DMusic.com | for indie musicians and fans | Free MP3 music downloads - Forums: Interact: please contribute your dmusic website redesign ideas here ;)

Electric guitars, Classical guitars, Guitar amps and more.

zZounds.com offers recording equipment for starting and experienced musicians. Find the best prices on electric guitars, acoustic guitars, classical guitars and more.

Forums > The General Forum: Interact

please contribute your dmusic website redesign ideas here ;)

acatalept	Date: November 4, 2003 @ 5:30 AM do you wish you could change something about the way dmusic looks? or do you love everything just the way it is? do you have a talent for graphic design or website coding (html/css)? or do you just have some vague notion of something you'd like to see done, and can explain it in 5000 words or less? please voice your opinion here... --- why i'm asking: a few days ago i stumbled across this thread - http://www.dmusic.com/forum/complaints/5926 - which, as it turns out, i completely misinterpreted and managed to make somewhat of a fool of myself as a result but, it got me thinking about the site's overall design and layout, and what could be done to update/streamline everything to sort of help drag dmusic (perhaps kicking and screaming) into the light of day, to give it some sort of "oomph", a real well-produced professionalism and unique visual identity. now i'm sure there are plenty of you who very much like things exactly as they are, but hear me out... if i do manage to work something out with fu-dog and the gang to make any sort of radical changes (and this is all pretty much just something i'm kicking around on my own for the time being), i would very much like to find some way to give you the option of continuing to see dmusic very much as you see it now, using stylesheets (which really wouldn't be too tough). i've been hashing out some ideas of my own over the past few days, and i'll continue to do so in the coming weeks as time allows - i'll post links here as i come up with anything. but i should stress, i'm hardly a pro when it comes to graphic design, so if any of you possess the inclination and skill (i'm starting to sound like that art-school-by-mail informercial here) to work on some design ideas, please don't hesitate to post them on some webspace somewhere out there that you have access to, and link to it here (if you have trouble finding a host, send me a note and i'll help you find some temporary storage). anything is helpful, from full html with images, to full page layouts in image form (from photoshop, quark, etc), to simple icons or sketches. all credit will be given where due... don't be shy . or if you simply have any specific ideas or requests, please post details here so i or anyone else who'd like to work on this can get a feel for what all of you would like to see. if i'm overstepping my bounds (which i very likely am ), please feel free to tell me so. but if i get enough feedback here, and manage to either finish some designs on my own, or if any of you submit designs here, i'll talk with the [admittedly already overworked] admins about how we might be able to implement any changes with as little backend work as possible - that is, please try and restrict any ideas you submit here to primarily visual changes (that can be implemented entirely in html/css with images), and not things that would require significant modifications/additions to the way dmusic actually works (that would require changes to the php/database code that actually makes this site tick). (btw, there's already a thread here - http://www.dmusic.com/forum/suggest/4925 - for site functionality suggestions... though i think it may have been closed to nonsubscribers...) ultimately what i'd like to end up with is some sort of system where each user could choose from several site layouts to suit their preferences, for example: the existing layout for those who prefer it, a minimal layout for dialup users, different colorscheme variations and large/small font schemes, as well as any designs that may come out of this thread. thanks for any input you feel like posting here... the more you share, the more we can all work towards something that'll make everybody happy. and as an extra incentive, take a look at this: http://veil.mine.nu - as you can see, i'm very good at creating designs that i like , but if you don't want dmusic ending up looking like some minimalist monochromatic abstract... thing, then let your voice be heard! [again, please note, this is all just an idea at the moment, and unless i or anyone else comes up with something concrete to show the men (and/or women?) behind the curtain, so to speak, this will remain a pipedream...] also if you have any questions or need help with anything, note me or post here...
Lcrowley	Date: November 4, 2003 @ 11:43 AM Oh man I love that site !!!! that is incredible man ... ok .. ya'll don't beat me up !! ha ha ha acat~ asked me to post this here .. and so I am reluctantly ... lol.. I was just playing around .. I wanted to try and keep the general feel of what you had already .. but it just became it's own thing .. ha ha ha .. anyway .. this is a logo I created for DMusic .. http://lcrowley.dmusic.net/pictures?detail=1&picid=14234
Jennae	Date: November 4, 2003 @ 7:17 PM thanks for posting this acat~ and the more feed back and support we can get here people the better. I think we all can agree front page could use some ideas so what are yours?? acatalept has offered the time and effort to assist in bringing these ideas to life so lets hear your opinions.
