New website features

[pennymachines]

Following the introduction of the new user-submitted events Calendar, the other promised improvements to pennymachines.co.uk are at last nearing completion:

The Archive: Will contain Links, Locations, Services, Patents, Resources, Restoration & Gallery. The last three are simply links to those areas of the Forum. Links, Locations & Services will be submitted by members (or non-members via moderator approval). They'll be listed alphabetically and by order of submission. If, as so often occurs, they become unavailable, members can mark them as such, keeping the information relevant. Patents can be submitted likewise and will be ordered both by patent date and date of submission.

The Museum: To comprise the most comprehensive pictorial record of the diverse output of the British pre-decimal amusement machine industry. Members can submit examples (in a process similar to posting in the forum) which will be organized by machine category type and listed alphabetically. Machines can also be viewed by order of submission. Non-members can submit content via moderator approval. Manufacturers will be listed with cross linking to examples of games they made. There's an option to credit entries to your username or submit anonymously (providing the anonymity some collectors may prefer).

The Arena: Will not look much different but will include a link for easy online submission of content.

The Market: Will combine classified advertising and auctions on one page and will no longer require separate registration - all forum members will have automatic access. The advertising will also be available to non-members and it will be directly linked to the Forum (via a 'Market' category). This uses entirely new software and is still at an early stage of development.

[bryans fan]

Who's been a busy bee then?

[badpenny]

How splendid

[pennymachines]

The new Archive is now up and running.
Please use it to keep us all up to date on vintage slot machine websites, arcades and useful services. I've copied over the old list of patents, but there are many more to be found.

[pennymachines]

All being well the new Museum should be online tomorrow with a few machines in each category just to show how it works. I'll be copying over content from the accumulated information in the Forum, the advantage being that it will then be in a structured, easily accessible form.

I've added a commenting system (open to logged in users), so entries can be corrected or additional information offered. I'll be active in moderating, editing, recategorizing etc. to keep it concise and accurate. There can several examples of the same machine, but in the interests of providing a good reference source, if I remove images it will be to favour better examples (i.e. reasonable quality images of machines in original or well-restored condition).

Commenting is also now available in the Archive, so if you've used a Service or visited a Location you can let us know what you thought of it.

[john t peterson]

Brillant, Mr. PM. I think your talents might be better served here in the US of A. As a matter of fact, we're looking for a FBI Director. Interested? It comes with plenty of publicity and a gun.

J Peterson
Uncle Sam wants You!

PS I think they'll let you bring BadPenny with you as your bodyguard.

[arrgee]

The new Archive is now up and running.

Clicked on this link last week and it took me to a completely different web page layout, although it was still this website the layout was shown in a number of light blue shades and the Category icons, which are currently to the right side of the page, were shown on the extreme left. The phpbb reference was shown bold at the top left of the page - I thought the website had been redesigned.
This happened a couple of times but not occured since.

[badpenny]

I think they'll let you bring BadPenny with you as your bodyguard.

I bet they wouldn't John, when Obama started criticising and sacking his senior military while they were busy in theatre of war, the stars aligned with my own personal yet special view on the world.

I wrote him a series of emails ensuring he was in no doubt as to my disappointment and displeasure with him. When he didn't respond I started demanding his explanations to be in my inbox by the following working day and started copying in all sorts of important people around the world. I didn't realise that Henry Kissinger was approaching 90 and I really shouldn't have bothered him.

Anyhoo, I never did hear back, yet suspect they may be a very thin file somewhere in the cabinet marked "Nutters never to be given a visitors' permit".

[pennymachines]

Clicked on this link last week and it took me to a completely different web page layout...

You must've been online when I was doing a spot of trouble-shooting by switching the Forum to the default style.

OK... Museum now up and running.

Please take a peek and please use it!

Couple of glitches:
1. If you try to save a draft (instead of submitting directly) it won't save the description.
2. If you try to post more than one video, it won't display any of them.
I'll try to get those fixed this week. You'll probably find others...

Something else I should probably say... make sure any pictures you submit aren't copyrighted.

[treefrog]

Well time for me to be controversial.

First point is, I see the Museum enhancements look great and fill a gap we have discussed many time mr pm. with a bit of tweaking looks like a great way in creating a slot machine database, by type, manufacturer and model with a little bit of history as a great starting point. But I think Museum is the wrong name as it is a data table or register of slot machine history. The ability to register and categorise your own machines is great, but I would be tempted to make some of these field indexed based on categories that can be searched and structured.

Next point, I have a real issue is any bandit type machine being classified as a "gambler" so are many other non bandit machines like allwins etc...I believe there should be one arm bandits category for one armed machines and fruit machines for button based machines.

This leads me onto my next point.....there are now two sites categorising machines and companies. The new site is not as structured and bandit focused based on the inputs so far (also the two running it are more interested in this type of machine) and this site is non bandit focused (for the same logic) ..do I see a natural split here based on people's interests.... as such perhaps the new site needs a bandit forum as many of the old members on here always use to moan about bandit posts. Have they all died as they rarely post on here anymore anyway.

So what's the plan guys as I see no strategy here

Told you I would rattle a few cages for those that care or are interested...