Hey up, I know there's a scene section around here but isn’t your usual spammy, come join my forum and post lots yay! Sort of thread, if anything its explaining how you guys as graphic makers can help support the graphics community as well as your own graphics, so hopefully you can understand me posting it in here and support the idea fully, if not please don't take a hard line and close the topic straight away or something, if there's a problem or you don't like the idea, say so and i'll look at adjusting it, so that it really does benefit everybody.
I’ll try and keep this brief, I wrote this out already and I babbled on for ages, so I’ll do it in a nice and easy faq sort of thing to make it easier, hopefully you appreciate that.
What is the FM Portal?
The FM Portal is unique in that rather than offering loads of content of its own, it contains a directory linking to all the content from different sites as well as a daily blog giving a round up of new content from around the community on that day.
Has this been successful?
Last year this proved very successful, with a lot more exposure being given to different sites around the community.
Why only written content and not graphics?
The thing with doing the content was that I added it all manually, went around to every site, read the new content, got the links, wrote a description for it and added it to the directory. This was obviously very time consuming especially considering the fact that there were nearly 2000 pieces of content by the time FM2008 came around.
This obviously couldn’t be done for graphics, as there were far more graphics than one could even comprehend.
So how will you cater for graphics?
In order to expand into the world of graphics for this year, I’ve set up a new area of the site so that people can manage there graphics portfolio. It’s very simple; you can just add the name and description of your graphic (as usual) and then rather than uploading a file, just provide links to where to download it from other sites.
We don’t host anybody’s graphics and we don’t hotlink to anybody else, rather we just tell people where to download there graphics from, it’s a heck of a lot easier than searching google for “Arsenal Facepack”.
Do you hotlink and just steal people’s resources?
Nope we don’t hotlink, just link to the page where the user can download the graphic, so they still see and enjoy the site the user is visiting, use there comments and rating system and generally experience the site, which will hopefully encourage them to stick around (depending how good the site is I suppose, but nothing I can do about that).
What are the benefits for an average guy looking to download gfx
It’s a lot easier for users to find and download the graphics they want, as they can find all the graphics from every site in one place without having to go to all the different sites, they can also see different mirrors so if one site is down they can get it from another.
What are the benefits for a graphics maker
Graphic makers can get added publicity and exposure for there graphics as well as making it easier to make sure they get there graphics uploaded to as many sites as possible via the upload links in the portfolio manager.
What are the benefits for a site hosting graphics
Sites benefit massively from the incoming links from the FM Portal, creating added exposure and publicity for there site, thus making it more popular (one assumes).
What about graphics hosted on file sharing sites
One of the brilliant things about the portal is that it also allows for a comprehensive organised list of graphics uploaded to file sharing sites, which are obviously harder to find or keep organised, compared to those uploaded to fm sites.
I shan’t be adding my graphics as I only want them appearing on one site exclusively
Like I said earlier we don’t host any graphics, we just tell people where to download them, so its just the same as you posting on a forum saying “go to *the site* and check out my *whatever* exclusive to *the site*”, except its a lot more user friendly than a post on a forum and will attract a lot more attention and publicity for both your graphics and the site that they’re exclusive to.
So hopefully you can understand me posting it in here and support the idea fully, if not please don't take a hard line and close the topic straight away or something, if there's a problem or you don't like the idea, say so and i'll look at adjusting it, so that it really does benefit everybody.
I’ll try and keep this brief, I wrote this out already and I babbled on for ages and it wasn't particularly helpful, so I’ll do it in a nice and easy faq sort of thing to make it easier for you, hopefully you appreciate that.
What is the FM Portal?
The FM Portal is unique in that rather than offering loads of content of its own, it contains a directory linking to all the content from different sites as well as a daily blog giving a round up of new content from around the community on that day.
Has this been successful?
Last year this proved very successful, with a lot more exposure being given to different sites around the community.
Why only written content and not graphics?
The thing with doing the content was that I added it all manually, went around to every site, read the new content, got the links, wrote a description for it and added it to the directory. This was obviously very time consuming especially considering the fact that there were nearly 2000 pieces of content by the time FM2008 came around.
This obviously couldn’t be done for graphics, as there were far more graphics than one could even comprehend.
So how will you cater for graphics?
In order to expand into the world of graphics for this year, I’ve set up a new area of the site so that people can manage there graphics portfolio. It’s very simple; you can just add the name and description of your graphic (as usual) and then rather than uploading a file, just provide links to where to download it from other sites.
We don’t host anybody’s graphics and we don’t hotlink to anybody else, rather we just tell people where to download there graphics from, it’s a heck of a lot easier than searching google for “Arsenal Facepack”.
Do you hotlink and just steal people’s resources?
Nope we don’t hotlink, just link to the page where the user can download the graphic, so they still see and enjoy the site the user is visiting, use there comments and rating system and generally experience the site, which will hopefully encourage them to stick around (depending how good the site is I suppose, but nothing I can do about that).
What are the benefits for an average guy looking to download gfx
It’s a lot easier for users to find and download the graphics they want, as they can find all the graphics from every site in one place without having to go to all the different sites, they can also see different mirrors so if one site is down they can get it from another.
What are the benefits for a graphics maker
Graphic makers can get added publicity and exposure for there graphics as well as making it easier to make sure they get there graphics uploaded to as many sites as possible via the upload links in the portfolio manager.
What are the benefits for a site hosting graphics
Sites benefit massively from the incoming links from the FM Portal, creating added exposure and publicity for there site, thus making it more popular (one assumes).
What about graphics hosted on file sharing sites
One of the brilliant things about the portal is that it also allows for a comprehensive organised list of graphics uploaded to file sharing sites, which are obviously harder to find or keep organised, compared to those uploaded to fm sites.
I shan’t be adding my graphics as I only want them appearing on Throw In
Like I said earlier we don’t host any graphics, we just tell people where to download them, so its just the same as you posting on a forum saying “go to Throw In and check out my *whatever* exclusive to Throw In”, except its a lot more user friendly than a post on a forum and will attract a lot more attention and publicity for both your graphics and the site that they’re exclusive to.
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Hopefully that came across alright, I don’t mean for this to come across as a blatant advertisement, speaking at you, but it needed some explanation without sounding to over the top, but basically the portal is like yahoo, google etc in that it helps people find stuff on the internet, the only difference is that its focused solely on Football Manager.
Don’t take this as just some spammy advert for the site its not, its something for the whole community and something which needs support from all the sites and all the graphic makers.
I'm not that close to, to many webmasters from around the community, but the ones I am close to and have compared stats with, have proven just how big a benefit links from the FM Portal are to the site, in helping to support it and increase it's activity.
Everybody is listed equally next to each other, smaller sites gets just as much exposure as juggernauts such as sortitoutsi, to help level the playing the field as it t'where (alas I couldn't think up a less competitive sounding phrase, but i'm not trying to cause friction and competitiveness between sites
).
Oh, we also have a unique way of viewing files, just to try and offer something different, you can quickly scroll through screenshots and click to download or read more information, rather than just having a list of un-descriptive file names.
You can also link to your portfolio to show of all your graphics very easily, using the same quick and easy graphics viewer, if you want to.
Here's the link to the FM portal And to the portfolio management section
Feel free to look around and see exactly what i'm referring to. It’s only come out of BETA mode at at noon today (as in there were loads of bugs, but I think they're all fixed now), which is why it's empty, but you can help fill it up obviously
FM Portal Graphics, everything in one place 
Linear Mode
