The Portal: It’s Like The Link To A Magical World, Innit?

As my site of the moment, sort of, expect The Football Manager Portal to get quite a bit of coverage on this dear site. I think its focking awesome, to put it simply. I have only recently discovered the true extent of the Portal, from the mass of scene links and a database of saved games which allow to see what it’s like to manage in the distant future, to the backlog of old sites created by Rob (most notably The Gazette; great things like Star Wars Manager are to be found there and are defiantly worth checking out) to endless teasers of FM 2007. Rob, I must say, has done a good job here, and the highlight of the whole place seems to be the now regular and buzzing blog, which seems to have changed from Rob compiling a list of new interesting articles, practically talking to himself, to him offering critical (sometimes very critical) opinions on sites and there work and getting a good response from readers.

No doubt some of the popularity from the site has come from the surprising continued support from the scene for this site. Both Manager Crisis, FGN and Throw-In view very favourable on this site, with MC even putting up a prominent link for all to see in there scene area, something I think all should follow suit with. The FM Portal has eclipsed all other sites to become the only site in my links because it has access other sites in one, there is no need for me to put links, because the Portal has them, and better!

But I’m not gonna bend over backwards here for Rob; there are some problems with his seemingly perfect construction. I have a big problem with the way the site is laid out, particularly the skins of the site pages. It all gets a bit confusing. You start off in a clean, crisp and simple Site Map, the starting block for the endless pages of info Rob has created, but upon clicking the links the site changes colour, style and layout. I would stick with one design the whole way through if I was Rob, or at least only two, as swiftly changing from black to some hideous green and then calm blue just pisses me off ever so slightly and I think a more unified look would only improve the appeal of the site.

Another quite major issue I have with the site is that every time I click on a link it opens in a miniscule window for me, that can’t get any bigger, which is really annoying and I hope it doesn’t happen to others, as otherwise the wide selection of links are pretty pointless. It doesn’t bother me so much with sites like BALLS, Blog FM etc. as they are quite easy to get links for, but sites like ‘Alonso From The Red Half’ which I have never heard of before and would like to see, and are bloody impossible to access by Google (call yourself a search engine!) makes my inability to get the links to work rather disappointing.

But Rob, it’s all cool. I mean, it’s like the link to a magical world, innit?