An idea for Royal Carnage - 2003 releases

[JayKeeley]

Hey,

It shouldn't take too much effort, but what do you think about me building an area (page) dedicated just to releases of 2003?

Very simple really: It'll be a list of all the reviews we've done for 2003 releases only highlighting the reviewer and the score. Of course, each entry will also link to the full review.

I just thought it might be cool to do this since year end is coming, and it might be nice to have an area just dedicated to 2003 albums. Might also help when compiling our year end lists?

Thoughts?

Also, not to sound like a nazi to all the staffers, but if you have outstanding reviews left of releases that specifically came out this year, I would urge you to make them the priority now. I'll of course keep adding them to both our A-Z index, and this new page for 2003.

 

[NAD]

That would be cool, but I've often thought about maybe a Javascript sorting dealie for the reviews by staff member, score, release date, label, etc.

I haven't designed a webpage for many a year though, so I'm not sure how difficult something like this is anymore. Don't mind me if I'm asking too much.

And yes, my 2003 promos are a top priority, other than 1 or 2 I think they are all 2003 releases. They will be done, oh yes, they will be done by year's end.

 

[JayKeeley]

That would be cool, but I've often thought about maybe a Javascript sorting dealie for the reviews by staff member, score, release date, label, etc.

You see, I'm just a dad and husband that sits at home and builds HTML pages as and when required. That itself takes forever and a day. When it all started, I thought we'd just do a bunch of reviews here or there, heh.

In hindsight, I would have built a PHP database, get rid of these cunting frames we use, implement search capabilities etc etc. For the future, we'll port all our stuff into a database and then build PHP scripts to search against it.

In the meantime, however, I'll just build a simple page with lots of links to the reviews - for convenience more than anything else. This way, you won't have to sift through the A-Z index to dig out what came out in 2003.

 

[NAD]

Well like I said, "Don't mind me if I'm asking too much."

I actually dig the frames quite a lot, and I think the layout is awesome, very easy to navigate. I hate needlessly cluttered websites, the only fancy features I really like are a searchable database, but yeah, someday.

 

[Ayeka]

Sounds like a fair feature

 

[JayKeeley]

Well like I said, "Don't mind me if I'm asking too much."

Well, you're absolutely entitled to ask for anything my man. All suggestions are welcome.

I actually dig the frames quite a lot, and I think the layout is awesome, very easy to navigate. I hate needlessly cluttered websites, the only fancy features I really like are a searchable database, but yeah, someday.

Thanks - I try to make it as clean as possible. The frames annoy me because each frame has its own URL. It makes my skin crawl. I kind of just made it up as I went along, and built it all on a 12" laptop. I saw our site in London recently on a 1280x1040 resolution on a 17" monitor. Wow, it was so different and spacious!!

Anyway, I agree with you wholeheartedly about search capabilities. Luckilly I took that into account in our guidelines early - one day we'll have search capabilities against:

- Band name
- Album Title
- Record Label
- Release Year
- Reviewer
- Score

I'd also like search against any band name, album title, and song title in the body of our reviews. That's why we use CAPS, italics, and " " to identify each of those attributes already.

It's just a matter of building a template / database and porting all our content into that format. It can be done, just not by me. I'll probably outsource it all one day. I honestly didn't expect RC to be as big as it's become. I think it's weird/unnerving that 400-600 people read our content on a daily basis.

 

[Ayeka]

I'll second !

 

[NAD]

Are we still getting that many hits? Fucking ace! When was the launch date? March of this year?

The new offical Royal Carnage smiley thing.

 

[JayKeeley]

Are we still getting that many hits? Fucking ace! When was the launch date? March of this year?

If I remember right, it was something like March 3rd 2003.

We averaged 200 unique visitors a day for a while, but the Iron Maiden feature (and the banner advertising we did on UM) made it jump to 600. Now we average at 400 per day. I won't bother with how many hits we get because those numbers mean nothing, especially to sites with frames.

 

[NAD]

Aye, I'm bad at the terminology. When I say hits I'm usually referring to unique visitors.

 

[JayKeeley]

Aye, I'm bad at the terminology. When I say hits I'm usually referring to unique visitors.

Heh, if we got 400 hits a day, I would walk.

