General Martial Edge News

On Thursday night Martial Edge were invited to the exclusive screening of Kung Fu Panda at the Imax Cinema, part of the National Media Museum in Bradford, West Yorkshire. The event kicked off in style at 6pm with a demonstration by students of local Taekwondo instructor Chris Beanland fifth degree. The display featured drills, patterns and semi contact sparring to showcase the kicking movements which went down a treat with the audience. At 6:45pm it was the press photo call with the giant monkey and Panda taken by representatives from the Yorkshire Post, Telegraph and Argus, Look North and of course Martial Edge!

The winners of the competition were Martin Derbyshire (Martial Edge username Ryusui Ryu) and James Beedham (Martial Edge username Beedham) and for the benefit of you guys here are the pictures from the event:

http://www.martialedge.net/reviews/events/martial-edge-meet-kung-fu-panda/

Next month sees the return of Christian Bale as Batman in The Dark Knight. So further information will be given in due course but we plan to run a similar kind of competition for the benefit of Martial Edge users with IMAX Cinema.

A martial Edge interviewee, Rosie Sexton was a guest on channel 4s chat show Richard & Judy which aired on Thursday evening. Rosie is about to take on the big timers in the USA Mixed Martial Arts circuit so we wish her all the best for that one. It is pleasing to see how her career has rocketed since we interviewed after her success in the Bodog Fight Leauge.

See here for interview:

http://www.martialedge.net/articles/interviews-question-and-answers/interview-with-bodog-fighter-rosie-sexton/

Martial Arts Forums

On Thursday evening at the Kung Fu Panda event I had the opportunity to chat with competition winner Martin (Forum username Ryusui Ryu) to glean feedback on the site. I am well aware that we have the Talk to the Team section in the forums and of course I receive regular personal messages and emails from you all with suggested improvements and of course alerts to bugs etc which is continually welcomed. However, it was fantastic to actually meet someone who used the site in person! Ryusui Ryu actually complemented us on how much of a training tool the site has become and was impressed by the level of debate in the forums - from beginners to senior instructors - rr made it clear that he felt everyone could have there say. It was music to my ears as that is what we are striving to achieve with the forums.

Anyway guys keep it up as clearly everything is moving in the right direction.

Martial Arts Shop

With a firm launch date of 1 August its all hands on deck at the Martial Edge HQ to get this store fully integrated into the site. See below for screen shots of how it is all coming together:

Advertising

This is my last plug on the commercial side (but hey, you want great content and great website functionality - the money has to come from somewhere to develop it all!) but we signed a deal with a new partner www.pad-up.com for them to display featured advertising on the site.

As always you can catch me or any other member of the Martial Edge team in the forums during the week.

General site news

There is some great new material on the site this week including Lesley Jacksons first part of The Rise and Rise of the Female Action Hero -

http://www.martialedge.net/articles/fun-and-entertainment/the-rise-and-rise-of-the-female-action-hero/

We also have a new contributor to Martial Edge, John Clements who is the Director of the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts. ARMA was established in 1992 to re-establish the concepts of Western Martial Arts such as fencing and sword play derived from rare medieval manuscripts. It is interesting stuff and so we will be showcasing articles and editorials from ARMA on the Martial Edge site throughout the year.

We also have some interesting material in the pipeline including interviews with traditional martial arts instructor Iain Abernethy and the stunt team behind the upcoming Batman sequel The Dark Knight so make sure you keep logging on!

Martial Arts Forums

As I have said before I think the Martial Arts Forums on the site is a great place to be. I am confident that anyone from beginners to martial arts teachers with 40 years of experience can post on a topic and have a response within the hour! Also thanks for keeping an eye out for SPAM. Although a member of the team is online at anyone point during the day obviously it is not humanly possible (boy, do we try though) to be online 24/7. Clearly silly messages about wondrous offers have no place on the forums. That said if it does appear to be a genuine attempt to have some feedback then by all means we encourage this - and often it can provide some amusement.

