YC fixes many bugs, and launches a series of new tools

Please join this group if you are interested in shaping YC and offering suggestions and criticism to help improve this community even further. As you all know, we've been through some development, and I felt the development didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped last year. As a result, I took the liberty of learning programming, and while it was a long and arduous process it paid off because I can implement your ideas on the spot now. As you can see, the network has been eliminated, and we are using one platform to power the community. This allows for a true integrated experience.

Here is a list of our changes so far:

• Improved homepage
  
  • General Homepage: real activity tracking, YC explanation, charts
    
  • User Homepage: Tracks your habits in order to suggest new music and forum topic suggestions. Provides a view chart of your uploaded music by members only (no guests), updated in real time.
    

  [*]Improved Music Navigation

  • There is now an easy way to navigate through music on the homepage. Powered by ajax, members can now peruse through works without leaving the forum home. Furthermore, new works for the day are annotated by a red notification.
    

  [*]Improved Uploader

  • We allow linking to youtube
    
  • We support multi-movements (both mp3 and youtube)
    
  • We support pdf embedding via Google reader
    
  • And finally, please read our upload guide.
    

  [*]Color Coded Directory

  • Offers a faceted navigation, where users can drill down through specific categories in order to find specific music.
    
  • Can narrow down the search by choosing specific composers via an auto updated autocomplete drop down.
    
  • Red color indicates pieces needing a review, Yellow indicates pieces with 1-2 reviews, and Green indicates pieces with 3 or more reviews
    
  • Pieces are ordered by latest comment, not by latest submission
    

  [*]Autocomplete Search

  • Can search through music or forum. As a member types, an autocomplete box pops up to help aid the searcher. Music and Forum Topics are ranked by many relevance factors. Click the "search guide" to the left of the search box for search tips.
    

  [*]Comment Map

  • If you are curious to see registered members who commented and/or viewed the works on this site, navigate through the comment map. Mouse over the box and wait for a popup to display. Green members indicate members who commented, regular text indicates viewers. Mouse over the names to retrieve a popup of each members list of works.
    

  [*]Similar Topics/Music

  • A really neat feature added to YC recently is the similar topics/music module. When you create a topic or music file, similar topics will display to the right of the post. This is a great way to discover old similar topics that may interest you, or other similar compositions that may have gotten lost or buried.
    

  [*]Instant Messenger

  • Our instant messenger allows anyone who is online the ability to instant message in real time. This replaces our pager, if you remember the site in 2005-2006.
    

  [*]Groups

  • A great way to manage competitions and lessons is through our new groups module, recently added.
    

Hi,

First of all, congrats for the improvements, I know it is a lot of work and my sincere props for that!

Why am I not anymore on this website? The answer is simple:

I was coming here for one particular reason: The category forums! While I am a video game oriented composer, it was really useful to come here and chill on the video game music forum. It was a lot of fun to listen to people stuff etc...and now that you removed all that, it is just not as interesting as it was anymore :s

Would it be possible to get back our separated forums...I find that it was one of the biggest strength of this website and I really don't understand why it is all gone...or maybe I didn't check the new website enough and I'm passing beside something that I don't see?

One more thing, the graphical design was way better before, your new website logo looks like a logo for kids(I think something more serious would be more appropriated).

The buttons are not enough visually in evidence, like the button join group which I was searching a lot...to finally see that it was a gray button saying that I can't join the group?? oh...wait...I have to be connected first, to see that button correctly..!...o ok now I see.....You see it is really not enough simple for a person who comes by on your website for the first time...What you could do is put a big button JOIN GROUP and everybody could click on it and if you are not connected a pop up shows up and ask: already a member? sign in first to be able to join the group...or not a member? Register etc.....

For the moment it is all what I have to say...thanks a lot for your hard work and consideration.

Regards,

Dominic

Hello,

We still have our category forums, if you look on our forum homepage, you will see a music navigation tab. The categories are listed right there, under the shoutbox. It is true we redid the site to allow for better categorization, which is how our directory is built, but this is better for the long run. You can head over to the directory and search for music this way, you will see how convenient it is now to search through music. In fact, this is a better way to find music you like, because you can drill down through the categories.

Furthermore, an easy way to upload music is by clicking on the "upload music" button located towards the top of this site. A dropdown menu will appear, and you can add your music this way, while being on any part of the site. The old method was to click through the category forum, and create a topic, and attach an attachment.

As far as aesthetics, I am going to work on a better design, but for now we are stuck with the default IPB theme since IPB 3.2 is still very new, and not many themes are out yet for this version.

Now I have a question for you. Do you like our current forum topic discussions? What topics would you add, if you were running the site.

Thanks for your feedback!

Hi,

I saw the categories after I wrote my message, sorry for that.

For the topics, I don't know if there is already one but a ''Services and Trade'' topic for people who want to talk business is always something good to have.

For the moment it is the only idea coming to my mind:P

All the best!

Dominic

If I may say something from a perspective of the one who is not a frequent visitor but has observed the website for a while.

Introducing new features certainly requires a lot of work, testing etc. and I appreciate the commitment and the hard work.

But is it really always required?

1. Are all the new features really appreciated and used by users? My guess is that some of the features are probably not used.

2. Are the frequent layout and navigation changes confusing people? My guess is that they are. I personally don't want to learn new stuff every couple of months just because I'm like the majority of web users (that are lazy and used to receiving an answer in a few clicks).

3. Are the constant look and feel changes dilluting the identity of the website? Yes, most certainly. How many websites / companies do you know that change their colour scheme / logo every now and then? None because once you have a brand you have to make sure it is consistent and grows. You don't dillute it by changing its face every now and then. Look at the big guys in any industry. The good logos are strong and unchanged for years

Other than that, I still like and visit the forum. I'm just discouraged by the changes that I see all the time. The problem with the web users is that once they get used to something, they start to like it and feel comfortable with it. If you change it all the time they may feel alienated and discouraged (that actually might be what happened to me at some point). Especially when some of the users are not super confident in the first place anyway. That's because we're dealing with composers here, some are better than others, some are not really young and it might be easy to scare people away if you're not cautious (unless you want to scare away the less confident ones. Then it's fine ;).

Again, I appreciate the hard work and commitment because I do know how much work it can take :)

Best,

J.

Actually, the most recent change most likely resulted from the numerous code errors in the actual server. I don't REALLY know anything about the technical part of the website, but I know the old appearance was slower and WAY more buggy than this one.

The new looks really cool, slick. Especially the left half of the page. The right feels somewhat more cluttered. But with new things you need a bit time to adjust. I hope this one stays for some time. Stability is a virtue.

But thanks to the guys working on this one

Stability is a virtue.

Can't agree more :)

If, for example the forum's using the Invision community engine now, stay with it and make it all look stable and consistent.

Other than that, be careful and thoughtful when adding new features. Sometimes it's not about how many things you add but how many you can remove, to make the user experience more smooth and focused.

Can't agree more :)

If, for example the forum's using the Invision community engine now, stay with it and make it all look stable and consistent.

Other than that, be careful and thoughtful when adding new features. Sometimes it's not about how many things you add but how many you can remove, to make the user experience more smooth and focused.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!