Ben's Bargains Serving Fresh Deals 24/7

Bend over Ben!

Cool changes!

I like teh stuff.

hopefully it works for teh real site eventually.

Hi. the manager at a bestbuy called me a jerk because after I dribbled a little bit of drool on his shoe.

Version 3 works much better on my Dell Axim with WM2003SE than 2.5 did. Thanks Ben!

Ditto to # 30 "Please consider making the deals column width variable by the browser instead of fixed width. I have yards of white space on the right of the page and the text is all scrunched up on the left."

My old eyes can hardly raead this.

Keep up the good work, Ben.

I agree with #30 as well. 60% of my little laptop's screen is blank.

Thanks for activating my account and sending me an update email Ben!

So Ben, is there any ETA on when you might actually get to activate V3.0 again and fully ... errr, or will that be V3.1?!?!

After having visited this site religiously for a little more than 3 years I think there are a few things I would suggest.

Pros
<ul>Changing to a CSS and better HTML design was a big plus for me. My first page load was much faster and the subsequent loads were even faster. I was also glad to see the total file size that I was downloading going down while the number of news items I was seeing with accompanying images going up. Nice!

The small changes in the graphics and gradients have helped me sift through the entries. Subtle but good. and I like the look better as well.

I like what your trying to do with the comments bar next to the comments link. It looks to me like it will become another subtle way of making my use of the site that much more efficient. I know that I already consider anything with 20+ comments a must click to see what all the buzz is about. This will help me spot those gems.

The search is seamingly a lot faster and responsive. I hope it is because you have made improvements to it and not simply because it is searching a limited number of records. This would be the GREATEST THING EVER FOR THIS SITE if you did make improvements to the search! Please let it be so.

I also like that you made the font size and the overall spacing smaller. As well as kept the fixed width very small. This helps make the speed scan that I do for items I'm looking for that much faster and efficient. This is one of the main reasons that I keep on coming back to Ben's is because of the layout. I can quickly scan the images and know when I need to stop scrolling to read the details. I hope that you keep this. I do realize that both the text size and the small fixed width of the page might be an issue for some, but I see that you have an alternate stylesheet available that uses bigger text/font sizes. Maybe a c... [Truncated]

I see that registered users have a drop down for choosing their preferred style where the login area was before they logged in. I bet that a lot of people will be happier if you start offering a fluid layout along with the larger text style that you're currently offering as an alternative (a combo of the two might be in order as well). This makes sense that you have to be a registered user to set up preferences for the site. Thanks Ben. Glad I found it.

Nice... I've been waiting for this for a long time. Looks like you finally ditched NewsPro. What system are you using now or did you or someone else custom write it?

custom in house, integrated with phpbb

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woo! It's back, and lets hope it lasts this time

is there still going to be a "For Her" section that will organize deals for women?

That'll probably be split into separate Flowers and Jewelry categories, although we may make an exception for the seasonal promos.

Ben, as part of the effort, you should give some of the regular users admin power so that they can ban the users who just post stupid comments on the board.

We do have a provision for "Moderator" status now. Look for some serious flogging to commence shortly.