Lcrowley	Date: November 4, 2003 @ 8:18 PM Personally .... I love the colors of the site .. the blue is not only relaxing, but it is different.. only other color I would like is purple !! ha ha ha ha .. kidding .. it is just my fave color .. lol.. My idea on this is to make it more artistic ... it is very professional looking ... but this is a site about music, and art .. it should say so when you open it .. now this isn't a big thing .. just an opinion ... Have any of you looked at deviant arts site ?? http://www.deviantart.com .. the color scheme is very simple like dmusic, but it is full of content .. has gobs of links for a visitor to hit .. basically someone can hit the front page and stay there for a good hour just looking at stuff off the front page ... another good example of this is http://www.renderosity.com .. now mind you I know that we are musical artists .. so it is a different realm .. but it is still art and those two sites are very popular ... and not only that but they change the front page content regularly ... I think that music sites all pattern themselves off of mp3.com in that they stay in the same vein ... with the look and the feel of the sites ... maybe if someone took a whole different direction with it ... it would change the mold .. I LOVED the idea of the random links that someone suggested off the front page .. I think that the top 20 should be a long box on the side of the page like the radio links are ... I think that features should be prominent ... I think they should change regularly(which ya'll are already doing, thank you) I think recent uploads should also be prominent in the middle of the page as well .. that way new songs are getting some attention .. In the country genre .. the same song has been #1 since I came to this site .. now I am not complaining about it cause it is a good song .. but if I was a visitor that would turn me off to always see the same thing when I came to the site ... I HATE CHARTS .. ha ha ha ha ... I think they are nothing but ego strokes .. I think DM picks are Much more exciting .. I would much rather have my music on a number list that was chosen by my peers or fans .. then by plays or downloads ... I know I am a minority in that ... but just giving my two cents on it .. and I think those DMpicks should be on the front page as well .. like 5 for each genre .. you could set it up where it changes each time the page is opened .. let me explain .. ok I open dmusic and I see top 5 DM picks for ROck .. then I leave come back .. top 5 DMpicks Country .. so on and so forth ... don't know how hard that would be but is a cool idea !! ha ha ha My absolute favorite thing about DMusic is the feature spot ... it was VERY personal to me to see us on the front page and not just there .. but you guys took the time to write a personal note about us with that .. I have to say that was an awesome feeling.
Acumen	Date: November 5, 2003 @ 12:00 AM a few logo suggestions (don't take the last one too seriously) http://images2.dmusic.com/users/a/c/u/acumen/14392.gif http://images2.dmusic.com/users/a/c/u/acumen/14393.jpg http://images2.dmusic.com/users/a/c/u/acumen/14394.gif
Lcrowley	Date: November 5, 2003 @ 2:08 AM o0o0o0o I LOVE the first one !! that is sharp !! great work !
Jennae	Date: November 5, 2003 @ 2:17 AM I don't want to necessarily Detour Logo ideas.. But we JUST replaced the old one. MAYBE leflaw is considering a change I dont know but I think we are moer interested in the function, layout, design, and enhancing factor as to what we can do to IMPROVE the front page. How can we gerate traffic to the fromt page? What would make you stop and look at the front page more often? How can we entice others from an outsider or new users point of view?? I encourage you all to stop go see the front page whats nice about it what's missing what are your opinions?? not saying it IS changing but, we could use some excitement there and we have one brave soul that has OFFERED to assist in creating some ideas as to present to the admin staff to consider such if any changes. I personally think: an added song review would be nice like a featured artist sort of but a song from an artist with a write up song review done by one person regualrily or collectively dontaed by members daily would be awesome!!! I think the news is ok.. but drab and lifeless. I think 3 artisle of MAIN HOT topics or conerns, and spend moe efforts on the NEWS page design, and moving some of those words off the front page I like the featured artist I think it should change weekly I think and artist or member interview would be cool, people can submit info and we can change them as often as participating parties allow I think we should have a pick list.. I dont care WHO picks it. I think there should be recommended listens. We could even offer this as an ARTIST RECOMEDED LISTEN section.. again allowing members to send in their top ten dmsuic songs and showcasing that list. If we get enough people willing to send in a top 10 list of their top fav dm songs, then, it would be less bias to any ONE persons selections. I've always wanted to do an artist interview, that never panned out as well on mp3 format with live conversation but we could record it for streaming. Kinda like vic did his metal hour show. Anf VIC where are ya buddy those were GREAT step to it! These are all things that would pull my attention to the front page.. and these are only ideas and suggestions I have a ton more but this should get some ideas flowing. whatcha got?
Jennae	Date: November 5, 2003 @ 2:21 AM artist bio included with the interview like and not that the news is bad where it is, but it's a bit overwhelming and I think it detours people from visiting the news tab. Draw the attention in on the news with a few highlights, then make em check the news tab for furthering articles, drawing more attention to the site overall i dont know just
Lcrowley	Date: November 5, 2003 @ 12:21 PM lol.. Jennae did you even read my ideas ?? heh
Acumen	Date: November 5, 2003 @ 12:39 PM lol... http://news.dmusic.com/article/8812
Jennae	Date: November 5, 2003 @ 12:53 PM yes.. and why ain't I surprised.