Also just one word on house keeping - this doesn’t apply to 99% of the people that use the forums but please bear in mind the rules of no personal attacks and no profanity respectively. Jason received a couple of emails last week flagging this and to be honest as much as we encourage no holds barred discussion there isn’t a place for either of It on the forums.

That said its all growing nicely with the site receiving on average a 1000 hits a day now and around 1-2 new members joining. Still some way off creating the world’s largest martial arts community but I feel confident in saying that the foundations have been set to really grow massively over the next 12 months.

Martial Arts Shop

The technical side of the site is now pretty much complete in this area now. At the moment the team are on with the task of uploading all of the product information and images etc. We have product testing scheduled for the end of the July with a firm launch date of 01 August. Throughout this time I will keep you posted on development.

Kung Fu Panda Event

Thursday night is the exclusive showing of Kung Fu Panda at the IMAX cinema and the lucky winners of the Martial Edge competition along with the team will be in attendance. At the weekend I will get the images and review of the event online.

Pete Mills

Senior Editor/Co-Founder

The Worlds Largest Online Martial Arts Community

Martial Edge team up with The National Media Museum

To help with the launch of the new animated flick KungFu Panda, Martial Edge were invited to run a competition for free tickets to the exclusive screening on the 26 June at the IMAX cinema located in the National Media Museum, Bradford. The evening kicks off in style at 6pm with a demonstration from local martial artists from the Bradford area followed by the full red carpet treatment with members of regional press providing the media coverage.

We received a good amount of entries and the question was:

Who provides the voiceover for the star of the show, Po?

A. JACK BLACK
B. JACKIE CHAN
C. ADAM SANDLER

The answer is of course A. Jack Black

In the interest of keeping it all fair I printed out the names of all the entries, folded them all up and had Jason pluck two lucky winners out of his stunt jacket. The winners who will be spending the evening with the Martial Edge team for the exclusive screening of KungFu Panda are:

For the IMAX family ticket , Martin Darby, forum username, Ryusui_Ryu.

For the IMAX Adult Pair of tickets, James Beedham, forum username, Beedham.

So congratulations to both winners! Im aware that this prize clearly was restricted to our UK fan base. In the interests of fairness we will be holding compeitions in the future that will give all of our global audience (with in reason of course) an opportunity to particpate.

Martial Edge store update

As always I cannot resist giving you a cheeky plug. The team finalised the individual product pages last week and they are looking fantastic. So here is a snapshot to keep everyone updated on how it is all progressing.

As always you can catch me and the rest of the Martial Edge Team in the forums.

Pete Mills

Senior Editor/Co-Founder

The Worlds Largest Online Martial Arts Community

Update on the Martial Arts Shop

This weeks blog is a massive plug on what we are doing with the online store. I wont even try and cover my tracks with flowery words. I will just be honest. However, it does serve a very good purpose in that we are involving you guys every step of the way with how we develop the site such as the look, feel and your attitudes towards customer service and secure online shopping.

A few weeks ago we started a thread in the martial arts forums with regards the store and what your thoughts were on the idea generally! Below I have listed the questions we asked and highlighted some of the feedback to show you how this played a crucial role in designing the basic layouts.

1. Do you shop online for martial arts products, if so, where do you shop, and why?

The overwhelming response here was a site that you felt comfortable and secure with. Essentially the IT team have constructed from scratch our own online store incorporating the latest anti spybot/spam security measures and of course threading the clean design throughout that makes for a straightforward online shopping experience.

2. Do you have any praise for existing online stores if you use them, or any negative points of why you dont currently shop online?

Here it came down to payment methods. We have looked at various suggestions and products that are currently on the market. In the end we went for a system called protx - allowing you to process secure credit and debit card payments online, over the telephone or via mail order. This had major advantages over systems such as PayPal or Google Checkout. To give you a little technical jargon to make you feel even safer about the online shopping experience In June 2006, Protx was one of the first payment service providers to achieve Level 1 compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). Also Protx continues to employ the most stringent levels of fraud screening and security standards, and updates its PCI compliance on an annual basis. In other words something you can feel safe and secure using.

