View Full Version : Changes
5/21 - Removed the possibility of adding an album to your favorites, removing, then adding again to boost it up the album charts.
- The album stars no longer horribly clash with a gray background on the main pages
- Length of comments and new albums are now standard on the main and genre pages. Click on next or previous on the main page will not lead you to a genre page entitled 'All'.
- An error has been fixed which allowed previous buttons even on the first album page
5/23 - Reduced the size of the header by 20 pixels to make the content appear closer to the top
- Changed the favorite bands page to reflect the # of reviews for that band, and the correct updated times. Also sorted alphabetically
- Fixed an error where a band,album, or reviewer was added twice to the favorites list
- Per request, underlined links on the album reviews pages
- Added album covers to the album favorites list and sorted by band name alphabetically
5/25
- Increased the character limit on album names from 60 to 75.
- Added featured reviews on left hand side of main page.
- Staff picks (featured) will now have short paragraphs explaining the picks on the reviews themselves.
- Changed moderator controls to allow supers to moderate
- Added a few more comments visible on each genre page (Less clicking next/previous)
5/26
- Added 'User Album Rating'. Now you can rate an album without having written a full review. This rating will be displayed in all your comments on the album, and will be averaged to provide an average user rating for each album. This will be tweaked in the future as necessary.
5/27
- Fixed bugs in user album ratings that allowed you to only rate 1 album
- Changed display of user album ratings to small stars
5/28
- Made user rating stars look less strange
- Added a page listing all of the featured albums
5/30
- Changed the header to save space and allow for more genres to be listed
- Added Pop and Jazz as main genres
- Fixed error where album charts would display albums not in that genre.
6/5
- Added a bunch of new genres, and tweaked the existing genres
- Added a link to this forum "Feedback" at the bottom of the page
6/7
- Fixed error where comments pages would have empty pages, or incorrect # of pages
- Removed View All Bands from the main page due to the large number of bands
- Began work on performance issues to make sputnik faster
6/8
- Worked on adding release date to albums
- Images of newly released albums now appear on the main page of sputnik
6/30
Added an "All-Time Charts" Feature accessible underneath the weekly charts. This displays the albums that are on the most favorite lists sitewide per genre. Enjoy.
Added release date to albums that have them
7/05/05
- Added support for vbcode on the main page
- Misc changes to latest albums
- Added user rating to the main page for the latest comments section. This replaces 'Views', as it is more useful
- Added user album ratings to band pages
- Added release dates for albums on band pages (for those albums that have them)
- Added release YEAR to main page for albums that have release dates. The release year is being used to prevent clutter, and it should be pretty distinguishable which album reviews are current and which are from past history, etc
- Changed the letter '1' to '1-9'
- Updated 'All' to 'All Genres'
- Increased the number of albums on weekly charts (genre pages) to 20
7/06
- Added a feature so that mods could merge albums
7/18
- The new releases section sometimes only showed one album, due to the other albums lacking images. The section has been revamped as follows:
Only albums with images will be displayed (4 in total)
If no new albums have images, the box will not appear
- Mods now have to approve the first review of a new user before it appears on the new reviews list.
- Mods can now mass delete all comments by a user (to combat spam and trash)
- Added an instruction to the recommended albums list
7/20
- Updated the Mxtabs new cd reviews list to not include reviews that have not been approved.
7/22
- Fixed an error where the last page of comments would not appear for some reviews
- Added a jump to last post link. On the reviews list, clicking on the red double arrow will jump you to the latest comment made on that review.
7/25
- Misc. graphical changes
- Clicking on 'rating' under recent comments now sorts the reviews by rating, and not last post date. Please note that by making this feature, I have realized that an inordinate number of albums have a rating of 5 stars... fanboy 'ratings' aren't truly helpful
- Added comment pages browsing at top of comments
- Modified the new releases section to show the album title and the user rating
7/26
- Fixed a bug in the # of comment pages
- Major addition today:
- Recommended albums have been reworked. A reviewer can still recommend albums as before, but they appear below the review, as suggestions. The recommended albums have been replaced in the box with 'Other Members Liked:'. This function looks at all the members who have the album on their 'favorites' list, and looks at their other favorites. It adds up the top favorites cross-referenced among all these members. This provides a quick jump to albums that other people also liked... which I feel is a great helpful feature. Of course, people will have to be more active with favorites lists, but I don't see this as a problem. For those who can't conceptualize the new feature, it is similar to the feature on iTunes "Other members bought," except this concerns favorites instead of purchasing. As members continue to use the favorites list the relevency will increase.
I might do this with bands as well further down the road.
Enjoy.
7/27
- Removed the ability to rate your own reviews
- Added the corresponding 'other members liked' feature to the band pages as well. More people will have to add bands to their favorites to make this effective.
