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Maybe this is not the right place to ask this, because everyone here is a musician, but how do non-musicians listen to music? Do they really hear the accompaniment or do they only listen to the melody, what do they notice and what not, etc. The only things I have read before were the articles about song writing (how to make your song popular).

I actually prefer this slick, clean look to the old brown one. Yes it could be seen as "cold" but I like its simplicity.

Jason, having not understood what exactly you're upset about, it's hard for me to give you a useful response to that. If you read my (admittedly long) post and continue to feel that your arguments are being blown off then either we have very differing definitions of what it means to acknowledge an argument, or else I'm simply unaware of what you're actually arguing. I'd like to work it out either way, so help me out here: what arguments of yours were blown off?

Hi guys, I'd like to offer some extended updates for you about this situation and the site improvements in general so you understand what's going on. I know the process has been stressful and we've been bad about communicating. You can blame that on me as it's my responsibility; in the spirit of apology, here's a birds-eye-view of what's been going on and, more importantly, why: THE STORY SO FAR You'll all recall that we've had a grand vision of an integrated system for years now. The first implementation of it via the "Network" was more ambitious than successful. We were attempting to mash together several technologies and then smooth out the resultant technical conflicts. Behind the scenes, an obscene amount of effort went into making that functional and while I know that it was not obvious, everyone on the staff was doing their best to make both the transition and the end result as amazing as possible for you. If we'd had more time and expertise to help out, it would have worked out fine, but luckily for us a new avenue opened up that we could not resist taking advantage of. As you may be aware of, we run on a technology called IP.Board. The board is only one of many modules that interconnect and can be used to build complex communities. The most recent switch for us was away from our custom Frankenstein network to a completely integrated content module made by the same people responsible for the forum technology. They are, in other words, designed to work together seamlessly right out of the box, which means that our focus has been only on customizing that integration to suit our needs. You may have noticed that we now have some very cool features for music submissions as a consequence, including an embedded PDF viewer (so you no longer have to download score files if you don't want to) and an embedded music player. These are the kinds of things we can focus on implementing now, and we will continue to explore more options for improving these systems. So when we talk about everything being "integrated" now, that's what we mean. The site now runs 100% on designed-to-work-together, heavily supported modules that we simply adapt to our community's needs. This means much less worry about fundamental functionality problems and more concern with basic usability ones. And if something doesn't work, there's a gigantic support network in place to help us sort things out. FINE, BUT WHY? So now the golden question: "Yes, Marius, but why and why should I care? Everything used to be amazing 5/3/10 years ago and I want it back!" First of all: everything was not better however many number of years ago, it was merely different and familiar. Maybe you knew more people. Maybe the forum technology was one you grew up being used to. If we never moved anything forward, there would be no progress and that's not how life — and certainly not how technology — works. Admittedly, our improvements were not consistently as stable, accessible, and functional as we may have hoped, but as frustrating as all those issues were, it's not constructive to complain about them idly. Especially since I trust that everyone on this board knows, at least on some level, that all the staff actually wants is to make YC the absolute best destination for learning and sharing music on the internet. Nothing we do is ever motivated by the desire to frustrate or impede your ability to use the site. It seems obvious, but I mention it because sometimes we receive complaints from people who appear to be under that impression. So why this particular update? Because it's a sustainable and expandable foundation on which we can continue to build without fear of compatibility and fundamental technical problems. Because it makes the site run far more efficiently so we can worry about usability and the experience of interacting with the site instead of tech support. Because, more than any other update, this one brings a gigantic set of improvements — both major and minor — to the architecture of the forum itself, which you'll notice in the small details of posting, reading, and navigating from any platform, browser, or mobile device you care to visit with. To address the topic of this thread more specifically, the sudden switch to blue was not a major aesthetic shift on our part; rather, it is the consequence of the IP.Board having been updated to its latest and greatest version, which ensures that we take full advantage of its capabilities. This technology is literally brand new and has significant changes under the hood that make our previous skin options incompatible. The blue skin is the forum default and is in place while we establish new skin options