How to prepare for Euro 2012

Euro 2012 is on the horizon and it now seems that England have sorted their manager situation out and are ready to take on the best teams in Europe in an attempt to win their first major footballing trophy since 1966 and only their second of all time. But no matter which country you are supporting, the UEFA Euro 2012 in Ukraine and Poland is set to be a fantastic tournament.

Heading out to the pubs for the games is great way to experience the excitement of the tournament, but another fantastic way to watch the games is in the comfort of your own home with a group of mates.

So how can you make sure you maximise the enjoyment of watching the games at home and how can you make your living room as close to the pub atmosphere as possible? Well here are a few tips.

Get the TV right
This is the first step. If you are going to be able to persuade your mates to head over and watch the games at yours then you are going to need to be able to offer them a decent view. Owning a nice big TV is vital and you don’t need to panic as you still have time to head out and buy one before the first game kicks off.

Seating
If you are looking to recreate the pub at home then bar stools would be a great addition and would add to the authenticity, however, they are not the most comfortable. If you are looking to attract a group over to watch the games then you will want nice comfy sofas and maybe even some bean bags for those who have to sit on the floor. Your main aim should be to make the viewing experience as comfortable as possible.

Drinks
Now, I do not want to be seen to be encouraging the mass consumption of alcohol, but if you want your viewing experience to be as close to watching the games at the pub as possible, then buying a few beers is a very good idea. There is no need to go mad and drink yourself into oblivion, but a few cans during the game won’t hurt you and your friends. Here is a good idea to keep things interesting, why not buy your drinks based on the nationality of the team England are facing? When England play France you could buy a crate of Kronenbourg 1664 or some lovely red wine and if we qualify and end up facing Holland then you could all drink Heineken.

Pub snacks
A crucial part of any visit to the pub to watch any sporting event is the much heralded pub snack. You should buy a wide variety of snacks including pork scratchings, peanuts and a range of crisps in order to please everyone’s specific tastes. When it comes to pub snacks, the more you buy the better.

Get behind the team
No matter where you are from, show some support for your country. Get some flags stuck up in your living room and put on that sacred replica shirt that you can only just squeeze into. If you get behind the team and get the atmosphere in your living room electric, as it will be in the pubs then your viewing experience will be as good as anyone’s. Well, as long as your team wins that is…

Picture: Vectorportal.com

Supporting England in the Rugby World Cup 2011

The Rugby World Cup is getting interesting, with UK teams doing well in the pool games.

England had a marked improvement in their second game against Georgia, although fans will still be expecting them to lift their standard of play to be competitive in the quarter finals. There has been some upset over Mike Tindall’s behaviour on a night out, but this can hopefully be put behind the squad as they move forward in the tournament.

Ireland did their country proud when defeating the mighty Aussies with a score of 15-6 and look set to finish at the top of Pool C.

The Welsh came close to beating the Springboks and then defeated the Samoans. Based on their performance thus far, they should have no problem in their matches against Fiji and Namibia. Pending success in these games Wales should finish second in Pool D.

The Scottish players find themselves battling in Pool B, where they have yet to face Argentina and England. If the Scots can pull off a victory over Argentina on the Sunday 25 September, they stand to make it to the quarter finals.

Upcoming games worth watching:

24/09 England v Romania 07:00

25/09 Ireland v Russia 06:00

25/09 Argentina v Scotland 08:30

26/09 Wales v Namibia 07:30

01/10 England v Scotland 09:30

02/10 Wales v Fiji 06:00

02/10 Ireland v Italy 08:30

Win with Wightbay.com

It is a long way yet to the final, but to help you enjoy the day in style, Wightbay is giving away a huge 42" LG HD LCD TV, with built-in Freeview.

But that’s not all! You can also win £100 worth of Sainsbury's vouchers to buy the food, drink and whatever else you need to enjoy the big game.

The Return of Internal Messaging

Great news today at Wightbay HQ

Due to popular demand, Wightbay is proud to announce that the Internal Messaging system is now back... and it's better than ever!

You can once again contact other registered Wightbayers through our internal mail system.

When logged in, the little envelope in the top right corner will glow and alert you when another user has contacted you.

In addition to this you can find "My messages" under the "Members" tab.

You will also be notified via email when someone has sent you a message on Wightbay so you don't miss out on a response.

The other top feature of the new messages is that your conversation history with other members will be saved so you can go back and read the whole thread.

We hope you are as pleased with this fantastic new system as we are! We'd love to hear your views on it so please comment here or at Facebook.com/Wightbay

Thanks to all survey respondents

Hello everyone,

Our survey is now closed and we'd like to thank all who took part in it very much. The feedback has been great for us and shows us the way forward in creating the best site we can for all Wightbayers!

We will be sending out free Wightbay t-shirts in the next few days to all our respondents (subject to availability).

Thanks again!

:)

What are your thoughts on these Wightbay homepage designs?

Hi guys,

We've tweaked the design of the Wightbay layout and come up with 4 new versions.

We'd love to know your thoughts on these. Comment on this post and let us know!

Wightbay Homepage Design

Hi All,

Ok, after what has been a VERY busy week working on teething issues, talking to users and establishing feedback for changes, I think we're getting there.

