information to the user. A general 'search' field with some basic sorting filters (by platform, Alphabetically, etc...). But this is entirely subjective - perhaps most users won't care, and that's alright.

Forums on the other hand, I feel should be a large collective and shouldn't need to be queried/searched by the user. The best thing I can think of is condensing the game's forum list into categories based on platform. But I can already think of problems with that idea from the start. Maybe it's best to rally the community here together for a brainstorm and see what ideas they can bring to the table.

Also, your answer was great! Well thought out and constructive. :) It's given me a better idea on your goals here, thanks a lot.

[quote]I don't see the point in promoting the website under people who are not interested in speedrunning.[/quote] I wasn't interested in speedrunning much before this site was up. This is a community for speedrunners - a community that's growing bigger and bigger every day. The last thing any community should do is shut out potential new users and contributors. Trust me, social networking helps a lot. And for a site like this catering to gamers all over the world, it's a huge opportunity.

[quote]I really don't understand the desire to increase traffic to the website.[/quote] Traffic is a good thing. There's no point in maintaining a website if you intend to close your doors to newcomers and cater only for the site's veteran members.

[quote][quote]Blog[/quote]This has got to be the dumbest idea I have ever heard in my entire life. This is only going to be some useless posts a la SDA with next to no content people care about. It would be a waste of time and effort. People just want to see leaderboards/resources, not read some shitty blog.[/quote] Relax, it's just an idea. Blogs are incredibly useful from a back-end and SEO perspective. It would be really helpful in increasing the site's ranking online.

But anyway, I can't imagine any of these suggestions being a priority for the site right now. Just a few ideas I found helped a lot in one of my own projects. Hope it helps.

Just a few suggestions I want to throw out there. I hope you guys at least find it constructive!

[big]Homepage UI[/big] I feel the homepage could have a little more diversity in content rather than just a list of new runs and a twitter feed. Featured blog posts, featured runs, shortcuts to featured/popular games, perhaps a slider for big events or new records, links to speedrun.com's other networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

[big]Expand your social reach[/big] Build your network across every social medium you can think of, even those that might have little to do with gaming or speedrunning. You'd be surprised how much traffic you can get through the smallest subreddits on reddit, or the most obscure places like StumbleUpon.

[big]Share Buttons[/big] Adding share buttons to user's speed runs would be great. Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit would be the essential ones to add. It's easy to implement, and super handy for less tech savvy users.

[big]Blog[/big] Add a blog, and set up a schedule to have at least three posts a weeks (preferably one everyday if possible). With hundreds and moderators around, and a decent amount of admins and full mods - I'm sure you'll have no problem coming up with ideas and contributors. 400-500 words per post, at least one image/video, proper writing and styling, and appropriate use of SEO would increase the site's traffic exponentially.

[big]Forums and Games List[/big] You should really find a way to condense these lists. No one should have to scroll for more than a second or two to find what they're looking for.

And those were my two pennies worth. The site's looking good so far. Keep it up!

Ah, well in that case there's no problem.

The favicon was just an example. There's the background, foreground, and logo - what's the limit on file size? what width and height do you recommend your upload to be? And some users might not even know what a favicon is.

This might vary for each user with their own viewports and resolutions, but guidelines for this stuff is standard design practice.

Anyway, I can't imagine it's a massive priority for the developers right now. But it's something that should be put on the list.

To be honest, I'm not much of a speedrunner and while I enjoy watching them on occasion - I only tend to check out the record breakers.

But it's a great site, and I love gaming! So let's see what happens here. :)

I'm thinking it might be best to add guidelines when editing the profile theme.

For example, not everyone is going to know that a favicon should be 16x16 and be uploaded as favicon.ico

Otherwise, the very idea of completely customizing the site based on your personal preferences is pretty damn neat. :)