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Redesigning, rethinking, moving things around, etc

archard

Joined: Jan 11 2007

So I've been thinking about how I wanna change some things around here to make this a better site, and like I've said before I've been working on a layout change that I'm sure you all will like. Aside from that though I've been thinking hard about how I want to manage content on the site in the future and I've come to a basic conclusion.

Three major issues I've been thinking about are 1) what's a better way to handle recordings 2) what's a better way to handle other types of content like articles and the "blog" type thing I've been speaking of and 3) how do I improve activity on the forum.

I've realized that for pretty much all non-tab content (recordings, articles, lessons, reviews, news, etc) it's actually the best idea to put it on the forum and reserve the main site for tabs. The main reason for this is that it is hard to make a truly robust system of organization when there's more than one type of content that needs to be managed. Tabs are the reason why people come to the site in the first place and I think it would be the best idea to devote all the resources of the main site to managing the tabs. I have some pretty decent ideas to improve the overall structure of the main site but it only really works when I don't have to focus on anything else.

I think the forum should be used as the central focus of the community. After all, what is a forum for in the first place? It has essentially all the tools that content on the main site does (comments, ratings, polls, permission systems, etc), so it doesn't make sense to segregate community focused content like recordings and articles. These things, while cool in their own right, merely take a back seat to the tabs. If I moved all non-tab content to the forum I think it would encourage community active, and therefore solve the third issue - improving activity on the forum.

So part of my redesign will be moving all non-tab content, including recordings and articles to the forum. New items will still be posted on the front page, but they will link directly to the forum topic. I'm modeling this approach off one of my favorite sites and one that has a highly successful community - http://www.ocremix.org. Notice how their "main" site is devoted almost exclusively to remixes. Other content, like news and reviews is all on their thriving forum. I think this is a very good approach and I plan to implement it. With my busy school schedule right now I think it will be a few months before I have the redesign completed.

Let me know what you think.
Submitted on Sat, 04/05/2008 - 20:23

Re: Redesigning, rethinking, moving things around, etc

Zelos

Location: Germany

Joined: Jan 31 2008

It's only a small thing, but I really think the attractivity of a forum would go up if it had some more subforums...a third category would already be enough. It's only a cosmetic thing, but to me the two categories seem like "oh, nothing's big going on here...".
Submitted on Sat, 04/05/2008 - 20:35

Re: Redesigning, rethinking, moving things around, etc

archard

Joined: Jan 11 2007

Yeah I'm definitely going to rearrange and add forums... I was gonna wait till "the redesign" but I suppose I could do it sooner.

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DANG
Submitted on Sat, 04/05/2008 - 20:38

Re: Redesigning, rethinking, moving things around, etc

Zelos

Location: Germany

Joined: Jan 31 2008

Just a small suggestion for the arrangement...

Game Tabs
- Introduction
- Help/Tips/Suggestions
- Competitions
- Recordings
- Site Stuff

Tablature
- Tabbing Help
- Requests
- Submissions
- Works in Progress

Off-Topic
- General Discussion
- Guitar Talk
- Music
- Movies
- Creativity Corner
- Games
- Anime
- Spamming

Game Tabs: Except of "Competition" it should be self-explanatory. I guess you remember the tab competetion you made about winter themes earlier...I think that's a great idea to get more not-so-popular tabs and to encourage people to visit the forums more often. I'd help you lead those contests, of course, the only problem would be that without prizes some people might not bother with something like that and I'm really unimaginative with all kinds of winnings...I'd also like to put the recording-section here, cause I'm not really sure where to put it elsewhere.

Tablature: If there's going to be a submission-form the submission-forums wouldn't be necessary anymore. The tabbing help forum should be something where people can get tips about how to make tabs and post their own tips.

Off-Topic: This is something where I'm not sure what to put in...the general discussion, guitar talk and creativity corner should stay, of course. Then I got "Movies", "Games", "Anime" and "Spamming". Games and movies should be clear, then I thought an anime & manga forum would be nice, too, since we have quite some anime tabs on the main site and threads for that topic wouldn't fit in other areas...the "Spamming" is just something to encourage people to post more often. :)
Submitted on Sun, 04/06/2008 - 05:02

Re: Redesigning, rethinking, moving things around, etc

Jpg

Music Monkey

Location: I'm right behind you!

Joined: Apr 04 2008

I'm guessing adding tabs for more instruments such as piano would be great.
More than just guitar.

It would bring all types of musicians.