Jennae	Date: November 5, 2003 @ 12:54 PM although that is funny
Lcrowley	Date: November 5, 2003 @ 1:18 PM heheheh ..
acatalept	Date: November 5, 2003 @ 4:20 PM - lcrowley: thanks for posting that logo, very nice work i wholly agree with the idea to "make it more artistic" (the frontpage, not the logo ), i'd really like for our collective creativity to come across in a very tangible sense - however, that's a very broad goal, but it's something i've got in mind (as i hope most of you would agree). i would also like to keep "dmusic blue" a sort of signature element of the site's design, much like deviantart's "da green"... but again, that'll probably just be one of several designs that emerge. also agree that most music sites tend to looker rather the same, though a lot of that is because they simply carry similar content - we need to spotlight what makes us different (esp artist interaction, community, and big-label independence). i think charts are very important, simply because, if implemented properly (which fu-dog assures us they are, and i tend to believe him), they are a very good indicator of mass appeal of a given artist's music (and i say this fully aware that i'll never be on any charts; my stuff's just a little too dark/weird ). sure, it feels good to be chosen as a pick by one's fellow artists and peers on this site, but imagine how good it must feel for those people at the top of the charts being chosen by fans and random strangers somewhere out there to be heard above all others... admittedly, interactive charts especially (like ours) tend to be somewhat self-skewing, simply because as people come to the site, see the charts, and click to listen to those people at the top of the charts, it tends to keep the top artists at the top and the little guys at the bottom... but that's still a minor factor compared to all the other sources the charts feed off of. but picks/features are very nice, esp if they come with a little review explaining why they're featured... maybe we can drum up some support from fellow artists to contribute reviews of their favorite (or most underrated, etc) artists/tracks to be featured on the front page... i also think that cross-genrefication (?) is very important for the frontpage, with links elsewhere to individual genres' respective picks/charts/etc. perhaps we can implement something where regular dmusic surfers/members can pick a favorite genre, which will be highlighted above all others, or featured exclusively on the frontpage... but that would prolly require some significant coding... - acumen: very nice logos, esp the third (er, i mean, first) one and way to make frontpage yerself - jennae: agreed, this very much isn't about logos (specifically), it's the whole enchilada... but i don't want to diminish chillinbuzz's work on the current logo any more than i want to suppress others from contributing their own designs - anything to get the juices flowing, so to speak regarding the news, i have to say i think we probably need at least as much as is currently there... sure, it's an entire screenful of text, but so is this post i'm writing what's important is just how much gets packed into those 10 news headlines. or maybe we could break it up by categorizing stories (artist, industry, law, site news, etc) or just have someone editorially select, say, the three "biggest" stories to appear on the frontpage, much like happens with newspapers and such, with an obvious link to other stories. suggestions anyone? i also really like your interview idea... think it might work out better in a non-live format as you say (to ease the burden on the servers, and to give it a wider potential audience) - maybe we could set up a "pseudoartist" whose tracks would each be an interview with a different real artist? maybe a short term solution until we could implement it backend. i also think you and lcrowley are on the same track as far as picks/features are concerned... maybe one of you could write a quick & dirty sample in here of what you mean? just food for thought... thanks much all three of you for taking some time on this... the more we hash this out in the open, the better...
Lcrowley	Date: November 5, 2003 @ 4:59 PM Well, when you click the music link and go to a respective genre .. you first see the DM Picks .. I think the number varies depending on the genre ? not sure on that .. any way .. I think DM Picks should be more up front .. I mean to a visitor of the site walking in .. Seeing DM PICKS makes them say oooooo the site likes these .. let me check them out first .. see what I mean ? Features ... I love the way the featres are done here .. like you get a front page for a week ?? right? but that is not all .. once you have a feature .. when people go to the genre under music . your feature is still there for veiwing !! it is awesome .. and I love that ! Only thing I wish is that there were more .. lol. .. like 2 or 3 features a week .. there is sooo much great music out here .. that I want to share it all with everyone !! ha ha ha .. I discovered two great artists in the last 3 days !! that I love The Sullied and Aaron Cross .. great stuff IMO .. I also think the "how to get featured" needs to be something an artist sees when they sign up !!! instead of a forum post .. I have signed up four new artists to DMusic since I joined and I have had to walk them through the process everytime .. I don't know why .. it seemed simple to me .. but they are having a hard time with sign up ??? I know this isn't what we are talking about but something I wanted to mention .. I know you are right about the charts ... lol.. I am just bitchy about them . ha ha ha ha ..