 

[Erik]

I know PHP. Let me know if you need anything. Formatting all those reviews to static HTML pages must be hell.

 

[JayKeeley]

I know PHP. Let me know if you need anything. Formatting all those reviews to static HTML pages must be hell.

Yes, about 30 minutes per review. The worst part is putting each track into the tracklisting box, and also re-inserting all font formatting. Dreamweaver doesn't use the same font attributes as anything else (even if I paste it in as HTML), and so anything in verdana, italics, bold etc needs to be manually re-done.

Also, not to name names, but some of you folks don't even provide URLs for the label or band, and neither do you provide the album cover!!! That makes me loco -> because I spend half the time on google and cduniverse.com downloading covers or hunting for websites. But I'm not bitching, I promise.

Erik - we can talk about PHP. Any ideas you have with creating content entry templates, setting up a database and search engine, we can talk off line. Example: should we build or should we buy something 'off the shelf'?

It's also dependent on how happy you guys are with writing for RC and how long you wanna hang about. Once you guys go, the adventure ends.

 

[JayKeeley]

By the way, back to the original idea, do you guys want me to list 2003 releases in any particular order? By alphabetical order, by reviewer, by score?

 

[NAD]

I do, I like that idea. Sort of like a feature without doing too much extra work.

 

[JayKeeley]

OK so list them alphabetically? By reviewer? Waddayuguysay?

 

[NAD]

By reviewer, and put KING NAD ON TOP!!!

But alphabetically by bandname would actually make sense.

 

[Demonspell]

I think it's a good idea, and there should be a page for each individual reviewer...and "classics" in the review section needs to be changed to "before 2003/current year".

 

[Papa Josh]

Yes, about 30 minutes per review. The worst part is putting each track into the tracklisting box, and also re-inserting all font formatting. Dreamweaver doesn't use the same font attributes as anything else (even if I paste it in as HTML), and so anything in verdana, italics, bold etc needs to be manually re-done.

Also, not to name names, but some of you folks don't even provide URLs for the label or band, and neither do you provide the album cover!!! That makes me loco -> because I spend half the time on google and cduniverse.com downloading covers or hunting for websites. But I'm not bitching, I promise.

Erik - we can talk about PHP. Any ideas you have with creating content entry templates, setting up a database and search engine, we can talk off line. Example: should we build or should we buy something 'off the shelf'?

It's also dependent on how happy you guys are with writing for RC and how long you wanna hang about. Once you guys go, the adventure ends.

I know I'm guilty of the cd covers and from time to time the band's website. As far as label urls, I guess I just assumed you had most of them. My deepest apologies, speaking also as a dad & husband, I can totally relate. I will do better.

And I ain't going anywhere, bro, I completely expect to see Royal Carnage to the next level. This has gotten to be bigger than we all thought, and it is because of this that we must make every effort to make it the best it can be. I want Royal Carnage to be the sponsor of the Monday Night Concert Series, a free show we have every monday night after 11:30pm.

So far, we've screened Tenacious D "Masterworks" concert and AC/DC Live In Donington. I plan on showing the latest Rush, Maiden "Rock In Rio," Dio "Evil Or Divine," Cradle Of Filth "Heavy Left handed..." along with other non-metal concerts as well.

I did get our logo on the new Alamo Calendar for November. It's on our ad space that we're selling. So, we get some free advertising until the space isn't available anymore.

 

[JayKeeley]

I know I'm guilty of the cd covers and from time to time the band's website. As far as label urls, I guess I just assumed you had most of them. My deepest apologies, speaking also as a dad & husband, I can totally relate. I will do better.

Well, I honestly wasn't bitching - I hope you know that. The fact that you write the review is where the real effort goes. I never want to be a fucking nazi about shit like this, since we all volunteer.

I want Royal Carnage to be the sponsor of the Monday Night Concert Series, a free show we have every monday night after 11:30pm.

What's your audience turn out like? Let me know - if you think it's worth it, we can cut a deal. I might even fly down and check it out.

Maiden "Rock In Rio,"

I can't imagine how good that must look on a big screen.

I did get our logo on the new Alamo Calendar for November. It's on our ad space that we're selling. So, we get some free advertising until the space isn't available anymore.

!