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Jpg
Submitted on Sun, 04/06/2008 - 14:55

Re: Redesigning, rethinking, moving things around, etc

Joined: Dec 31 1969

NO SPAMMING BOARD

The goal is to /not/ have retards populating the place. That would just be a waste of bandwidth for everyone ever.
Submitted on Sun, 04/06/2008 - 16:28

Re: Redesigning, rethinking, moving things around, etc

Zelos

Location: Germany

Joined: Jan 31 2008

"Enterim" posted:

NO SPAMMING BOARD

The goal is to /not/ have retards populating the place. That would just be a waste of bandwidth for everyone ever.

I don't want a second 4chan...I just thought, well, there's always some hope. :)
Submitted on Sun, 04/06/2008 - 18:01

Re: Redesigning, rethinking, moving things around, etc

Joined: Dec 31 1969

Hey, not all of 4chan is /b/. /mu/ actually has legitimate conversations sometimes. Also, /r9k/ is extreme win for actually forcing people to have you lost the game legitimate thoughts and not just repeat memes and THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST for eight paragraphs.
Submitted on Sun, 04/06/2008 - 19:51

Re: Redesigning, rethinking, moving things around, etc

archard

Joined: Jan 11 2007

"Jpg" posted:

I'm guessing adding tabs for more instruments such as piano would be great.
More than just guitar.

It would bring all types of musicians.

I said before I'd like to start introducing tabs for other stringed instruments like banjo, ukulele, mandolin, etc. Not piano though. Even though it is technically a stringed instrument.

"Enterim" posted:

NO SPAMMING BOARD

The goal is to /not/ have retards populating the place. That would just be a waste of bandwidth for everyone ever.

I agree I don't want a spam board... general discussion should be enough.

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DANG
Submitted on Sun, 04/06/2008 - 20:00

Re: Redesigning, rethinking, moving things around, etc

Stamen47

no0bzOrG

Joined: Jun 16 2007

Something they've done at vgsheets.com is have a members only board with exclusive sheet music for members with a certain number of posts. The idea is to encourage people to reach the post amount instead of posting maybe three or four times and never coming back. By the time they've reached the post amount, hopefully they'll stay active and keep contributing to the community. However, I think I'd rather just have all our tabs out there for everybody and lure people to the forum with cool contests and our charming personalities. But if you guys think a member's only forum section (maybe not even just for exclusive content, just sort of...for...members....), I'm certainly not calling the shots.

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Is this the end of zombie Shakespeare?
Submitted on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 00:23

Re: Redesigning, rethinking, moving things around, etc

Jpg

Music Monkey

Location: I'm right behind you!

Joined: Apr 04 2008

"archard" posted:

"Jpg" posted:

I'm guessing adding tabs for more instruments such as piano would be great.
More than just guitar.

It would bring all types of musicians.

I said before I'd like to start introducing tabs for other stringed instruments like banjo, ukulele, mandolin, etc. Not piano though. Even though it is technically a stringed instrument.

That's a great idea.
But why not piano? I think it's 2nd best instrument[After guitar].

"Enterim" posted:

Hey, not all of 4chan is /b/. /mu/ actually has legitimate conversations sometimes. Also, /r9k/ is extreme win for actually forcing people to have you lost the game legitimate thoughts and not just repeat memes and THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST for eight paragraphs.

I don't believe that. It's all spam.

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Jpg
Submitted on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 13:50

Re: Redesigning, rethinking, moving things around, etc

archard

Joined: Jan 11 2007

"Stamen47" posted:

Something they've done at vgsheets.com is have a members only board with exclusive sheet music for members with a certain number of posts. The idea is to encourage people to reach the post amount instead of posting maybe three or four times and never coming back. By the time they've reached the post amount, hopefully they'll stay active and keep contributing to the community. However, I think I'd rather just have all our tabs out there for everybody and lure people to the forum with cool contests and our charming personalities. But if you guys think a member's only forum section (maybe not even just for exclusive content, just sort of...for...members....), I'm certainly not calling the shots.

Hmmm, intriguing idea. I haven't thought of any practical applications for such a forum but there's definitely a possibility for something like that. I agree though, excluding sheet music for premium members is not the way to go.

"Jpg" posted:

That's a great idea.
But why not piano? I think it's 2nd best instrument[After guitar].