Acumen	Date: November 5, 2003 @ 5:23 PM acatalept... you got my hopes up when you said "and way to make frontpage yerself." don't do that again.
ronnie71	Date: November 5, 2003 @ 5:33 PM all these ideas are cool... but just because you build it dont mean they will come so also we need to think about to get peeps here. a majority of computer users on the net use it to check news and email so with this in mine. Lets have an email service liken to Yahoo or Hotmail(Advertised base email or for a small fee you can become a subcriber and get no ads) There are alot of things this does it promotes DMusic outside of this site like say i have our band email Kwiver@dmusic. com then everytime i send emails then it has our band name and this site's name and i send alot of emails for example fans, other bands, promoters, venues, radio stations, my mom. Say you dont have space but what if you limited upload space then you could have this feature which is good advertising for the site plus good for DMusic to get paid advertising ffrom the email. Hotmail gained 40 million subcribers in three years this away cause it was free.. our angle will be free email plus music you can listen and download without fear of getting put in jail. With the users we have now if half of them had an account using DMusic email then our numbers could grow exponetionally. Also a online Newsletter would be great you already have email adresses of so many. Also could be a way to stay fresh in the minds of people who dont come here as frequently but will be just informed with news, boycott-riaa news, featured artist and top whatever. i was supposed to be talking about design... i love the color of DMusic its relaxing. The featured artist is great. The news could be cut down to more important articles since have a news tab people can go there for more if thats what they interested in. Also love Jennae's idea about interview what would be cool if you could not only see and hear a featured artist's music but hear an interview by them too.. and if we was really hi-tech or whatever could be a streaming video. just my two cents
mtekk	Date: November 5, 2003 @ 6:47 PM Yeah dmusc.com or dmusic.net email account would be awsome, also Im not sure who is incharge of Gnutella.com anymore, but It needs some work (Help and Developer's section fixes, and really, should be migrated into Dmusic.com as it already is somewhat, because after the move from the old server to the new ones half of the site's functionability has been lost, Different CSS based "skins" for Dmusic would be cool, and How about having a defult theme that changes with the seasons, such as incorperation of snow graphics durring winter, and leaves during fall, and ect. an Idea in combining Gnutella.com and Dmusic once and for all, would be to have Gnutella.com a different Skin for Dmusic, along with the addition of the gnutella forums at the Dmusic forums, and a special gnutella clients page, and that's all that would really be needed, and that's just one idea, also you know how we can have custom avitars, how about a custom Dmusic symbol that we can upload as the one we want to have displaid, That would be cool, and howabout the ability to kinda make your own color scheme for dmusic for a somewhat custom look and feel, but limitations could be on this, such as limited colors/ choices on this custom design for non subscribers. just some of the things i thought of
mracky	Date: November 6, 2003 @ 7:21 PM design-wise: change the main navigation; lose the 'tab' concept and place the hotlink words to the right of the logo -- in a mapped IMG. lose the 'clipboard' look and surrounding frame. open up the content to the use of the whole page. create a header line with the current user login, search, and add two pulldown widgets. one that contains all the genres which should be linked to their respective music pages. the other should contain all the links which are currently under 'my account'. consider adding java script to automate some of these navigation controls. i know purists are reluctant to use it, but hey, Mozilla handles it fine in Linux as does explorer in the many windows flavors. pick one news story and make it the news of the day. lose the rest from the home page. people can still get to the others on the news page. push 'recent uploads' to the music page. move the streaming radio stuff to the left side (the my account stuff was replaced with a pulldown). redo the look of the charts: lose the two quarter note icon. move the thumbs and comment into the song box. change featured artist to a bigger splash and picture while shrinking and rearrange the other artists (ones without linecopy). thats all ... for now
Lcrowley	Date: November 7, 2003 @ 2:26 PM Excellent input mracky !!!! Lana
acatalept	Date: November 10, 2003 @ 5:32 AM - mracky, i agree with lcrowley, thanks for the detail some java script could prove useful, but in moderation, and only if properly used... the major problem with java script is that it tends not to break gracefully: for example, the less cross-browser-compatible elements of html will generally at least display their content in uncooperating browsers, but generally when much of anything goes sour with java script, much if not all of the page's script ceases to function; and if you've got no fallback, the site becomes largely unnavigable (or unviewable, or what have you, depending on the function of the script). time will tell, and i'm sure i and anyone else who'd like to help will do some testing to work out any gross problems with the major browsers before committing to any massive change like this. i like some of your other suggestions as well - not sure about pulldowns, they are utterly compact for long lists of options, and more quick to navigate than a treeview, but i'll probably try out a few options to see what's the best tradeoff. i'm definitely thinking of better ways to make use of all available space on the page (re your comment on the clipboard look), but whitespace is a good thing to a certain extent, too. - ronnie71, agree dmusic can always use help in the promotion dept, but i don't know if they can handle giving away even more free stuff (bandwidth and disk space) in their current financial situation, esp considering the potential for abuse of email accounts. but a very good idea, would definitely draw a lot of traffic, and be helpful for artists - mtekk, i have no idea what (if any) relationship exists between dmus and gnutella.com - anyone have any idea about this? i do really like their clean, simple layout though also, as to your question on a custom "symbol" (aside from your avatar), what exactly do you mean? something to be displayed on your member or band page, like a custom header graphic (for instance, your gramps webcam graphic)? also, as far as creating your own "custom" color scheme, this wouldn't be too tough with css and a simple form (like you say, maybe just for subscribers), though it would depend on just how much of a given design was dependent on static graphic images, and how much was defined in html/css... good idea though - lcrowley, i see what you mean with the dm picks, but i think part of the problem is that there are just so bloody many hell, for country and blues, there are more picks than non-picks... think we need a way to cycle through picks over time, or otherwise better narrow down the [current] picks in any given genre to just a handful, or at most no more than can fit on a single page - sort of a "featured tracks" section for each genre to complement the "featured artists" listed on the genre pages and the front page. dunno, but would require some backend coding and maybe even some reorganizing/reclassifying of the database, and that can be hairy and time-consuming... think we would need some more manpower behind the scenes to keep the features and picks fresh, and dunno if that's doable with the current state of things (ie, until dmusic becomes more profitable)... maybe we could implement a member-contributed picks/features section here in the forums somewhere that would allow voting or something to narrow down the field (since the current picks forum threads are overflowing ). thanks everyone for the contributions, keep em coming
Lcrowley	Date: November 10, 2003 @ 2:21 PM Yes, that is exactly what I envisioned Aca~ ... picks should be something special ... heheh ..