7/29
- Removed the manual recommend albums and recommend bands
8/1
- Tweaked the reviewer rankings slightly to favor higher review ratings over # of reviews submitted.
- Added new profile/usercp feature: You can now view a list of all the user album ratings a particular user (including yourself) has given. To use br3ad_man as an example: http://www.sputnikmusic.com/uservote.php?memberid=66789
- Addded a user's review ratings (ie, when listing the reviews by the user it shows their rating as well) to the profile screen.
8/2
- Changed some text colors
- Showed 10 cross-referenced bands instead of 5
- Changed the album charts to update more frequently
- Click on User Review Rating now displays a list of everyone who rated the album and their votes (popups required)
8/5
- Fixed a bug where a mod or a reviewer editing their review would bump the review to the top of the list, and report that a new comment was made.
- Fixed a bug that messed up the album charts. If a band was added to the favorites list, sometimes this increased the ranking of an unrelated album. Things should make more sense now.
- Alt pop renamed to soul
- Renamed the 'Did You Find this Review Helpful' to 'Was this Review Well Written?' This will help clarify things. The top will still display the 'helpful' link
- Increased the allowed comment size by 300 characters
- deuglified the all-time charts
- Improved the accuracy of the search
- Added support for half-star user ratings. Previously it rounded to the nearest star, now the ratings round to the nearest half star. This change is sitewide.
8/14
- Lessened the boost for favorites in album charts, due to unbalance
- Fixed yet another bug in the album charts
8/16
- Fixed an error in the sitewide charts that did not account for subgenres.
8/25
- Expanded number of comments per page from 15 to 20
- Added 'new and notable' feature for the genre pages that lists the latest 5 albums (by releasedate) user rated 4 or higher
8/26
- Fixed a bug in the sub genres page that prevented you from viewing more reviews than were on the first page.
- Changed the genre pages so that it no longer pops you to the top of the page while scrolling recent comments.
8/27
- Changed the subgenre navigation to be in the main header and not on the left.
- The genre link on the band pages now leads to the genre page
- Changed the look of the band pages
9/02
- Release date changed. The month and day are only displayed for 2005 releases, while everything else just shows the year.
- Made notice of this on the submit form
- By clicking on more under new releases, you can see the fifty latest releases for that genre.
9/05
- Mod command: See who voted on whether a review was good or not
- Mod command: Ban user from posting on sputnik
9/07
- Moved the user album ratings to the album box.
9/13
- Album charts added back to sub genre pages
Some genre changes today:
- Removed the Doom Metal genre due to only 6 bands being included.
- Removed the Acoustic Rock genre (not relevant/confused with folk)
- Removed the Classic Rock genre (should be under Rock)
- Removed the Rap Rock genre (too few bands / dead genre)
9/14
- The site was as black as death. Things are a little lighter now. The design might change sometime in the future.
- attempted to remove some visual clutter from the genre pages
- As a trial, the first new review no longer appears in large form with text. A lot of this text was unprofessional and screwed up the page. Additionally, this was distracting. I am open to returning it, but this is as a trial basis
9/17
- New page layout for genre pages. Still working on perfecting this
9/19
- Fixed a bug where new reviews were not displaying
9/28
- Fixed a bug where mods could not make a certain review appear first
- Fixed a bug where the band would not display correctly on reviews
- Fixed a bug with the Metallica reviews
- The search for albums now displays the band name as well as the album name in the results
9/29
- So that new reviews can be seen more readily, after the first three reviews being presented in full text, all of the rest will be in small format. You should be able to see all the latest reviews pretty fast by clicking next.
10/07
Mostly visual stuff today with the review pages.
10/11
- Mod option: unban user
10/13
- Fixed a bug where if a user selected average, it would give a rating of poor
10/15
- It is now possible to change your album rating. To do this, just use the rating form again, and it will change your vote.
- Album page now displays your vote in the ratings section
11/04
- Misc bugs fixed
- WYSIWYG added to new review
- Feed of relevant reviews added to mxtabs (increased exposure for reviews)
- Not being logged in now directs you to a login page, rather than an error message
12/03
- Some changes that should reduce load somewhat
- Worked on the new member issue
- Album title length increased from 50 to 75
Updates Today:
- Album ratings on the main page round to .1 instead of .5 to show more difference between albums.
- You can now add an album without adding a review. This album will appear under the band page and can be rated and added to favorites, etc
- If there is only one search result, it will jump to that page
- New news section added / still being revamped, modified
Add music news page (Design not complete)
Some performance enhancements
- Came up with the new design for the genre pages, to be implemented tomorrow
Layout redesign today
New feature: album rankings, can choose from this year, all time, or any year, per genre
Added genres Grind and Post-Hardcore to Punk, dropped genre Street Punk
- You can now edit your own news items
- Misc coding optimization
- Added a sputnik skin for the forums
Made a change to stop idiots from giving top rated albums (superb and above) ratings of awful in order to move them down the charts.