3. What sort of products would you buy in an online martial arts store?

Quite simply we are offering a range of 600 high quality products, available on next day delivery:

Sparring equipment and Protective Gear, Fitness and Home, Workout Bags Kickshields, Pads and Training equipment, Boxing and Kickboxing equipment, Martial Arts Uniforms and Belts, MMA - Mixed Martial Arts, and Official UFC merchandise, Martial Arts DVDs and Books, Training Weapons, Martial Arts Kids, Martial Arts Clothing, Shoes and Bags

4. How long do you normally expect products to arrive and does this influence your buying decision?

The thoughts from you guys here was that as a general rule 3-5 days or 2 weeks for an international delivery. The system we have put in place is around 1-3 days depending on the size of the item. That puts the Martial Edge online store up there with the best in the industry.

5. If you could order the following, the first being most important and the last being least important, how would you rate the following when making a decision to purchase a martial arts product online: price, quality, delivery time, customer support, trustworthiness of the site (or any other factors?)

Quality and customer satisfaction came top here. Again to reiterate we have sourced 600 products of the highest quality -I will release pictures in next weeks blog. With regards customer support there will be telephone, email and live chat (UK BUSINESS HOURS ONLY FOR THE LIVE CHAT) where you can talk to a customer representative online as and when you have questions.

6. If the shop had a Google checkout or PayPal payment system, would this put you off (with these you need to register before buying). Would you do this, or do you normally only buy from stores where you can pay via credit or debit card directly?

Resounding answer was credit card. As I mentioned at point number 2 we have addressed this issue with Protx that offers complete fast and secure payment methods just as if you were in a shop making a sale at a cash register.

So there you go a quick low down of how we listened to what you wanted and then took that information and incorporated it into our design process.

Pete Mills

Senior Editor/Co-Founder

The Worlds Largest Online Martial Arts Community

 

Its been a busy week.

Again.

But before I get into the details the team would like to make the following announcement:

The Martial Edge website now receives around a 1000 unique visitors every day.

Sure its not there in the millions yet but we decided to share that with you because there is a growing community developing now from Lebanon to Los Angeles which excites the Martial Edge team a great deal. Of course if you consider the millions of people all across the world who practice some sort of martial art or have an appreciation at the very least this number is insignificant in the grand scheme of where we want Martial Edge to be. However, it is a landmark we set out to achieve and if we keep improving on what we are doing it will only increase the numbers who visit and use the site on a regular basis.

Achieving this is down to four key factors and please note not mutually exclusive.

1. You guys who get stuck into the debates in the martial arts forums and of course the lurkers who move silently through the site.

2. International Authors who contribute articles, interviews and reviews -which subsequently attracts more people to the site.

3. A great team behind Martial Edge who are working tirelessly behind the scenes.

4. An amazing website that allows for profile pages, regular content, forums, schools/club directories, video, audio and soon a range of 600 martial arts products.

But as I say every week keep spreading the word to fellow students and instructors as that is one of the key ways we will continue to grow the Martial Edge community.

New Articles Layout Page

On a more general note I wanted to keep you informed with what is going on with the new articles layout. Its got that hint of work in progress but I can assure that behind the scenes the team are working furiously to get this section up to speed and finished. As some of you may well have noticed the levels of interaction vary on article to article -something over the next four weeks we aim to totally bring up to speed and have every article at the right level. By this im talking about images, video, audio and of course elements such as the author profiles and related article boxes. So pardon the construction work because in a few weeks the site will be all set to take on the world of martial arts.

As usual you can catch me or any member of the Martial Edge Team in the Forums.

Pete Mills

Senior Editor/Co-Founder

The Worlds Largest Online Martial Arts Community