withering	Date: November 11, 2003 @ 4:49 PM Maybe I'm off track here, but what about a 'graphics' section with a selection of (more or less) official artwork bits related to DMusic, that could be used for instance when linking to the site? Maybe even users could add their own creations, like the nice logos above? The current logo is OK, but a little over the edge to use as a link on another website. Something a little more neutral would be nice to have available - like the CC logo we all love and adore: http://creativecommons.org/images/public/somerights.gif
Maffmatix	Date: November 11, 2003 @ 7:11 PM You should be able to edit posts you make after you make them.
Tudris	Date: November 12, 2003 @ 2:22 AM Is this for real? I'd love to see DMusic support modern design and markup with valid XHTML and CSS... Web standards are a crusade I consider to be in league with the fight against the RIAA. Anyways, I do web design... Here are some samples... http://dris.webhop.org/ - Check the 'Design' link for alternative site skins... Note that not all will look perfect in IE; I didn't really care on a personal site. http://dris.webhop.org/designs/berntley/ - A grunge design for my brother's website. http://dris.webhop.org/designs/uberblog/ - Not quite finished, just started yesterday. This is the design for the future site of my online publishing system. There are others, but I'd have to look around to find them... However this possible redesign goes, my only big input is go with standards... I'd be glad to help out.
Tudris	Date: November 12, 2003 @ 2:24 AM Agreeing with DislocatedBoner... Should be able to edit posts... Anyways, scratch that link to the grunge design... It's now viewable here: http://berntley.webhop.org/
acatalept	Date: November 17, 2003 @ 10:55 PM very nice work tudris - you're surely better at this than me ... and it's only for real if we make it for real. i agree with the modern design ethos as far as code structure and browser interoperability is concerned (ie, what good is a good design if it's broken or wholly unviewable to half the web surfers out there), but foremost i'm concerned with the design itself: making everything more widely appealing and user-friendly, though those can be quite subjective issues and tough to nail down (hence this open call for feedback from the community). i've got a design or two in the pipe, but it may be a while before i've got anything thorough enough to present here for comment - and i know it's hard for some to comment without having something concrete in front of them to comment on. fu-dog seems very open to contributions, and he appears to be working on some layout changes of his own as we speak, but this is a large task considering how much else he's got on his plate. so if you (tudris) or anyone else out there has any ideas you'd like to present here in the form of a full-page image or even working html, please feel free to do so... the more we get out in the open, the better feel we'll all be able to get for what our possibilities are, and the more likely it is that the operators of dmusic will like something they see .
Lcrowley	Date: November 18, 2003 @ 1:25 AM Tudris, Have you noted Fu-dog with these ?? he is begging for help in the complaints forum .. acata~.... have you looked up there in the complaints forum ??
kredd	Date: November 19, 2003 @ 4:08 PM here is a little bit of a layout re-working. nothing structurally drastic and no css or anything, just a 'quick' mock up. i could find the exact blue already being used so i went with a red color scheme, just for the heck of it... maybe this will help with some ideas or get some juices flowing.
kredd	Date: November 19, 2003 @ 4:08 PM how about a link????? doh!! http://www.absenceoftheuseless.com/dm_test/index.html
LowREz	Date: November 19, 2003 @ 11:16 PM there is a forum on a site that i go to and its awesome.you can edit your posts and delete them after youv'e made them.and it tells you what threads your subscribed to and where the newest posts have been made and by who.i think it says its powerd by vBulletin.com
Tudris	Date: November 19, 2003 @ 11:26 PM Well, I've got ideas running through my head... I'll get a mock-up on paper tomorrow or tonight, and I'll get it in code tomorrow or Friday. School has been catching up lately, so we'll see when I get something done. I'll check the complaint forums pretty soon and see what's needed. Thanks for the compliments btw!
