Rags To Stitches Productions: DARTS ~ Web Design and Development

Showing posts with label DARTS. Show all posts

A New Years Facelift for Dartoid's World

3:33 PM Author: RAGS

As technology and the World Wide Web advance, often times it passes a web sites capabilities beyond regular updates and modifications. Dartoid's World has been online since 1995, and Rags To Stitches Productions performed a complete rebuild in early 2008 bringing the site up to speed with the times. Nearing the end of 2012 Author and Darts Columnist Paul Seigel and I decided the time was right to once again bring the old up to speed with the new, and as of January 2014 the new Dartoid's World is better than ever.

From a design perspective, the new Dartoid's World remains true to its historical layout and navigation to keep Paul's readers comfortable in the updated environment. While in the background Paul has an arsenal of new tools and features that help him post, edit and maintain his columns along with updating the monthly highlights of the web site with no technical knowledge or expertise. As Paul likes to tell me frequently, "Don't forget, when it comes to computers I'm a big dummy!"

Bringing the new Dartoid's World up to speed with today's Internet included the upgrade to a Responsive layout that automatically detects and adjusts to mobile devices accordingly. Site content is also toggled on and off depending on the mobile device being used assisting in ease of navigation, proper presentation of the content and improving the users experience.

Other upgrades include a Related Columns feature and a widget that randomly presents the reader with a selection of Paul's columns from the archives to discover or read again. When Paul adds a new column to the web site, it is automatically posted to his Facebook, Twitter and Google+ pages, saving him massive amounts of time and effort. Paul can edit and update the site from his Android powered mobile phone during his adventures around the World, and even post columns from his mobile device from the live darts events he participates in.

It would take a small book to list all of the upgrades that the new Dartoid's World has behind the scenes, and not only is the site up to speed with today's Internet, it will be for years to come.

Johnny K Darts

6:11 PM Author: RAGS

John Kuczynski is known as Johnny K in the sports world of darts. As a sponsored professional dart player and annual fundraiser John needed a web site that would give him the opportunity to post news and events on his own, and serve as a place for accepting donations to his annual Toys For Tots dart Tournament.

Naturally, WordPress was a perfect fit, giving John the easy to use tools to publish and maintain the site himself. And with the added benefit of a donations plugin, John can easily integrate his fundraising with his PayPal account, monitor donations and have those who donated post comments to his web site during the process.

Visit Johnny K's new web site and consider making a donation to his fundraiser.

My Dart Shirts Custom Shop

6:52 PM Author: RAGS

My Dart Shirts Custom Shop is an extension of My Dart Shirts, offering more options in terms of style and printing. The Custom Shop has created custom designs and manufactured dart shirts for dart players all over the world, from amateur status to professionals playing on the big stage.

New Blog: John Kuczynski, Dart Player

3:21 PM Author: RAGS

While I am just about done with John Kuczynski's new web site, taking the time to create a blog for John made a nice addition to his online presence. Johnny has a lot of fans as one of the most popular and winning American dart players, and those fans like to follow his tournaments and achievements.

I sensed a bit of frustration from him in regards to updating the Internet. John was spending quite a bit of time updating his fans on MySpace, Facebook and his own web sites. By creating this blog and utilizing the RSS feed, John can now simply post once and the other sites are automatically syndicated with the same post.

If you are interested in a blog for yourself feel free to contact me.

Where's Your Widget?

9:25 PM Author: RAGS

Back in February of 08 I had posted about the iGoogle Darts Theme I had created, and later discovered went over relatively well as a traffic generator. I recently discovered a new and similar avenue in a Widget.

Widgets are nifty little scripts that run on web pages. They can have just about anything in them. Products to shop for, a picture of the day, the joke of the week etc... I'm sure you've seen more than one since you've been online today.

Having a web site that sells dart shirts and gifts to dart players, I discovered a news Widget that would allow me to enter any RSS feed into it for adding darts news snippets to my web site. A small effort to make the site somewhat "sticky" as they like to say. While surfing through my Google Reader for an RSS feed it occurred to me that I read darts news from several sources almost daily. By using the "Share" feature in Google Reader I could customize and generate my own darts news feed.

The result is a branded darts news Widget that dart players with web sites, blogs, MySpace Profiles, league web sites and other web pages might consider installing on their web pages. I know, now you're wondering how this may generate some traffic to my web site right?

Since I am generating the RSS feed through my Google Reader account, I also subscribed to my dart shirts blog. Now every time I post an announcement for a new product or t-shirt design I can share that news along with the other news snippets I share for the day. As a result, that simple click of the share button will broadcast my blog post to every web site using the Widget. And much like the iGoogle darts theme, this Widget will more than likely be placed on darts related web sites, where dart players can be found surfing the web.

I hope to update on some statistical data in the near future, in the meantime don't be shy. You can look at my Widget (yes, that does make me giggle), then browse around the Widgetbox web site and think creatively about making one of your own!

