Moving Forward with MrFixitsTips

It's hard to believe that it’s been almost 2 months since Mr Fixit passed away. In that time, we’ve cried, we’ve laughed, we’ve remembered and through the many messages received following Paul’s passing we’ve paid heartfelt tribute to a dear friend.

We’ve also honoured Paul through donations to two worthy causes in his name, with over £3,000 having been raised on his behalf. We’ve kept his flame burning right here on the site too and it’s a credit to the community that Paul fostered here and to the members that contribute to it that we continue one of Paul’s great passions, to try beat the bookies.

But “how do you move forward with MrFixitsTips without a Mr Fixit?”

We don’t really have all the answers to that but we’re doing our best. With the support and approval of Paul’s family and the assistance of his colleagues at the Daily Record we’ve put a plan in place that will allow us take things forward, to build for the future and make this community the best it can be in Paul’s absence.

Nothing will happen overnight but we’ll be gradually making improvements that will stand us in good stead for the months and years to come.

And we want you, the MrFixitsTips community, to get involved along the way.

Here’s some of the things that we’re planning for in the next few weeks and months.

Re-brand

A project we've been working on for a quite while is to refresh the MrFixitsTips brand. Things had been put on hold when Paul was ill early last year but we've picked it up again and with the assistance of our friends at design agency, Fouro, we've come up with a new brand as well as brand new look.

We wanted something punchy, meaningful, that would work well across all platforms from website to social media and beyond while giving the brand a refresh.

For a long period of time now this site has been about so much more than Mr Fixit's tips. We've a hugely talented pool of tipsters and writers who contribute to the site and a brilliant community that post their tips on a daily basis but sadly we no longer have Mr Fixit himself.

With that in mind we've opted for a more concise brand name of ‘MFT‘ – shorthand for MrFixitsTips of course, but a name that also gives us greater flexibility from a marketing, creative, mobile and social perspective.

As such, we've devised a new logo that will replace the current instances of the MRFIXITSTIPS logo as well giving us a new marque to use on social media;

• The circular shape with the hexagonal panel represents a football – the very core of our site
• The speech bubble shape is for our community – the heartbeat of the site
• The two-tone colours, split 50/50, signify the perennial battle of sport; Frazier v Ali, Palmer v Nicklaus, Celtic v Rangers and of course, Man versus Bookie
• The red and white colours are in homage to Clydebank FC, Mr Fixit's first love
• We also love the current Premier League branding so expect to see the use of spiraling circles and it's colours which have inspired us

There won't be an overnight roll-out of the new brand – you may already noticed some subtle change to our on-site graphics – instead we'll be introducing elements over the next few weeks so keep your eyes peeled.

Community Moderators

Without realising it himself, Mr Fixit was great at managing the community here; responding to queries, providing advice, keeping people in check when required and all done with his own good humour and level-headedness.

 Since his passing we’ve tried to manage comments with a light touch and only really get involved when required.

With this in mind, we’re pleased to confirm that Hullshaker has volunteered to join our bootroom and will be our first Community Moderator, a role that will give him administration rights to keep an eye on things when we’re not able. Thanks Hull and welcome aboard.

Should things get busier it would be great to be able to turn to other members of the community to get involved in this side of things too so get in touch if you’re keen to help out.

Writers

We’re always on the look-out for talented tipsters and good quality writers. We’ve a brilliant community here, full of people who know their stuff, so if you’d like to turn your hand to writing regular posts for the site then please get in touch via email at hello@mrfixitstips.co.uk.

We're keen to add as much good quality content to the site as possible such as;

• Match Previews – we have a new partnership in place with TonyBet this month that will see us publish around 100 match previews but this is still a very small amount compared to the number we could be doing. If you'd like to write match preview about a certain league or even your own team then we'd love to be able to publish your write-ups.
• Accumulator Tips – The recent addition of Jamie Kennedy's Accumulator Tips has proven very popular and there's clearly an appetite for Acca Tips, whether they be outright To Win Accas, BTTS, Over 2.5, Corners, Cards or a combination of markets. Let us know if you're great at Accas and want to share your tips.
• Specific Leagues – Consider yourself an expert on Serie A, or are you an A-League afficianado? We want to add more specialist tips for the various leagues around the world so if you're hooked on a particular league and can provide regular betting angles then get in touch.
• Specific Markets – Some people prefer to bet on specialist markets such as cards, corners, goalscorers, shots on target or BetBuilders. Again, we'd love to have posts on the site that focus on particular markets.
• Other sports – Although football is our bread and butter we've always had a healthy coverage of other sports on the site. Our current regular offerings included Horse Racing, Golf and NFL, with the occasional tips on Greyhounds and Boxing. We're keen to add more depth to these sports as well as add more sports so if you're on expert anything from Ski-jumping to Speedway and would love to get involved then let us know.

New Site & New Features

Over 80% of our visitors to the site view on a mobile device so we're working on a new version of the site that will be even more mobile friendly. We're hoping to launch that later in the year.

Between now and then we'll be dropping new features in to the site, for example we've started adding some stats in to Match Previews and our main daily Horse Racing thread now features the next three races due to go off. There are other enhancements in the pipeline as we try to make the site as useful as possible.

Feedback & Ideas

Of course we're always open to your feedback and ideas to help us shape the future of MFT.

We've had several suggestions in recent weeks for example; “can we have a dark version of the site to make it easier on the eye at night” or “can we have a mute button to hide comments from certain users” – we liked that one.

We'll take all feedback on board and were very open to new ideas that you think would improve your experience on the site.

Please use the comments section below to let us hear your thoughts.

Remembering Paul

Last but not least we're pleased to announce a weekly charity bet on behalf of Paul's two charities; The Bubble Foundation and St Margaret of Scotland Hospice.

We've teamed with McBookie.com who will provide us with a £10 free bet each weekend and we'll be asking our followers on Twitter to vote for their weekend treble from a selection of matches.

All proceeds will be donated equally to the two charites by McBookie at the end of the season.

Thank You

Finally, thank you to everyone that shown their support since Paul passed away. We feel privileged to have the opportunity to carry on with site and we hope that these improvements will see it go from strength to strength.

PS – Fancy a Notebook?

We have a bunch of MRFIXITSTIPS branded notebooks that were ordered last year that we'd like to give away for free now that we're introducing a new brand.

So if you live in the UK and would live to receive one just email us your name, address and site username with the subject line: “Notebook” and we'll get one posted out to you.

The current restrictions mean we might not get it to you immediately but we'll do our best to post them as soon as we can.

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