that are fully compatible. We're doing this to prevent the previous issue of some skins being fully functional and others not allowing you full access to the site's features. That's not going to happen anymore, but while we work on making sure that consistency is in place and that you have skin options to choose from, you'll have to bear with us and deal with this sterile little default theme for a bit longer. COMMUNICATION What's most important to me, and is in fact the core of my responsibility here, is how all this stuff affects the end user. In case there was any confusion over this, all of your complaints, thoughts, suggestions — constructive or otherwise — and assorted reactions do not escape my attention. I listen, I make notes (pages and pages worth), and I consider how best to bring these issues to the attention of those who can solve them. No matter how robust the system, most problems do not have a simple one-switch solution. So while it may seem as though we're not listening, we are, and all your suggestions for improvement are under advisement and in most cases are being actively worked on for implementation. I have probably not been transparent enough in the past with this, so henceforth I'll do my best to respond more individually to all your thoughts so that you at least know that we've made note of them. I apologize for not having done so before and hope you will forgive me. To give you some examples of things that you'll see implemented in the very near future (perhaps even by the time you read this message): The upload forums will now be categorized as they used to be, and accessible from the forum so submissions are no longer lumped together in one messy forum Despite what I said above, we have nevertheless made it a priority to provide you with at least an alternate colour scheme for this skin while we work on getting the rest in place Forums that are redundant are in the process of being merged (not archived or deleted) and re-organized to keep things streamlined and encourage activity by getting rid of ambiguous post destinations Music can now be very easily submitted from wherever on the site you are using the header widget that you'll notice beside your messages icon in the top right of your browser We're communicating with support regarding the chat bar and its annoying behaviour and errors and will endeavour to either fix it or provide a more functional replacement ASAP Those are things you can expect to see happening immediately. The list extends from there and includes many other usability concerns and extended features that we hope you will be patient enough to appreciate as we make them available. Having learned our lesson from previous updates, whatever new functionality comes, it will be rolled out gently, with plenty of communication and beta mentality, so that we ensure that your response is taken into account. MOVING FORWARD That being said, please realize that we cannot please everyone, and sometimes we need to make judgement calls that include changes to the way you interact with the site — for instance uploading via the submissions instead of the forum, which some people were very upset about — but these changes are necessary to ensure that we can keep moving forward, and even though they may seem initially unfamiliar, we hope that you'll give them a sincere chance before coming forth proclaiming that we've loosed catastrophic horrors onto the site. Hopefully that clarifies some of what's been going on for everyone and helps you rest assured that there is method to this perceived madness. If, despite all of this, you continue to be repulsed and wish to leave the site, then you are of course welcome to do so and we will miss your contributions. I only ask, respectfully, that you go with the admission that your departure is the result of a personal disagreement with the site's evolution and not the result of a sweeping generalization about the site being irreparably damaged. Thanks for reading through and please continue making suggestions and comments, either here on the forums or privately to me via PM if you want to save me the trouble of hunting things down. :happy: Love,

Agreed. It works now. It seems to be working well. The Main http://youngcomposers.com/ page looks great. The forum skin isn't ugly. Yes, so many changes - BUT, is should be obvious that the site and design are headed in the right direction. Also, Tokke - what the hell is your problem?! Anyone remember when Tokke didn't scallop and complain about minor bigs and details? THOSE were the good ol' days!

I remember when SSC was a woman.

The new design is a result of the software upgrade. We've basically eliminated all bugs we've had from the past year, and integration is now 100% throughout the site since I opted to use the entire Invision Suite for development. As far as design, I can purchase a few different skins, but IPB 3.2 is very new still, so we will have to wait a little until we start seeing some new different styles.

Oh come on you guys! Don't be ridiculous. Chopin is trying to finalize what he started a bit ago. You don't like the colors basically. The look and organization of this is basically spot on. Give it some time and he will have the different skins available again. Let's not just jump off the cliff. This doesn't change anything amongst us really. We still have the same group of people and we still have the same functionality. You can still do anything you could do a couple of days ago. Just calm down. Chopin will finally get settled on something and integrate everything together. Then we will have a finished product that will stay put for a while.