A Suggestion for RoyalCarnage.com

[General Zod]

As your database of reviews grows, have you considered indexing the reviews by rating, as well as alphabetically? Although I make an effort to read the reviews when I have time, I often don't have time to read all of the reviews posted online. It would be really helpful if I could see a list of all the CDs you rated 9.0 or higher, for instance. I'm not sure how labor intensive such an index would be, but I think it would add to the value of the site.

Zod

 

[NAD]

I would love to see our reviews searchable and sortable, and the way they are designed makes it a future possibility. JayKeeley and Erik are the experts on this stuff though, I haven't so much as built an HTML tag for 8 years.

 

[JayKeeley]

I think when it started out, we figured we'd have a few reviews published here or there, and instead it grew out of proportion! I know the number of reviews is pretty big now, and search functionality would rule, as well as a big database supporting all the content entries etc etc, but I'm the wrong man for that job at this point in my life.

However, adding scores to the A-Z index isn't a difficult job - it's just ludicrously laborious. It's one of those things we should have just started with but didn't. Well, you know what hindsight is. Yep - good suggestion, and definitely one thing I shall look into doing if I can spare some time because I know people will be more interested in reading reviews with higher scores obviously. I know I would.

Thanks GZ.

 

[Ayeka]

I want to see Cinderella reviews

 

[JayKeeley]

Alternatively, everyone could take a portion of the A-Z index each, view the source code since it's only HTML and manually type the scores in next to each album listing. They could then save the HTML source code as standard text, e-mail them back to me, and I could literally just upload the new pages back to the server.

Easier said than done I guess, heh. I mean, technically speaking, if everyone had a WYSIWYG editor, they could even format their own reviews in the final HTML format - essentially cutting and pasting the same format each time from a 'master review' template - and send them back to me (allowing for instant publishing). Shit, this could even be done in Notepad.

I honestly recognize all of the problems with the site. The lack of search capabilities, the frames, lack of content management templates, and others. I guess I could outsource it to a 3rd party, and have it all fixed up for a fee, but what's the point if RC isn't a money making site or company? I'd never make the investment back, and I'm not exactly numero uno martyr for the underground such that I would stop eating so some band can have a review published.

 

[JayKeeley]

Actually, Jay, if you trust my web development and web design skills I might be able to do a complete overhaul of the site. I currently take web design classes which is currently requiring me to do a bigger project as a final type thing and RC would be perfect -- I could make frameless, easily maintainable, database-driven pages but converting all the old content to the new format would just be too time-consuming and tedious for me to do. I dunno, if you think this sounds less than insane we should maybe talk more over e-mail or something.

It sounds good actually. If I read you right, what you're proposing is to reformat the structure of the site itself, but have someone else (like me) migrate the actual content accordingly. We can talk further off-line and weigh out the pro's and con's, etc. I'll shoot you an e-mail.