GeneHilbert	Date: November 20, 2003 @ 12:05 AM kredd....... Dude! That looks GREAT....... very kewl
kredd	Date: November 20, 2003 @ 10:12 AM thanks gene, glad you like it. just tryin' to help out a little.
acatalept	Date: November 21, 2003 @ 12:34 AM kredd - gotta second genehilbert, very nice, esp for a "quickie" plus zero graphics = good for low-bandwidth dialup users like me...
acatalept	Date: November 21, 2003 @ 12:42 AM lowrez - i agree, vbulletin is a feature-laden and robust forum package... but methinks those that call the shots around here would like to keep the entire site running off their own, proprietary codebase so they can call the shots as to how everything looks and works without having to rely on a 3rd party's code release schedule. and i've got to admit, these forums definitely have a certain minimalistic appeal, though maybe search/edit/delete functionality would be nice eventually... for what it's worth, there's no way to subscribe to threads currently, but the main forum page does show the most recent thread posts, and who they were posted by
johnnygnote	Date: November 21, 2003 @ 1:30 AM Please add an online CD program!!
mtekk	Date: November 21, 2003 @ 7:17 PM acatalept- as far as I know Gnutella.com is on the same server as Dmusic, and all Gnutella mambers are Dmusic members, along with all dmusic members are gnutella members (or at least that's how it used to work. I don't know who officially owns Gnutella.com (actually I think the domain name is owned by Spyed) anymore. What i meant by the custom logo thing, was kinda part of the custom color scheme (CSS implimented) stuff. Have a choice of logos, because I've seen several good logos, along with having different ones that would actually match with the color scheme. it could be a graphic that is already on the server on choice or a custom one that you upload that is within the acceptable dementions, and file size. Oh yeah, take a look at the CSS, and try to make it valid, If i rember correctly, i tested it to see if it was valid, when I implimented CSS in my site (I had to check the validator). The result was that there where some 'errors' in the css code, It's not really a big thing, but i thought I might as well expose the fact that there may be a potential problem in it.
azhazhellfire	Date: November 21, 2003 @ 10:30 PM it would appear that i've missed the party once again. however, i think i'll say this anyway. i LOVE the design of this site. it's so unique. making it 'professional looking' means making it look like all the other sites. yes, we could make it shiny and attractive. but it would rob it of it's character and depth. although change the damn colour of that "subscribe today!" link on the front page. it's distracting!
TameasDust	Date: November 22, 2003 @ 11:48 AM one thing i have noticed no one has is a total list of artists here. just a page where they are all listed according to genere as in a link to their music ... with new artists that have joined in the last week listed at the top sort of thing ... just a thought ... probably too much work ... although i always wondered how many artists were here at DMusic and where to find them ... other than the song listings
fu-dog	Date: November 22, 2003 @ 2:22 PM On Gnutella.com: That site is owned by Spyed (a.k.a. - Angelo Sotira of deviantart.com), but it still runs on our servers. He was the original owner of dmusic.com, and it was this site that pioneered the concepts that led to the genesis of deviantart.com. Gnutella has fallen by the wayside as Angelo's been doing crazy things with deviantart. On CSS: All of DMusic needs a rebuild, and it would be nice if it fully supported the most recent technology standards that have been devised to make the web a more functional place, IE - xhtml and CSS2. Making that happen is another question however. I'm in the process of unifying the base templating system that the site runs on, but i've got at least a couple hundred pages left that need translation. Once that's done i can pop the base site into new modes fairly simply... but first things first. azhazhellfire: The whole point of the distracting link is to get folks to subscribe. You know, support the site and whatnot? TameasDust: Actually, it's not a hard thing to add at all. I was planning on adding a listing of all artists, sortable by name, genre, last login, date of sign up, and number of tracks. It's just another charting system. Such representation has taken a back seat to a lot of other features we need first though. Overall site redesign: acatalept's original focus was the artist page, but this really is a site-wide issue. I can understand your desire for feature requests, but if you're going to add those to this discussion then please talk more about how the user would interact with those new features and how that would be incorporated to the visual design of the site. The prime consideration for this redesign is how DMusic can be streamlined to make functionality understandable / usable / intuitive, and secondly to make things "slick." However, the latter definitely takes a back seat to the former, hence the ugly "blue blocks" on the artist page that started this thread. --- And back to my tunes and my template conversion... on a Saturday.
azhazhellfire	Date: November 23, 2003 @ 7:55 PM i didn't really mean distracting. of course you need something in your face but that thing is purely gh3y. should get someone to do a flash file or something. somethin tellin people what they get extra when they do.
Thaspian	Date: November 23, 2003 @ 8:28 PM White text on black screen. This black text on white/grey backing is bad for your eyes. It's like staring at a lightbulb..
