Your thoughts on www.harnesslink.com

[John Curtin]

Now that I have started on this forum and now that I have a little time I thought I would ask you all how do you think that we could improve www.harnesslink.com in any possible way.

All your ideas would be welcome and looked at because it is you the readers that we want to please.

It has become a decent site with well over 80,000 unique visitors a month and growing daily.

In fact it has never stopped growing and as I said recently to the all the people that work for harnesslink "if it did not continue to grow I would close it down".

We want the entire site to be based on a passion for Harness Racing.

A place where all Harness Racing can be found.

[Neil]

I think it is going well John - could have some more contributors to stories I guess but this forum is also growing with more posts all the time.

Hard to spread the word I guess but well done and keep it up.

Neil

[Don Corleone]

John, there is nothing I like better than putting my feet up grabbing the laptop and heading to Harnesslink. (finding time is the hardest part!) You are all doing a great job. Believe me there is not much that happens in the Harness world that you and your team have not covered. I love the fact that the site is devoted to harness racing. I am "spreading the word" about the forum and I am sure it will continue to grow and grow. Keep it up team.

[admin]

I think it is going well John - could have some more contributors to stories I guess but this forum is also growing with more posts all the time.

Hard to spread the word I guess but well done and keep it up.

Neil

Hey Neil.

Adding more contributors is definitely what we would like to do long term, but of course you need to pay for quality and because we serve such a big market (worldwide) they will often only appeal to one country or even one state. But along that line if anyone here would like to contribute please PM me and we can possibly work something out.

Anyone who knows John knows that at the end of the day the site is all about promoting harness racing, so if there's anything we can do to help spread the game we'll try it.

And Don, thanks for your kind words and your support.

[nat]

Harnesslink is always running on my PC its the one place that all the information comes insted of looking through several site this one dose the lot. I dont know what more you could do maybe storys on the top horse and where they are at and what direction they are aimed at, more breeding and stallion articales and like Neil said more contributers atleast on in each state, island or country

The only thing that bothers me is the amount of crap & mud slinging to be polite that went on about Penna now Russo and the Ruggari issues sometimes they just need to be knocked on the head. But other than this Harnesslink is the best Harness Racing site on the web other than this forum.

[Thomas Johnson]

I agree with Nat, Harnesslink is a great site from a US point of view as it is the only site that covers all of harness racing. I used to go to the Standardbred Canada site but now I only need to go to harnesslink as they have everything on there. The USTA parhway site is okay for information but not for news. You also have to pay a lot to get there information. I agree Harnesslink is the best news site around. Keep up the good work.

[Thomas Johnson]

And looking at the site today I think that the European end on the site may need a boost as there is huge interest and a lot of people in harness racing there. This is not a critisism as I love the site but you are asking for ideas.

[peacheymagic]

Like others have said harnesslink is well set up in that I can see what is happening in nz, aus, us and canada without having to change sites. A possible improvement I could suggest would be to have articles from major studs every so often telling us about their current stallions which would save me having to look up studs webpages to find out what stallions are standing where and their prices.

[admin]

Like others have said harnesslink is well set up in that I can see what is happening in nz, aus, us and canada without having to change sites. A possible improvement I could suggest would be to have articles from major studs every so often telling us about their current stallions which would save me having to look up studs webpages to find out what stallions are standing where and their prices.

Good call, we can definitely look into that.

[justdoit]

More advertising Peacheymagic is that you John?

[peacheymagic]

Haha im not John just think it would be good to have stallion info on harnesslink as well, I know every stud is going to talk up their stallions but would be good to have the info here and then it is up to the readers to decide what to believe or not to believe.

[Phoenix]

Harnesslink is always running on my PC its the one place that all the information comes insted of looking through several site this one dose the lot. I dont know what more you could do maybe storys on the top horse and where they are at and what direction they are aimed at, more breeding and stallion articales and like Neil said more contributers atleast on in each state, island or country

The only thing that bothers me is the amount of crap & mud slinging to be polite that went on about Penna now Russo and the Ruggari issues sometimes they just need to be knocked on the head. But other than this Harnesslink is the best Harness Racing site on the web other than this forum.

Don't forget the treatment that the McCarthy's have come in for.

[justdoit]

Can whole web sites be translated to other languages? not everyone in the world reads ingles

[Phoenix]

You would only be able to convert an entire website to other languages if there are national flag icons that indicate this can be done. www.harnesslink.com (http://www.harnesslink.com) doesn't translate to other languages but what you can do is cut text and paste into online translators..

[justdoit]

I would like to see a french flag and a kiwi one. Please.

[trotpace]

Love the site, the only thing i would recommend is to try and streamline the site. It looks crowded.

[admin]

Can whole web sites be translated to other languages? not everyone in the world reads ingles

I've thought about doing this in the past, Google Translate can do it on the fly but it's automated and not that good. In the end I decided it wouldn't be worth crowding Harnesslink even more but maybe we could add the tool somewhere in the footer - I'll talk to the tech guys and see what we can do.

[admin]

We've just added the auto translate to Harnesslink as well as on this forum - it's in the footer of both websites. If anyone else here speaks multiple languages please let me know if it's too terrible to be of use because I've heard it's pretty bad.

For some reason in this forum you have to click to translate each new page, so I'll try to arrange to get that fixed as well.

Regarding the crowded complaint - not sure if there's too much we can do at this stage without a complete redesign (which is extremely complex for a site with close to 100,000 pages and has the functionality that we have. One thing I can suggest is to click the country links in the nav menu which will just give you news for each country. That way if you're not interested in news from say Canada you won't get it.

E.g. USA page is here: http://harnesslink.com/www/News.cgi?category=United-States-Harness-Racing

Any more suggestions please keep them coming!

[admin]

Haha im not John just think it would be good to have stallion info on harnesslink as well, I know every stud is going to talk up their stallions but would be good to have the info here and then it is up to the readers to decide what to believe or not to believe.

We do have tag pages where you can narrow down to stories we've done on each Stallion. It's not an ideal solution but otherwise we would have to maintain a complete database which would change all the time.

To view just click the "Categories" link in the top menu, then expand the horses tab, then expand the stallions tab. Then you can view a page like: http://harnesslink.com/www/News.cgi?category=Somebeachsomewhere

[aussiebreno]

I would like to see a french flag and a kiwi one. Please.

Just had bro to the end of each sentence :D

[justdoit]

Hi Aussiebreno,
It's still not working. I cannot understand their language:)
Harnesslink should have Betfair, Sports Bet, You Bet, etc advertising on their site. Why have they not?

[justdoit]

Harnesslink should have Betfair, Sports Bet, You Bet, etc advertising on their site. Why have they not?

[admin]

We have had Betfair and YouBet in the past and hopefully will again.

How's the translate function, any good?

[justdoit]

Hi admin,
The translate is good:) Thankyou

[justdoit]

Hi Admin,
Why not so much Standardbred Canada info these days?
Your site used to have the link to the enries and results, and have your logo
all over their site.

[Love Of Courage]

Hello John,

Love the site, log on every day to see whats happening in the harness world. I would like to see a separate area set aside for ideas to improve harness racing for all concerned and perhaps have answers from people in positions to implement these ideas.

I would love to see the thoroughbred owners targeted to purchase standardbreds. When you consider that $30,000 will get you an average bred thoroughbred yet could get you a standradbred blueblood. Look how Graeme Rogerson helped boost sale prices and brought some new blood into NZ harness racing.

Regards,

Sue