Chris Brandrick

Apologies for the lack of updates in the past week, it’s been a busy one!

Goal number eight in my goals for 2008 is to launch gaming site Gamebrit, I briefly mentioned it in the linked blog entry, but today I am going to go into more details as to what to expect.

Development on the site began just before Christmas, with the basic design being completed (see blog image for a sneak peak). The site is currently functioning and running on a good content management system, currently I am just adding content, and of course games into the database, which is taking far more time than I would like. I could outsource this menial work, but trying to keep costs down is key.

The site, as you may have guessed is going to focus on gaming, specifically within the UK. I hope to eventually be able to interview, and run features on UK game development houses and studios. I have successfully gained a foot in the UK gaming industry before (although a small one) so I see no reason why I cannot do it again with a more focused site.

In addition to the aforementioned CMS, which I will touch upon in more detail in a later post, I will also be implementing a forum to hopefully gain some community around the site; a collection of UK gamers, interested in the development of the UK in the gaming industry, oh and bloody good writing.

I initially wanted the site to be ready this month, but due to lengthy input processes I can see this being knocked back. Either way I will keep you updated on it’s progress, this post was really just to let you know, and because I am excited about the opportunities the site will bring. Any questions or comments, just leave your thoughts in the comment section.

Over a year ago in a rather impulse moment I bought a turn key site from the NamePros forum for only $10 (£5), this was merely an experiment to see if on a personal level I could make any money from such a site, especially considering the bad reputation they have with other web designers.

The site I bought focused on Weight Loss and after optimizing the placement of AdSense, performing some SEO, and submitting it to various directories and search engines the hits started rolling in. Admittedly the site was not enjoying a huge amount of visitors but it was more than I expected. The site continued to make a small amount via AdSense, and more than making a profit for what the site was costing me to run.

In the summer, the domain I had (weighty.info) expired and unfortunately I did not renew, thus rendering my SEO and other work useless. Despite this I decided I should still use the content I bought, and looked into new domains.

Recently I registered ‘WeightAdvice.net’, which not only do I think is better suited to the content, but on a whole is a better more brandable domain. So with this domain at hand, I decided to try the Drupal CMS, and upon installing it I am very impressed. (Drupal review coming soon).

My new site can now be found at www.weightadvice.net and I shall be posting content daily. Check it out, and if you have any comments or thoughts be sure to drop me an email or just leave a comment.