My suggestions:

1. The VG Chartz logo needs to be redone, the chart is well... ugly and so is the font used.  Maybe you could have a contest to design a new one.

2. The VG Chartz logo is too big on the page and should occupy about half the size it is now, also the wasted space after the logo could be put to better use by having menu options up there (check the way 1up does it with theirs).

3. The layout of the rest of the page seems to be messy.  You don't need the "User Control Panel" where it is for example and the forum link in that panel is redundant.  Some of the boxes could also be shortened considerably, "The Most Popular Games" box for example should be one third the size it is now, "Hot Topics" should be one quarter, some boxes should be eliminated completely from the front page like "VG Charts Community" (a list of the currently online users should be on a seperate forum front page), also just to mention it shouldn't it be "VG Chartz Community"?

4. Part of the problem with a site dedicated to tracking sales is that once you post the weekly sales how do you keep people coming back for the rest of the week (I mean the ones that aren't forum posters)?  Basically instead of having lots of hits at one time you want to have lots of hits all the time.  In order to do that you need unique daily content to complement the charts.  For example you could put a greater emphasis on unique news on your main page and have some of the articles have a sales slant (A VG Chartz interview with Michael Pachter (or another analyst) for example).

Well that's it for now, I have a lot of ideas but these are just a few off the top of my head.

Ok a bit more details on these then...

 1) "NEW!" - Some way of marking a thread so that it is readily apparent that it has a new post since the last time you have checked the thread.

& 

2) "Goto Post" - A link on the forum level listing next to each thread that you have posted in that opens the page and takes you to your most recent post in that thread.

I think possibly the best thing to do for these two is to take your existing orange icon next to each thread and overlay an arrow on it (sort of like an arrow that is put over an icon for a desktop shortcut etc...) this way it indicates its going to be a shortcut and the orange still denotes new activity.

I don't think having the database manage these is going to be extremely crucial to be honest.  Currently each letter someone types in a post is taking up 1 byte so 2 bytes here and there aren't going to make a huge difference.  But I do think that some level culling the old entries is a good idea to prevent it from becoming extremely cumbersome, particularly with a growing user base. 

3) Charts "View"-Window - The ability to set a time frame for hardware charts would be simply amazing...really no other way to say it. Just to be clear this would be specified as a date range for non-aligned graphs and a week range for aligned graphs.

If my concept of how the compare console graph works is correct then this should be fairly easy.  The basic idea is to allow users to "zoom" in/out on an area and get more useful information.  By allowing them to set a date range to look at for non-aligned graphs they can control the view window, and by allowing them to set a week range (ie week 6 to 40, week 1 to 15, etc...) for aligned graphs they can again control the view window.  

This should allow the graphs to produce a lot more useful info than it already does by allowing people to look more closely at interesting trend periods more accurately. 

4) Ignore List - I think this could help cut down on a lot of problems on these forums. I know there are some folks I would put on ignore and it would be nice =)

I'm not sure how you feel about this one, but there are a number of ways to implement it if you decide to go this route.  You could either completely hide the post, or just not show any text in the box so the person would know that something was said but not necessarily what was said. 

6) 5 second post delay to cut down on double posts

This one is pretty straightforward as far as design goes. 

11) User specified posts per page - Allowing the user to set how many posts per page in their profile would be nice for some of the folks who maybe have more or less bandwidth/memory than normal. PS - I would still love a scaling width layout for the site...but I realize I am in the minority with my monitor of Doom =)

I think this one is general pretty easy to implement, were you for or against this one ioi?

14) Donating Member - For folks who donate cash to the site you should give them either a special title denoting their contribution or perhaps an avatar? Something to point out and highlight the folks who are helping out.

I think having one of our members who is gifted at the graphical banner making type stuff could make up something for this purpose. 

15) Image Extraction - This one might be a bit harder but the basic idea is that you would allow people who are looking at a graph to download an image of that graph (or have it saved to the site itself) so they can link that graph in a thread rather than having 100 people come and look at the same graph over and over again.

I think this is one that should probably get shelved for a while since its a bit more of an extra than something new.   