Dartoids World

10:33 PM Author: RAGS

I only wish mixing business with pleasure could come around more often. Recently I finished up an exciting project in the rebuild of Dartoids World. As a regular reader of Dartoid's column for many years, I had always been a bit torn when visiting his web site. As a fan and loyal subscriber to his articles, the content was always there. However from a webmaster's chair, I often found myself cringing at the lack of consistency, broken features and cookie cutter template and widgets that the web site consisted of.

I can't begin to explain how excited I was when I got a call from Dartoid himself to discuss an overhaul. Mixing humor and vignettes of local life with useful tips for darters who find themselves at the ends of the earth with nowhere to throw, Dartoid’s World is a must-read, the most widely read column about darts in the world.

I engineered Dartoids World to give him the freedom of posting his column with ease, using a custom created admin area that is as simple to use as any text editor or word program. In addition to that, I built in easy to use tools for Dartoid control other features on his web site such as polls, a travel gallery and recommended columns. Each time Dartoid posts a new column the web site automatically updates his RSS feed, Google Site Map and the menu's and links within navigation. I told him I could make it so easy a six year old could do it, and he no doubt responded with his great sense of humor, "good, because when it comes to this kind of stuff I'm about as smart as one".

Additional features give Dartoid's readers the ability to comment on articles and rate them, a rating system for the "double out shots" which are updated automatically each month, and a "wheres Dartoid" module that allows him to keep his audience updated on where his travels and journeys around the globe are currently taking him.

On six of seven continents, Dartoid has gone toe-to-toe and mug-to-mug with some of the best dart shooters, and best drinkers, on the planet. From Beijing to Toronto, Tokyo to Johannesburg, Bangkok to Rome, Dartoid’s stood at the line, often in the most unbelievable of circumstances.

Dartoid's column has been featured by Bull’s Eye News, the American Darts Organization’s (ADO) Double Eagle and numerous other darts publications and websites around the globe since 1995.

iGoogle Darts Theme

8:57 PM Author: RAGS

Just like most things I seem to stumble across, iGoogle had no home page themes for darts. So, just like the screen savers I made for my phone, PDA, Blackberry and laptop I decided that needed to be addressed and submitted a darts theme. Also, being the Internet Marketing tool that I am, I branded it with my dart shirts web site URL. My vision of course was to draw dart players to the web site to shop.

Can I say it was successful as an Internet Marketing venture? Unfortunately, the nature of the theme limits you to providing a static image. So without a functional link to track statistics from users there is no way to tell.

The theme page does have a counter that shows how many users currently have the theme installed on their iGoogle home page, and I have seen it as high as 4000 users since submitting the theme. From a branding perspective, considering a few thousand Internet users have my web site URL on their screen I would venture to say many will visit the web site. I would also guess that the majority of users who are enjoying the theme are dart players, which is a slam dunk in terms of reaching a targeted, qualified audience.

This is just another example of finding creative ways to get exposure and traffic - especially qualified traffic - to your web site. The Internet is full of widgets, bells, whistles and inter active features that people use quite often, and if you keep your eyes peeled for ways to market yourself through them you can discover stones left unturned.

So, if you're a dart player please enjoy this iGoogle Darts Theme and drop some comments - good or bad - on the iGoogle theme page!

During the day it looks like this:

And at night it changes to this:

Darts WithThe Spambot

8:48 PM Author: RAGS

We all hate em'. Those pesky codes you have to enter in order to get an Internet form to go through. Usually they're an image with some distorted letters and numbers you can barely read. These things are in place to stop spambots from automatically sending their crap through the form processor.

I have been the victim of these spambots for quite a while now, and have simply refused to put my customers and web site visitors through the agony of distorted letters and numbers. But this week I finally had it. Filters werent doing the trick and those freakin' spambots were hitting my online forms several hundred times a day.

I was so fed up I considered purchasing all of their male enhancement products for an overdose so I could track them down and beat them within an inch of their lives with my newly acquired tree trunk sized male member.

So in order to calm down and address the problem creatively, the solution I installed randomly tells the user what their score is and asks them which double they need to aim at in order to take it out. Get it wrong and the message wont go through until you get it right!

My Dart Shirts - Apparel for Dart Players

6:43 PM Author: RAGS

My Dart Shirts was born out of necessity in a way. I had recently started playing darts more often than just a casual game at home. Playing in a league and attending local tournaments, I had started looking for some casual dart shirts to wear to darts events. An Internet search left me little to choose from, and when discussing it with a friend he laughed and reminded me I've been in imprinted sportswear since 1996. "Make them yourself!".

Although my major role in imprinted sportswear had been embroidery, as a graphic artist since 1984 and having been introduced to all forms of apparel design over the years, taking advantage of the newer garment printing technologies was easy. My Dart Shirts enjoys top listings in the search engines and has grown to become one of the most popular sites for dart players to find shirts, gifts and more.