TameasDust	Date: November 23, 2003 @ 11:12 PM EEEEEEEK white on black THAT would give me a headache ...
TameasDust	Date: November 23, 2003 @ 11:13 PM Scary
ChillinBuzz	Date: November 27, 2003 @ 1:34 PM " id="71182">
ChillinBuzz	Date: November 27, 2003 @ 1:35 PM ignore me, im just mucking about with some ideas.
leflaw	Date: November 27, 2003 @ 2:26 PM keep commin at me , baby.....
princess-angry	Date: November 27, 2003 @ 5:00 PM make it so I'm not constantly logged out all the time! headache!
ChillinBuzz	Date: November 27, 2003 @ 5:10 PM " id="71196">
ChillinBuzz	Date: November 27, 2003 @ 5:11 PM " id="71197">
princess-angry	Date: November 27, 2003 @ 5:15 PM oh I can make excellent graphics! I'll make some for a small fee of 5 dollars! as soon as I get my pay pal set up!
ChillinBuzz	Date: November 27, 2003 @ 5:18 PM I'm basically taking pics of artists on DM to make the logos but some genres dont have enough pics
ChillinBuzz	Date: November 27, 2003 @ 5:49 PM " id="71201">electronic revamped:
ChillinBuzz	Date: November 27, 2003 @ 6:16 PM " id="71203">
Psipher	Date: November 27, 2003 @ 6:44 PM i look scary in the pic above!
ChillinBuzz	Date: November 27, 2003 @ 7:11 PM you look fine you dork
ChillinBuzz	Date: November 27, 2003 @ 8:10 PM " id="71212">
ChillinBuzz	Date: November 27, 2003 @ 8:11 PM " id="71213">
ChillinBuzz	Date: November 27, 2003 @ 8:11 PM " id="71214">
Maffmatix	Date: November 27, 2003 @ 8:50 PM I like the icons- it made me realize this site needs more colors... flashy shit... neons... all that.
leflaw	Date: November 27, 2003 @ 10:37 PM WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Maffmatix	Date: November 28, 2003 @ 12:51 AM Also- see how many views there have been on a thread?
GeneHilbert	Date: November 28, 2003 @ 2:24 AM Chilly........ Dude those are very kewl............ Great job.
ChillinBuzz	Date: November 28, 2003 @ 10:41 AM i aint finished yet... but i'm gonna have to consider approaching some artists to complete some of these logos BECAUSE HALF THE ARTISTS HERE DONT HAVE ANY PICS!!! :sob:" id="71306"> i aint finished yet... but i'm gonna have to consider approaching some artists to complete some of these logos BECAUSE HALF THE ARTISTS HERE DONT HAVE ANY PICS!!!
ChillinBuzz	Date: November 28, 2003 @ 10:53 AM Natalieeeeee!
ChillinBuzz	Date: November 28, 2003 @ 11:19 AM it is now getting harder to make these... :P" id="71309"> it is now getting harder to make these...
ChillinBuzz	Date: November 28, 2003 @ 11:40 AM " id="71310">
ChillinBuzz	Date: November 28, 2003 @ 1:46 PM " id="71317">
ebarbarella	Date: November 28, 2003 @ 3:18 PM Excellent Job!!!! those are the ones!! damn you did a good job with this ChillinBuzz!! who makes the decision?
leflaw	Date: November 28, 2003 @ 3:37 PM hot damn!!!
RyanS	Date: November 28, 2003 @ 4:17 PM Damn, those are sweet!
ChillinBuzz	Date: November 28, 2003 @ 4:32 PM those were easy compared to the ones coming up - although ive taken timeout for the night 11 down, 8 to go....
kredd	Date: November 28, 2003 @ 4:50 PM good stuff dewd...rock!!!
sween	Date: November 28, 2003 @ 8:31 PM Love the icons, but wheres mine!!!??? haha what software do you use?
Lcrowley	Date: November 28, 2003 @ 8:55 PM Wow those are awesome Chillinbuzz !! great job ! Lana
Tudris	Date: November 29, 2003 @ 7:06 AM Mm, they look great! By the way, the font you're using was by chance the exact same font I was thinking of in that redesign idea I mentioned having like a week ago. Yeah, about that... I got the flu.
Tudris	Date: December 11, 2003 @ 8:34 PM Okay, I finally got off my butt and finished a quick rough... http://dris.dyndns.org:8080/designs/dmusic/ I haven't tested in a whole lot of browsers, but I know Mozilla, Safari, and the other good ones will do it fine.
acatalept	Date: December 12, 2003 @ 9:51 PM damn, can i just be the first to say that's freakin nice, tudris though i'm a little partial to monochromatism, so i may be biased looks very clean and well laid out in ie6 (cept the sidebar headings are butting up against the tops of their containers; but like you said, that's to be expected). all the more impressive that it's all css. i feel like i've neglected my self-imposed obligation to put up some concrete ideas here as well... real life has imposed its own, uh, concrete ideas of what i should be doing with my time of late - maybe beginning of january i'll have something to show for all my big talk i'm really glad to see so much input here though! maybe if i'm lucky, tudris will beat me through the door...
