New CD Price comparison site

[redbird]

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There seems to be a few DVD price comparison sites around on this forum but not many cd ones. I'm fairly new to this game an would appreciate any comments/help critisism (not too harsh please) on mine.
cdscheap.co.uk

It isn't quite finished but about 90% there or so....

As a newbie I'm planning on coming to Bristol next week hopefully to get to meet a few people (especially those earning £300+ per day, is that really acheiveable?)

I'm only doing this part time at the mo but with redundancy looming I'd like to be in a position to go at it full time.

Any advice appreciated, hope to see a few of you in Bristol.

Dave

[lowndsy]

Is that the medifusion feed? One of the reasons you don't see as many music sites is because the music feed is a bit harder to code for (no sample code).
The functionality of the site looks good to me but I'm not so sure about the overall design - it looks very "uncustomised templatey" to me. I suppose it might be better when you have added all the links.

[redbird]

Yep it is the medifusion feed, I have to admit that design is not my strong point, hence it is a customised template.

However all the php stuff is my own work as I much prefer that side of it even when it takes days to solve a problem that is blindingly obvious and should have only taken minutes!

Thanks for the feedback, should have been finished by now but had a total hard disk failure and its gonna take me days to get back to where I was.

Warning to all when people tell you to do regular backups take note they know what they are talking about.

Dave

[drivetowin]

I like it.

Only thing I would have done differently is on the price comparison pages for an individual cd I would have put the prices beside the cd cover image and then put the blurb about the cd further down as for most people it is the prices they will be interested in I reckon - but like I say that's personal opinion.

If my first attempt had looked half as good as that I'd be twice as rich as I am now

[andy2004]

when i click on the 'price check' link i get this:
Warning: Failed opening 'center_pricecheck.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/php/includes:/usr/share/php') in /home/virtual/site12/fst/var/www/html/header.php on line 99

[redbird]

Andy,
Thanks for that don't know how that happened as it seems ok on cds-cheap.co.uk and they should be the same apart from home page.

No access from work so I'll have to look when I get home.

Dave

[Brett]

when i click on the 'price check' link i get this:
Warning: Failed opening 'center_pricecheck.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/php/includes:/usr/share/php') in /home/virtual/site12/fst/var/www/html/header.php on line 99

I get that message as well but after a second or so it disappears and the prices appear

[redbird]

Brett

Is that on both URL's?
I can see the problem on cdscheap.co.uk, but cds-cheap.co.uk seems ok to me.

Dave

[Brett]

Brett

Is that on both URL's?
I can see the problem on cdscheap.co.uk, but cds-cheap.co.uk seems ok to me.

Dave

Hi Dave,

You're right.

Brett

[redbird]

should work OK now on both URL's, anything else you spot please let me know.

[jasonflk]

AS merntioned before you just need to sort out the links in the template, the left hand navigation appears to slightly offset to me.

It might be useful putting a next and previous links at the bottom of the page in the listings.

apart from that all appears to be good, I'm adding you to my favourits :-)

[redbird]

I assume you mean the arrows being offset?
That is on my "to do" list as are the other links. In fact I'd welcome suggestions for what the links should be. A "top 40" is in progress but open to suggestions...

I appreciate the comments, its sometimes difficult to be objective when you've stared at the same screen for 23 hours a day (only 23 because I need to eat occasionally, there was something else I needed to make time for but I forget what that was).

[mattylamb]

I think it looks really good actually. I'm currently working on a cd price comparison site myself to go with my dvd and games sites and if i get it anywhere near as nice as this I will be very happy.

incidentally, it looks like you could be having the same problem as me in that its not displaying the artist properly.

for example if you search for "out of the blue" it misses the first artist, then only displays part of the other artists - eg it says "Dolphy" when it should say "Eric Dolphy" and so on.

I've been tearing my hair out with this today. I've checked the feed and it seems ok, so its something in the parsing of the xml.

I'll let you know if I get it working, and would appreciate it if you could do likewise.

[CompareStore]

I also like the layout you have there - very clean and simple.
One thing I would do would be to use a redirect page for the affiliate links. When a search engines spiders your track listing pages it's going to see a lot of affilliate links which could reduce your "rating". Also programs like Norton may block a lot of these links.

[redbird]

comparestore.

Cheers for that, good advice most appreciated. I will certainly will do that.

I'm also working on registration to create a watchlist whereby I'll email when prices drop to whatever level you set which I'm hoping will encourage people to keep returning. Almost finished it but day time job gets in the way.

MattyLamb

I have recently done a fix for an artist problem which makes it a bit better but not sure complete fix, not sure if your eg's now work. Need to look at my code to see what I did (at work at mo). Let me know if you think fixed and I'll look at what I did.

so much to do so little time.