I wanna keep this a tablature site. I realize there are "piano tabs" but let's not even get into that. I only want string, fretted instruments that you can write a tab for the same way you can write a normal guitar tab. Maybe someday in the future I'll open up a sister site for video game piano music, but for now it's all about the tabs.

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DANG
Submitted on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 13:58

Re: Redesigning, rethinking, moving things around, etc

Jpg

Music Monkey

Location: I'm right behind you!

Joined: Apr 04 2008

"archard" posted:

I wanna keep this a tablature site. I realize there are "piano tabs" but let's not even get into that. I only want string, fretted instruments that you can write a tab for the same way you can write a normal guitar tab. Maybe someday in the future I'll open up a sister site for video game piano music, but for now it's all about the tabs.

I was thinking about that too, how there's no piano tabs.
But I got an idea, we could create a method for tabbing piano songs.
Think about it, if we could create a fool proof method for tabbing songs for piano, this site could become big.
Not only that, it would help pianists share songs without transcribing, and help pianists learn songs with ease.

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Jpg
Submitted on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 14:07

Re: Redesigning, rethinking, moving things around, etc

archard

Joined: Jan 11 2007

"Jpg" posted:

"archard" posted:

I wanna keep this a tablature site. I realize there are "piano tabs" but let's not even get into that. I only want string, fretted instruments that you can write a tab for the same way you can write a normal guitar tab. Maybe someday in the future I'll open up a sister site for video game piano music, but for now it's all about the tabs.

I was thinking about that too, how there's no piano tabs.
But I got an idea, we could create a method for tabbing piano songs.
Think about it, if we could create a fool proof method for tabbing songs for piano, this site could become big.
Not only that, it would help pianists share songs without transcribing, and help pianists learn songs with ease.

That'd be interesting, but I don't really see it catching on. Anything you have in mind?

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DANG
Submitted on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 14:09

Re: Redesigning, rethinking, moving things around, etc

Jpg

Music Monkey

Location: I'm right behind you!

Joined: Apr 04 2008

Well pianos look like this-

|*|*| |*|*|*|
c d e f g a b

And I would think to start on the C note if decided to tab, because that's the the middle note on all pianos
So C=1, D=2, E=3, so on up to 7.
Flats will be determined by- 1#

And this scale repeats 7 times on a piano + one C at the end and a A+B in the beginning[Unless you have an electric keyboard piano, which doesn't have the first C scale or the last].
So maybe you could do lines, like-


1st C|--------------|------------------|
2nd C|--------------|------------------|
3rd C|--------------|------------------|
4th C|--------------|------------------|
5th C|-1-2-3-2-1-1--|-1-2-3-2-1-2-3-3--|
6th C|--------------|------------------|
7th C|--------------|------------------|

|--------------|------------------|--------------------|--------------------|
|--------------|------------------|--------------------|--------------------|
|--------------|------------------|--------------------|--------------------|
|--------------|------------------|--------------------|--------------------|
|-1-2-3-2-1-1--|-1-2-3-2-1-2-5-3--|-3-4-5-5-5-5-5-3-1--|-3-4-5-5-5-5-5-3-1--|
|--------------|------------------|--------------------|--------------------|
|--------------|------------------|--------------------|--------------------|

That's, c,d,e,d,c,c...etc. [Summer by Joe Hisaishi, Tabbed it right now]

As for chords, I'm lost. You could do 3+6, but I don't know.
And for determining left hand and right hand keying you could do one right above the other just like on a sheet.

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Jpg
Submitted on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 14:40

Re: Redesigning, rethinking, moving things around, etc

Zelos

Location: Germany

Joined: Jan 31 2008

That's really confusing when you have to play the black keys. You can't just say 1-2-3 = c-d-e, what about the note between c and d? If you would say 1-2-3 = c-cis-d it would get very confusing after some notes...
The only possibility would be to write a * after a note to show that it's the black key after the one u see in the tab.
And chords, as you said, would be very hard to accomplish, too. I guess you now know why they made sheet music for piano and tabs for guitars. :P
I'd rather keep the site strings-only, too, but thanks for sharing your ideas.
Submitted on Sat, 04/12/2008 - 20:22

Re: Redesigning, rethinking, moving things around, etc

Rick

Unusual

Joined: Apr 17 2007

You could make a slide down menu for Recordings like you did with the Tabs

That could make it easier to find what you're looking for

And the tabs already have a link to the video

So that's pretty cool too

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I opened one box of cereal only to find a totally different bag of cereal inside... such is life
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Joined: Nov 12 2021

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