My Arcader - Arcade Information, Themes and Scripts

Hey Arcaders,

So many people have been asking me what is so good about Arcade Trade Script (ATS for short) so i thought i would check out what all the fuss was about and give a detailed review of my experience from ATS and what it can achieve with a little work done to it.

With our recent copy of ATS we put it to the test to see how great the functionality was and I can tell you now that it’s by far the easiest arcade script to set up that I’ve ever seen. It has tons of important features missed out by the other arcade scripts like SEO Tags, Additional Descriptions and Traffic Trading with partners, Statistics, Supports different file types, Up to 3 game images and much much more!

I set up some trading with other arcades and it provided quite useful to gain a  higher traffic flow through my arcade and with the admin statistics it was great to see which partners where doing better and which are doing terrible so i could remove them. All the SEO options and tools inside the script made it quite easy to optimize my site and rank highly on some keywords early into the life of the arcade. With a little imagination you can create great arcade ideas like Flash Game Search and create a whole new arcade site based on one idea.

We recently contacted the owner of ATS to get a review about what he thought about the script and what is going to happen in the future with it:

ATS out did my expectations in it’s first year and I have very happy with the continually growing number of choosing to use or convert to ATS. More and more people are coming out with ATS related mods and templates and I think it is only a matter of time before we become one of the big 3 arcade scripts. Now into it’s second year and with summer now here we plan to release some new ATS products, templates, and possibly some mods over the next few months to help sites get ready for the new school year rush this Fall. Some new version enhances are planned as well.

RSS feeds are coming in the next update as well as some more cheat protection to help in case of incorrect plug URLs. We are trying our best to help protect our customers sites from webmasters that try to take advantage of others. Version 1.2 is expected to be released in the early to mid summer.

Brad
ArcadeTradeScript.com
Intergo, LLC

What will the future hold for ATS?
In Development is version 2.0 which will be focusing on users and the community. Things that will be added involve are Profiles, Friends, PMs, Comments and more. It is a fantastic improvement for a great script and I’m sure a lot of the webmasters cant wait the get there hands on it.

Thanks,
Foxy

Hey Arcaders,
This is a review of  Free Arcade Script by Kurt the lead coder of Free Arcade Script. Remember to check my comments at the bottom of the screen. Just under the second pair of “— —”.

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Free Arcade Script, or FAS for short, has come a long what in its relatively short lifespan. Having been one of the people who has helped work on some of the script i can give you all a good review on what it is capable of.

FAS began life as a project by someone called Danny who was the original coder. He sold the script to Robbie who brought on board me as the lead coder. A few other people like Adam have helped out and who have contributed to how FAS is now. Moving along, I had a great concept of where the script needed to go to be among secure, user friendly, enjoyable, admin friendly, easy to maintain,  easy to modify and create templates, easy to make money with and last but not least SEO.

Following on with what i had planned, A few features were added in a short amount of time but was cut short when it was decided that the script needed to be changed to enable all the features in the plan.  Once we changed the script we started adding more features once again and we developed some scripts to add that were just found in premium scripts.

Some of the feature that FAS has:

• SQL Caching. This is a feature that not even all premium scripts have. It helps cut down on the number of system resources that is needed to run the script. This allows the arcade to be ran from a shared hosting account for a longer period of time before having to move to a more expensive hosting.
• Integrated Blog. Some more experienced arcade owners know how much traffic an arcade blog can bring in from simple thing like SEO. This feature can be turned off in the administration panel.There is also a feature which enables you to add members to members without needing to make them an admin. Letting others control your site for you.
• Game adding privileges can be given to members without needing to make them admin. Again this lets others control your website you out you needed.
• Extensive profiles for users. This script is almost a social networking script the way it is set out. Users can send private messages back and fourth. More is being added as we update the script.
• Built in newsletter. No script that we know of comes with a newsletter script built into it.
• Custom pages. The admin can set in custom pages from the admin panel which can user Javascript and HTML inside them.
• Each page can have it’s own meta tags and meta description defined for SEO purposes, including for each different game.
• Advertising can be set up different for each specific game. Great for game sponsorship revenue.
• Game auto sizing for games uploaded through the admin panel.
• Support for the script is incredible! You would never guess that it is a free script by the way problems have been handled in the past. Most issues have been addressed in hours if an admin is in the board, not days. There have been a few that have taken longer, but they got worked on till they were dealt with in one fashion or other.

There are of course other features that are more common among arcade scripts: link trading system, ad management, RSS feeds for games, search, member management, game management, template management, etc.

Some of the feature that FAS is missing:

• Tokens were left out, at least for now, on purpose. It was felt that telling a visitor they can only play 50 games before they have to register would only irritate them, and chances are they would leave, perhaps never to return.
• Some arcade owners like to have an ad page appear before the game page. This was also left out on purpose for the time being. Same reason applied, it might irritate some visitors. This is something that the owner is considering putting in though in such a way that it needs to be purposely activated in order to work.
• Banning users has not been a problem that has come to light in the support forums, so it was held off for a bit while other features were given priority. This is already been coded into what is shaping up to be in the new version v2.1.

What features are coming in the future?

Well, I can tell you that banning a user is already coded in to v2.1. The basic structure for a forum, much requested by members in the support forum, has already been laid out. The ability to give members a choice in templates is in the works. Video, music, funny pics, and jokes, are planned for. I have heard rumor that a high score mod is almost done, just waiting on the contractor to finish and send it. More profile additions such as adding friends is already being coded in. Different languages, rotating ads, game plugs, shop, XML site map, and more, are all things in the works.

Yes, it may still have a few things some people would like to see changed but no script is perfect, and for a free script, it really is hard to beat.

Thanks,
Kurt
http://www.freearcadescript.com

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Well guys what do you think of his review? It explains a lot of the life story of the scripts and has great details of what is in the script and what is coming in the future. For a free script i must say that i have to rate this 10 / 10 it has gone further than what most free scripts do and and still going. The only thing that i can see what is missing is a integration to a game distributor such as Mochimedia, Flash Games Distribution or Game Feed.

With that said guys feel free to send in reviews for your arcade or an arcade you like. I will be reviewing this script in the future and you can compare the difference from a developer to a user.

Thanks,
FoxyGamers