New Allegiance Website

Post by **aem** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 4:46 am

Although it has been live for almost two weeks and several people already know about it, here is the official announcement. I gave up on anything getting fixed here so finally made a new website for Allegiance and have been working on it over the last month. It was designed to basically be a modern version of Microsoft's original Allegiance website.

http://FREESpaceCombatGame.com

It does not look quite as good in IE because IE does not support CSS text shadows. In case you are browsing at work and are stuck on IE6, the website is not yet optimized for older versions of IE and there are numerous display problems.

I selected a domain based on keywords rather than something like allegiancegame.com. Having keywords in the URL does help a lot for SEO and we need as much help as we can get at this point. Another reason is that I hope it will help the website rank in searches for the game Freespace which appears to still have high search volume.

Please help by...
Logging into your Google account or making one real quick if you don't have one. Click the Google +1 button at the bottom of at least the homepage and also http://FREESpaceCombatGame.com/allegiance/. If you want you can +1 other pages too, but those are the most important by far. Most regular pages have the button at the bottom and news (blog) posts have the button under the post title.Facebook: While you are clicking +1, also click the Like button. Also if you have not liked our Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/freeallegiance), please do so.If you have a Twitter account follow us on Twitter, https://twitter.com/freeallegiance
Work in Progress
The website content is still very rough. Content needs to be unique for good SEO and almost everything has been written from scratch. I will make the content better as I find time. I have started building a few links as that is the most important factor for SEO, but I also need to put much more time into this. Google does heavily penalize new websites so it will be at least 6 months to 1 year before a lot of that penalty drops off. It may be difficult to rank well during this time.

Mobile Site
There is a mobile version of the website, but it is even more a work in progress. All images are currently stripped from mobile site and I need to get some added. I also have not placed the news link on the mobile site yet.

Forums and Social Features
These are already built in through BuddyPress. One nice feature is that anyone can create groups, private or public, with their own forums. While these features are installed, a lot of CSS fixes and other maintenance is needed to get them ready. I figure that the majority would prefer to stay here and not start with fresh forums, but it would not take long to get the new forums ready if needed.

Archangelus · Post by **Archangelus** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 5:54 am

incredibly nice job AEM. The page looks great.

Honestly I dont think that the problem is "starting" a new forum, but how to filter all the "old junkies" we have here to move into it.

There is so much important and remarkable things here that I believe most of us don't wanna lose. Some of us already experiencied this before ( I mean losing important "Junkies").

ryujin · Post by **ryujin** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 6:17 am

Hell yea man!

Terran · Post by **Terran** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 6:24 am

very nice overall but............... purple??

TheCorsair · Post by **TheCorsair** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 6:42 am

AEM wrote:QUOTE (AEM @ Sep 29 2012, 02:46 PM) Although it has been live for almost two weeks and several people already know about it, here is the official announcement. I gave up on anything getting fixed here so finally made a new website for Allegiance and have been working on it over the last month. It was designed to basically be a modern version of Microsoft's original Allegiance website.

I really like it. Can you please clarify what you mean by "I gave up on anything getting fixed here".

Post by **aem** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 6:48 am

TheCorsair wrote:QUOTE (TheCorsair @ Sep 29 2012, 02:42 AM) I really like it. Can you please clarify what you mean by "I gave up on anything getting fixed here".

This website desperately needs to be fixed/updated, but TE is too busy and no one else has access to do so.

It has been discussed already in many other threads so not going into detail, but this website has all kinds of search engine optimization (SEO) problems. These issues are preventing it from ranking well for relevant keywords on Google, etc.

TheCorsair · Post by **TheCorsair** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 6:50 am

Thanks, well sounds to me that we really need TE to allow people with more free time to have the required access before the game completely dies out.

FazzBumm · Post by **FazzBumm** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 9:47 am

really thank youl. Incredible work!

peet · Post by **peet** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 10:00 am

You seem to have spend a lot of energy and time on the website, it has a lot of "eye candy". To me, the purple is a bit overwhelming. In the "home" page it fills my screen with purple, than overwrites it with the banner (image). I am using the latest firefox browser. It's a matter of "personal taste".

I think it might look good on your resume.

I am not sure how it helps the game itself, for me the "original" website, especially after the latest upgrade on the home page, looks decent enough.

About google+ / facebook / twitter, I am not too keen on this "login with your <insert social media credentials>". I see it more on websites. To me, those social media groups are way to curious about my personal data, and how to use it for their profits.

Anyway, kudos for your hard work.

Post by **pkk** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 10:51 am

AEM wrote:QUOTE (AEM @ Sep 29 2012, 06:46 AM) Mobile Site
There is a mobile version of the website, but it is even more a work in progress. All images are currently stripped from mobile site and I need to get some added. I also have not placed the news link on the mobile site yet.

Wow, you wasting you efforts into a nice to have feature?! Did I miss the fact, that Allegiance runs on IOS/Android?!

There is not enough content on your website yet, just skip it.

AEM wrote:QUOTE (AEM @ Sep 29 2012, 06:46 AM) Forums and Social Features
These are already built in through BuddyPress. One nice feature is that anyone can create groups, private or public, with their own forums. While these features are installed, a lot of CSS fixes and other maintenance is needed to get them ready. I figure that the majority would prefer to stay here and not start with fresh forums, but it would not take long to get the new forums ready if needed.

bbPress is just a lightweight forum, it's not a replacement for a real forum. But judge yourself:
http://freespacecombatgame.com/forums/topic/forum-rules/
http://bbpress.org/forums/

It's always a bad idea to copy/paste disclaimers without checking them:

peet wrote:QUOTE (peet @ Sep 29 2012, 12:00 PM) About google+ / facebook / twitter, I am not too keen on this "login with your <insert social media credentials>". I see it more on websites. To me, those social media groups are way to curious about my personal data, and how to use it for their profits.

Yep, Terms of Use/Privacy Policy are contradictory. We do not sell or transfer infos to other websites/we use third party websites.

QUOTE (Privacy Policy)We offer the use of a secure server. All supplied sensitive information is transmitted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology and then encrypted into our Database to be only accessed by those authorized with special access rights to our systems, and are required to keep the information confidential.[/quote]
All personal information is transmitted encrypted via SSL (HTTPS)?! WHERE IS THAT FEATURE!