Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello!
I've been working on http://www.finditcheapest.com and would like to announce it am all brand new and improved!

New and improved:
- Xbox Live and Points deals page
- Better logo
- Code that throws up less 'divisible by zero' errors
- Removed search results where the product is no longer sold or no valid prices are listed
- Fonts are easier to read
- Enhanced sorting of search results (ie. not as broken)
- Updated popular products on front page
- Minor bugfixes [/appstore]

Please to be taking a look if you haven't recently because:
1) I'm quite proud
2) I'm in the coding mood again at the minute and am very keen to hear suggestions on improvements.

Is this a bit like http://www.savygamer.co.uk but with better spelling?

I used to use a site called bargaincomparision.co.uk, but that was run by a right fucking div. I mean a real medical div.

Your drop-down options don't appear underneath each other, but side-by-side... that intentional?

Can you screenshot that? What browser/version are you using?

I'm getting that too in Firefox 10.

oh floppy neck. No idea why that is. It's just a form drop-down. Tests ok in IE, Safari, Chrome and Opera.

Anyone know what's happening there?

I'm far from an expert on this stuff, but it looks to be something to do with the display:inline on the form css. If I remove that in Firebug, it fixes the problem. Not sure if it has a knock-on effect on any other bits of the form though.

brilliant. I am super sleepy head now, but I'll turn the compy 386 back on and have a look see at my code. Thanks for delving into it.

EDIT: Arb! Devilman and Gachap have another look. Should be better now. Thanks dm.

That CSS really really for reals shouldn't have any effect on a dropdownlist; it's a firefox bug and should be submitted to bugzilla (it probably already has been because WTF). It certainly behaves correctly in Chrome dev on Windows 7.

Edit: Having 'DVDs' in the first dropdown cover 'anything shiny disc' is wrong though, albeit 'industrystandardargh' wrong.

I know, right?
What do you go with-visualnoninteractiveentertainment?

I dunno - when you think about what you're asking it to do, it makes some sense.

Ok. I just added a 'Tweet' button to results pages such as http://finditcheapest.com/dvdprices.php?id=mfno1113293

I'll put a Facebook one on as well when I work it out. Is there anywhere else that works for a 'hey I just found this' style social link? Places like Reddit etc are obviously for more substantial content.

Looking swish! Not sure about the logo, though...

Google +
Pinterest

MySpace
Bebo
Geocities

Livejournal!

Having too many smacks of desperation. Just have the big three (FB, Twitter and G+).

How's it going, by the way? Does it get a lot of use?

G+? Does anyone actually use that? I have Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest because Pinterest works quite well for my site but isn't really appropriate for Russell. I thought Twitter, Facebook and email for finditcheapest might be better?

Google does, when you search for stuff.

Hmm... I took out my G+ link as I wanted to keep it to three and thought Pinterest worked better for my content. Not sure whether maybe it would be worth putting it back, now.

I go through phases of enthusiasm. Now I've finally actually learnt a bit more php I've been able to make the coding so much more useful in terms of providing results.

I'm in a phase of enthusiasm at the minute and one of the ways I want to help promote the site is with the social media stuff. Eventually I'll start paying for advertising to boost traffic but for now it's doing...ok. Enough to pay for a night out every so often is probably a fair way of putting it.

Hard to say, really. How much traffic does Pinterest drive to the site?

I'm constantly getting £x worth of Google Advertising for free if you're interested. You can probably only use it once, though.

It varies, but today about 110 visitors have come through from one 'pin', but some days it can be as low as 20.

Google adverts is pretty powerful in terms of configuration too. We found that a targeted campaign of only a few keywords and a maximum cost of £2 a day, made a huge difference to the google page ranking and amount of hits we were getting to the cupcake hutch.

I would not mind being privy to those details.

Moi? Or Grim...'s free voucher thingies?

Grim... can send the code to Russ if you send me the glittery moustache cupcakes.

I thought Google were quite vocal about paid advertising not changing the search results?

I assume paying for the advert itself doesn't change the results, but i'm sure quadrupling the amount of visits must do?
It may have been coincidence, but a week or so of running the google adverts and we jumped from about page 18 to page 1 when searching for cupcakes in milton keynes.

Dunno, really. Doesn't WTB do this for a living?

It's all black magic to me. Current place i'm working paid a fortune to a company to look at our site. Their main recommendation was search engine friendly urls. Worth the cash that was...

Yes, I meant if you have an adwords code that would be very appreciated please.

They're at home - I will hook you up later tonight.

Legendary, thank you.

Visits themselves won't do much, but if those new visitors are putting links to your website in other places as a result of liking what they saw, that would help.

Shit, I've not sent you anything yet, have I? I'm binding it to a vision now, as Derren Brown has taught me to do, and I'll remember tonight.

You're rubbish at this, Matthew.

No, wait... 'Matt'. You've always been a 'Matt'.

Spook!

Nice website Russ. Just a couple of little things which would make it better for me.

Lose the capital B in XBox. Dont know why, just stuck out and annoyed me

I think having the top 10/20 chart (theres plenty of space either side of the main body) for each category would be ace. I dont always know what I want to buy or what is good at the moment, so having this would be useful for people just browsing and not looking specifically.

But yeah, great site.

Maybe allow people to search by site as well (for at least a few) so I can, for example, click xbox games on Amazon, and then sort by price. I know I can do it on amazon, but...

edit: I done broked it.

I have been working for a long time on this (since Bits n Bobs 30), but you can now add items to a PriceWatch list on http://www.finditcheapest.com

Click the Register/Log In link just below the search area to set up your list. You can then add items to your list from all four categories (DVDs, games, CDs and books).

See what you think.

I have literally no idea why this would happen. It worked when Mimi tried it a while ago.
Also I have a custom 404 page you should see instead

Ah - I suspect it was because I had an apostrophe in my password. Or maybe a space. Or a full stop.

Get your sanitize on!

This is on my to do list. I'm going to get a jquery validator to plugin to all the forms to make it more slick, but it's a job for the weekend I think.

Good to know it's not the whole thing that's broken though, yay

jQuery can't sanitize your input data, it can only validate it from the client - it's trivial to get around.