Tudris	Date: December 13, 2003 @ 5:22 AM Hey, thanks for the feedback! Yep, I took a quick look in IE6 and noticed the sidebar heading problem (among a few other, very minor glitches). Before I start hacking the CSS so IE can understand what I want from it, it's better to have the design as close to final as possible when rendered in good browsers (Mozilla, Safari, Gecko-derivatives). Like I said, this is just a first draft. Is there anything anyone feels isn't right, something that should be there that isn't (or vice-versa)? There are a lot of directions it can go, and it might not even look like this in the end. For example, I think it'd be just sweet to match the colors so we can get Chill's awesome headers in there (speaking of which, the links to those images are broken ). On a side note, would FuDog have statistics available on browsers that hit DMusic most frequently? I can only assume IE is prevalent, but maybe there's a slight Mozilla bias here. The end result of the design will be viewable in any browser, but it's good to have priorities (some sites just don't let you in if you aren't using IE; bad move). Plus, it'd just be interesting.
fu-dog	Date: December 13, 2003 @ 11:12 AM Here are the top non-bot hits of December: 1 484704 71.69% MSIE 6.0 2 61208 9.05% Mozilla/5.0 3 43831 6.48% MSIE 5.0 4 42307 6.26% MSIE 5.5 5 14972 2.21% Opera/7.2 6 6014 0.89% MSIE 5.2 7 3661 0.54% MSIE 5.1 9 2285 0.34% Mozilla/3.01 (compatible 10 1507 0.22% MSIE 4.0 11 1005 0.15% Mozilla/4.7 12 735 0.11% Konqueror/3.1 13 607 0.09% Mozilla/3.0 (compatible) 14 591 0.09% Opera/7.1 15 541 0.08% Mozilla/4.0 As you can see, we've still got some folks rocking some pretty old browsers... That'll need to be taken into account. Whatever CSS pages are created, we'll need to have a backup non-css for older browsers. Tudris: That's a sweet start you've got going on there. I'm curious to see what you do with content sections such as the artist page, and genre displays. With the latter, know that we're going to have a lot more genres soon, and sub-genres, and probably sub-sub-genres as well.
Tudris	Date: December 13, 2003 @ 1:07 PM Indeed. Well, almost 1 out of 10 use Mozilla, and that's more than most sites I see. Konquerer? Hmm, does Safari send a Konqueror UA string? I figure I'd have to be on that list somewhere. As far as old browsers go the option most people go with is to hide all but the most basic CSS from browsers with buggy support. Browsers with no CSS support won't see anything in the first place. What you end up with is a plain-vanilla HTML page, with a little styling for all but the very oldest browsers. The question is whether DMusic is okay that decision. Keep in mind a few points. First of all, the percentage of users this applies to is very small. Second, all of the content will still be accessible, but it won't be arranged in the layout everyone else sees. Finally, in my experiences, people don't use old browsers because they want to; it's more often because their computer can't go any further. With that in mind, there is a correlation between users of old browsers and slower computers, so that small percentage may actually enjoy a vanilla page that doesn't take any time to load (all decorative graphics are in the CSS). One last thing to say is that using CSS over tables means the site is more accessible to alternative browsers (mobile devices, screen readers, text-based browsers) by leaps and bounds. So, where you lost a tiny bit of styling compatibility with obsolete browsers, you gained content compatibility with every browser that can read XHTML (pretty much everyone, as for the most part older browsers don't even notice the difference from regular HTML). Anyways, thanks FuDog, that will be useful. And it was interesting. By the way, I do have an idea for the music page, but it will depend on how many top-level genres you have and what they are. For now, does anybody have suggestions or criticisms?
kredd	Date: December 13, 2003 @ 1:47 PM looks really really good tudris. my only comment is where will the banner ads go???
Tudris	Date: December 14, 2003 @ 5:59 AM I was actually thinking about that too. I have a place for them in the markup, but it's not styled, so it doesn't show up. I'll try moving it around to different places and figuring out where the ad is placed best. I almost left it out inadvertently, forgetting DM even had banners; I have a CSS file that selects common advertisement markup and makes it dead, so I don't even see most ads.
YaBoyDrew	Date: December 24, 2003 @ 9:48 PM we need more color
YaBoyDrew	Date: December 24, 2003 @ 9:50 PM xcuse me.... WE NEED MORE COLOR this place looks pretty dead, but i still love it lol (that group hug icon is mad gay)
Tudris	Date: December 29, 2003 @ 5:31 AM Thanks Drew, I'll see where I can throw some color into it. I actually like the shade of blue the current site has, so maybe I'll use it somewhere. Hmm...

Post A Reply
From:	guest	(Icons - Linking)
Post: