The Future of Young Composers

I find nothing much to complain about wasted space on the forum part of the site - too little space and it could look cluttered. Especially on a laptop.

To me, YC is one amazing website. And yes... redesigning the website would be great. Perhaps to be faster to download. Sometimes... I get pissed off my all the layout. It's so... large. Bad!

And the colour... too much! Why not let one customize the colour? :)

Attached, an image demonstrating the wasted space. Not good! YC could be simplyfied and STILL be a great site!

The "wasted" space has to be aligned with all the columns. If you cut short one of the columns, the rest of the text will bleed outside of it. Then you just have a programming mess.

Just to give you a heads up, we are a good deal done with development. Most of the intelligence of this system has been complete. The only things left to do are:

1. Finalize the IM system (trying to see if we can integrate with the forum)
   
2. Design the payment plans
   
3. Redesign of the forum, and the network, for presentation.
   
4. Finalize the search (many elements work together to perform the search results)
   
5. Various sorting, and stats.
   
6. And minor tweaks and oversight

The network isn't complicated on the outside, (nothing like Facebook). It is in fact very simple on the outside, but the way it categorizes music, searches music, and enables composers to find music, should make it easier for us to connect to each other, and find the music we are looking for much more easily than depending on the forum alone. One of the frustrations on this site is keeping track of music. Another frustration is the lack of comments from burried posts.

The search engine which was built from scratch, also has an innovative way of searching for music fairly, and our music rating system is also unique (we have a system to combat voting fraud). Therefore the complex and innovative parts of this site cannot be seen visually at first glance, but as you add more media, contribute to the site, and check your music stats, it will be hopefully be appreciated and recognized as you dig in a little. People who contribute more to the site, will notice that their music will have a higher visibility than those who do not contribute at all.

Because of our new system, this depreciates our traditional way of creating a thread and attaching music to the thead. There will only be one place to upload music so we can take advantage of the built systems that handle categorization and music/member rankings. Because our old system will be outdated, we will no longer permit attachments, or linking to music once we launch. The reason is because we want all music to be centralized in one location and take advantage of our music visibility functions.

I hope to continue development by adding new features throughout the life of YC. We should be live with our first iteration of the network before Christmas!

This is such an amazing present! I cannot wait!! :D

Great! We'll all be happy to have everything set and done!!! :D

@ Chopin

Glad to hear everything is moving smoothly. I keep poking my head in once in a while, and even now it's a pretty cool system! Can't wait till the design and such is finialized!

Update: Just got word that we have about 3-4 weeks left, not counting testing :O

Most of this is done, we just have to worry about bug fixes, design, and a few backend things.

Moving along!

WOO HOOO.

Awesome, can't wait to see a new layout and IMs! Has anyone noticed that today we set the record for most members online in a day? That means our future is getting brighter!

That's actually because our admins sent out that mass PM about the Facebook fan page. Lots of people suddenly realised this site was still crackin' when they got an email in their inbox telling them they had a PM on YoungComposers.com :)

YC is one of the least cluttered places I frequent on the web.

I liken your complaint to someone on the beach, surrounded by people being eaten by sharks, complaining about stepping on a rock.

Compared to facebook, myspace, and the like, this place is skin and bones. I can't imagine it being cpu-intensive or anything like that...

I second that. It's great that bandwidth-light pages actually load quickly, and I can actually find what I want because there aren't hundreds of buttons and icons cluttering up the page. Simpler is always better.

One tiny suggestion - a review of the number of forums. I think the forums are becoming overspecialized or under used. Maybe not now ... best to do this sometime after the changes to YC have taken place

Never mind - it looks like you are way ahead chopin with the idea of centralizing posting of music. Are you thinking of something along the lines of soundclick or composers forum set up?

Our system will be a little more unique, in that you music upload music from the network, but you choose a dropdown menu (this menu will reference instrumentation, which secretly will place your post in a forum without you even realizing it). The forum will be the comment engine, but this will also be behind the scenes. Reviews can thus occur either in the forum directly (for those of you who dislike change), or you can post comments directly in our network. The amount of forums we will have for uploads, will correspond to the number of instrumentation categories.

Well I don't quite understand your description.

But I will say that the discussion and performance and paid projects etc forums that do not involve commenting on a work are the ones that ought to be reviewed for how often they are used and efficacy. I feel we have a ton of these that are not being used to their greatest potential or are redundant.

Our site design has been drafted. Let me know what you think.

Our site design has been drafted. Let me know what you think.

Looks good.... :)

Is this for the "young composers" subsite, or the main-overall site? If the latter, are we trying to get away from the "classical" connotations ... ?? :whistling:

This is the main site, which will be either "DoTune" or "MyCoda" or....

Young Composers will remain untouched, it will continue being a public forum. I will try to get the template to match the site.

I am not trying to get away from the classical connotation. As you can see from the design, I want to add onto the classical connotation. I do feel, Young Composers will remain a very strong classical culture on the forum (and I decided to keep the forum on YC for this reason), and the network will invite a broader audience. The overall theme should remain musical composition, as the web design and of course functionality, should suggest.

YC will be the brains, or the hub of the network, and in fact, control the network to a degree. All music uploads can be done from the network, but all music reviews will be seen through YC. Think of YC like a one sided mirror. We can see them, but they can't see us :) So while we are expanding our audience by using a new name, different branding strategies and a new pitch, YC will be on close watch behind the scenes.

Are you planning on launching a beta site for testing purposes? If that is the case, I would like to volunteer in advance to test and report any bugs found.

We're going to be testing the site on Thursday or Friday. I will need a handful of people to help me find problems.

I'm happy to beta test too. :happy:

Thanks Chopin,

Let me know via PM if I can be of any assistance. *crosses fingers that the new site will be virtually free of any major bugs* :)

p.s. @ Marius: Very cool avatar! Looks great man.

The home of our network will be on Record Hall. Thank you all for your feedback regarding the site name. I know some of you will like the name Record Hall, and some of you will hate it, but it is a neutral musical name with a "hint" of art composition associated with it, and this is what I was going for. YC however will remain the same, and it will continue to do what it is best at; being a forum. The only difference you will see here may be a site design change, and the fact that we are switching to Invision Board. However, it will continue to remain our major public communication hub. I will create a new forum that will be intended for network errors, new ideas, design flaws, etc.

I will keep you posted as to when we will begin our initial beta testing. Even after our initial beta testing, I think I am going to make our network private, or invite only for the first few months. I am afraid that if we make it an open network from the start, then it breaks down because of some unforeseen circumstance, that this could be quite damaging. Thus, this group will continue to "beta test" as a private community until the beginning of the new year. I also have to get an idea of server space and bandwidth usage for the default, free membership. As of now, I have no clue what the server space requirements, and bandwidth bill will be.

Good job Chopin, I hope the site will turn out fantastic! I'm here if you need any help as well (I'll offer my services as a beta tester if you need some? I've had experience on DeviantArt, so I know basically what to do)

Also, will we already be users on Record Hall (me as impresario, you as chopin etc.) or will we have to register again?

The home of our network will be on Record Hall. Thank you all for your feedback regarding the site name. I know some of you will like the name Record Hall, and some of you will hate it, but it is a neutral musical name with a "hint" of art composition associated with it, and this is what I was going for. YC however will remain the same, and it will continue to do what it is best at; being a forum. The only difference you will see here may be a site design change, and the fact that we are switching to Invision Board. However, it will continue to remain our major public communication hub. I will create a new forum that will be intended for network errors, new ideas, design flaws, etc.

I will keep you posted as to when we will begin our initial beta testing. Even after our initial beta testing, I think I am going to make our network private, or invite only for the first few months. I am afraid that if we make it an open network from the start, then it breaks down because of some unforeseen circumstance, that this could be quite damaging. Thus, this group will continue to "beta test" as a private community until the beginning of the new year. I also have to get an idea of server space and bandwidth usage for the default, free membership. As of now, I have no clue what the server space requirements, and bandwidth bill will be.

please keep young composers or at least pick something other than "record hall", even "mycoda" is better.

anyway, i would like to test the beta site.

Also, will we already be users on Record Hall (me as impresario, you as chopin etc.) or will we have to register again?

Everyone will be members of Record Hall, there is no need to sign up again. This is why this project was a bit complex. It would be nearly impossible to promote the network with my limited budget (without the help from VC funding) if it wasn't for this Young Composers integration.

please keep young composers or at least pick something other than "record hall", even "mycoda" is better.

Young Composers is here to stay. I am sorry you dislike the name Record Hall, but it seems to be the most fitting, at this time. Neutral, and memorable, is what we need.

I will call out to you all, who are willing to help me beta test once the time has arrived.