The site has a long way to go before it can get any form of daily hits (good amounts). It's still kind of labeled in the fansite category and much of its community are nothing but poorly spoken fanboys. The most important thing obviously is for vgcharts to become the most accurate sales tracking site out there to shake its unreliable name from some peoples minds. Being able to track 'other' data such as game sales would also make it a lot more popular as no one else seems to do that.

Eventually the site would need to find ways to get content up that is respectable and unique in order to draw in more intelligent people, as it is now, you can't have one pro microsoft thread without say, leo or someone jumping in spewing nonsensical fanboy drivel everywhere. It makes analyzing and discussion less.. enticing. I imagine a lot of people spend more time looking than taking part in the community.

A lot of the stuff the site has is pretty fansite fodder, such as how amazing games get 0s because fanboys like to hate. The site will need to make a lot of ties with more professional sites (maybe getting gamerankings reviews on top of the terrible user votes) and the like.

But I see a lot of potential in this site if ioi keeps it up, he seems to have his heart in the right place and the shit he took at sites like neogaf is pretty unreasonable. I would help out with the site in the form of uploading pictures and adding to the database but I don't have the ability. I also have written reviews I could help out with on top of other people, but again, it needs to be well done.

Still the site has grown a lot since when I first starting tracking it, long as everyone keeps doing their best it could be a very big site one day, assuming that is the goal. If i had to list one grating complaint, it would be those damn 'congratulations you won an ipod thing' vocal ads.

You know ioi, I have talked to a couple people (besides forum members) who uses VGchartz for stock tips. Like when to snag up or sell a stock. Of course its usually just speculation depending on press releases etc. But since you have an ongoing sales counter as well as good information from the sources. You could look into putting an investing area, don't know how that would turn out, but since we get a lot of "firsts" on this site, it may bring in traffic for younger people who are interested in investing in the video game industry. Just a crazy thought.

It would improve the website by leaps and bounds if "Off Topic" forum posts did not appear in the "Hot Topics" on the front page. Seriously, seeing "Shaved or Smooth" sitting at the top of the Hot Topics does not help the image of the forum at all, in fact, the opposite.

It would be nice if mods (or Stof) could move topics from one forum to another if they are started in the wrong forum.


It would awesome if the thread title, like this one:

Forum > Website Discussion > Website improvements - more community input

appeared in the top bar of my browser so I could glance up and see which forum a post was in instead of having to scroll to the top of the page. It would be a helpful reminder of what the thread topic was and also what forum it was in. It's a fact that there are a lot of people just hitting topics from the front page Hot Topics with no idea what forum the topic was posted in.

Being able to select a timezone for the boards would be nice. I hate that it's 5 hours ahead of me.

i think in the games section there should be links to the other games in the series like super smash bros to super smash bros melee to super smash bros brawl

Also I don't know how hard this would be, but it would be absolutely fantastic if we could get comparison charts for software put in. I think it would be really cool to be able to compare older consoles that are in the database to new ones, or to directly compare the new consoles. Like how much software did the 360 sell total compared to ps3 or wii, etc. Worldwide of course, with filters to filter one specific category (america, japan, other)

I want mostly limited signature some of those are so big it's just plain annoying it's okey with pictures but it should be limits of how much you can add in your signature.

In the comparison tool we should be able to select Europe as a subheading of Other (which would include UK, France, Germany... and Other Europe) because sometimes things come out in Other at a different time than in Europe and makes aligning the launch all but useless.

For example the PS3 was out in some Asian countries (other than Japan that is) at the end of 2006 so that if you want to compare European PS3 sales with European 360 or Wii sales with the launch aligned it looks like the PS3 sold almost nothing (low volume in the small Asian countries it was released in in 2006) and then exploded with the Euro launch.

Another thing is it would be nice to have a confirmation step for the Add a friend feature as I already clicked on it twice by accident (I need a new computer :().

A big thing would be to have European software data but I understand that it might not be possible if you do not have it and difficult due to the extra work it would give you if you have the data (and it is not one time off jobs like my other suggestions).

Anyway I enjoy the site already so any improvement would be a bonus.

Thanks for it Ioi.