On Monday I expect the re-list / renewing old ads to be resolved and any expired ads you had on the old Wightbay will be available for you to rebook/re-use should you wish. Will keep you posted on this!

Within two weeks we should have the brand new Wightbay Messages service up and running - Put into immediate development after user requests told us you missed this A LOT! We are listening! :)

So this leave the homepage...

In our attempts to try and get people into content quickly and let them find what they want, we're getting feedback to say we have over-done it, that the homepage is now too cluttered and is somewhat scary to look at! So, again we've listened and today we've mocked up a few initial designs for improvements. And we want your opinion...

We've posted four mock-ups on our Facebook page for you to view. Please take a look and give us your thoughts. Any of them an improvement? What else would you do? Etc.

This is your chance to help us tweak the new Wightbay and deliver a site you are all proud of and love to use.

look forward to reading the comments :)

Rob

Tell us what you think and get a free Wightbay t-shirt

We're giving away free Wightbay t-shirts as pictured to anyone who responds to our survey about the new Wightbay (subject to limited availability).

We are welcoming all your feedback and are taking your comments very seriously indeed. Now you can let us know what you think by taking a quick survey.

Take me to the survey now!

FAQs to help you around the new Wightbay

Afternoon all,

There are now some top tips available to make finding your way around the new Wightbay site much easier. These can be found in our Frequently Asked Questions section or in our articles section.

Thanks for your patience while we transition to the new and improved Wightbay.

Not long now...

The new site is very nearly ready for your delight and we're getting super excited here at Wightbay.

All that's left are the finishing touches, a bit of polishing here and there, and we're good to go!

We hope you are all looking forward to a shiny new Wightbay too.

New site imminent...!

Ok, so it's been a long time coming but a new era for Wightbay.com will soon be upon us (cue dramatic music!).

The blog, which has been severely neglected in recent months will be back in full use and will undergo a make-over of it's own in coming months.

So to kick-start the return of the blog, I would like to give you first visual of the new look Wightbay site in preparation for it going live next week. (Fingers crossed!)

Here it is...

Here is the first draft for the new Place an Ad process... I have condensed the current 3 intial steps onto one page... What do you think?

I am currently looking to improve the 'Place an Ad' process to make it straight forward and less complicated. Below are a few suggestions of what I may remove etc. Your input, advice and thoughts would be extremely helpful...

Twitter Updates

follow me on Twitter

The traffic on Wightbay has grown excessively over the last year. Above shows a direct comparison to the Isle of Wight County Press, iwight.com, iwbeacon.com, ventnorblog.com.

I have finally got myself on Twitter... http://twitter.com/JodieOliver
I down loaded TweetDeck and now I am hooked.

Great News!! All testing is complete we are moving Wightbay to a bigger and better server. This will improve the speed of the site and stop the down time. This is due to be switched first thing Friday morning.

We had to do this due to the increased traffic levels we are now getting. Wightbay is more popular than ever with over 70,000 visits each week.

It’s been a really hectic start to the new year as usual, not even had a minute to update the blog!

Great news for the start of 2009... Wightbay is getting more and more popular and last week saw us break new records for the number of visitors (nearly 62,000 visitors in just one week!).
Most the island must be surfing the site every week.

I have made some changes today to help us make some money to keep this great community site running smoothly. We’ve introduced a very small fee of just £3 for all motors listings. The extra revenue we hope to generate will help us cover the increasing costs that come with being such a popular free site (web servers, technical development, moderation etc etc!). Everything else is still free, so if you need a bit of extra cash to start the new year, start placing your ads now!

Give your Advert Extra Exposure!

There is going to be a chance for you (the users) to get that bit more extra exposure for your adverts. Due to the site growing in popularity and the increase of ads being placed on the site, we want to offer the ability for users to gain that bit more extra exposure. You will have four options...

Featured Ads - For £2.80 per week, your advert will get maximum exposure by remaining at the top of listings in the relevant category

Highlighted Ads - Will Cost £1.50 per week, this will give you an orange highlighted ad which will help your advert stand out from the rest.

Bold Ads - For a small fee of 50p, you are able to make your ad text bold. Again this should help your advert stand out (subtle approach).

FREE LISTINGS - free listings still remain! You will still be able to place an advert on the site for free.

We will also be introducing a new browse feature on the latest ads page. This is designed to help the users delve deeper into the site and find exactly what they are looking for.

On the latest ads page and on the search results, every ad listings will have a link to the category in which the advert is placed. This will allow the user to see similar ads and will hopefully (fingers crossed) stop people relisting there ads everyday to get extra exposure. This Browse feature combined with the Enhanced Ads (described above) will help get advertisers the extra exposure that they are seeking. An example of the browse feature is shown below;

I thought this was worth sharing... Make sure you click on the faces!
Click here

After deliberating over this for a while and having feed back from a couple of users I have decided to change the name of the Property Category on Wightbay from 'Houses/Flats/Rooms' to 'Property-Houses/Flats/Rooms'.
http://www.wightbay.com/XCClassifieds/CPViewInCat.asp?ID=464