The best example of this was a top rated alt/indie band (4.8 user rating, 5 reviewer rating) that a metalhead gave a 0. Pretty uncalled for.
- Added limited vbcode to band descriptions (bold, italic, underline)
- More speed optimization (cached the rankings)
- Added latest 5 comments made by a user, viewable under the profile. Right now this doesn't jump to the exact post, but just the review.
The annoying bug where if you are not logged in it gave an error message has been fixed on most pages, it now redirects to the login form. The login form has also been updated.
You can no longer access the User CP if you are not logged in.
- 6:28PM Fixed another login bug
- Fixed a security hole
- A members favorite bands now appear in their profile as a comma seperated list, a la facebook. This should make it a lot easier to see, and the old interface was pretty ugly.
- Bug in user ratings fixed.
- User ratings should now return you to the correct review
Coding optimization today - all behind the scenes stuff
Albums now sorted by releasedate in the bands list
Added a cool new feature in user profiles today:
By judging your activity on the site, I made an equation that determines your primary musical genres, and graphs them accordingly. Check it out!
Your musical genre now displays 5 genres, and includes your favorites lists and your album reviews as well as the ratings
Ported over a lot of forum profile features to the sputnik profile
Band image support added. This is moderated like other band changes. Still in beta stage, and does not yet appear in news.
Add away
- Band image now in news items
- News page restyled
- Error in searching for a band/album with a # fixed
- Made a few changes to the recommended albums:
- Now uses user ratings instead of favorites lists only
- Now only suggests albums in correlated genres, this will be tuned later
- Unfortunately, many of the albums listed are the most popular, hurting people's chances to find new stuff... perhaps I could add something where you can set the level of obscurity you want.
- Changed look of the profile pages a bit
- Fixed a bug in displaying your own favorite albums
- Adding stuff to favorites lists now occurs in a popup window
These changes should help make the new recommendations, if not perfect, more useful than before (When you'd have RATM suggested for Jack Johnson)
The album playlist feature has been revamped:
- In your user cp/my profile, you will now be able to rank albums. You can move them up or down the list, with #1 signifying the highest ranking. When user's view your profile, the albums will be sorted by ranking.
- This feature is still being tweaked.
- Possibly you might be able to write a blurb about each album, or come up with custom tags, such as 'what I'm currently into', 'all time favorites', etc. But this may be a long shot. In the meantime, rank your albums if you so desire. Remember, albums can share rankings (there can be 3 #1s, etc)
Check it out here:
http://www.sputnikmusic.com/profile.php?memberid=1
Basically, if you are into a song/album right now, it's pretty easy to let others know. Right now 6 appear at a time, and are viewable by everyone looking into your profile.
This is for songs and albums that are not necessarily your 'favorites', but stuff that you are currently hooked on.
The server automatically tests if a review exists, and if so, it forwards you to that page when you click. If not, it checks for a band and redirects there... if there is nothing in the database, it just leaves it blank.
In the future, you can view what you were digging in past weeks/months, and there will be some form of sitewide charts taking into account what people are listening to.
This feature is sort of like a manual last.fm, but it is also more subjective, as you get to choose what's stuck in your head, not just based on repeat plays.
- Misc changes to profile looks
- Band favorites page under my profile now comes with a search box
- Band Members feature added, still working on the details
- Clicking on 'View Edit History' under a band will show who edited it over time, starting today. Not as detailed as I originally planned, but this should be an effective way to give credit.
- Added a band URL field to band profiles
- News pages now track the number of times article has been viewed
- You can now edit your diglist titles
Drop down subgenre navigation
- fixed IE drop down bug
- Adding a new album now requires mod approval
- Reviewing an album now sets your user rating for that album as well.
- Added count of band profiles edited to profile
Note: I am switching over to working on lessons for the time being
- Fixed bug in band edit: paragraphs should now display properly when edited (previous descriptions will have to be re-edited)
- Style changes today
- Spacing should now appear in comments
- After replying to a review that has multiple pages, you will now be returned to your comment instead of back to the beginning of the review
- You can now delete your own user album ratings if you so wish
- Hopefully did something to alleviate some of the slashes in tracklists
- Latest member comments in profile now jumps to the correct page
- You can now search for band members
- Added Browse Bands option to genre page to replace the letters for casual lookers
- Changed the album playlist rankings to be much faster and easier to use.
Currently I've limited it to your top 10 (this is because I don't feel people will want to sift through every single album and rank them).
The way it works... in your usercp, under album playlist, you will see 10 numbers, with a drop down box next to them. Simply select the album you want in that slot, and click submit. You can leave albums blank also. I just tried this and it took less than one minute (the hardest part was deciding which albums to put where).
This top 10 appears under your profile under 'Album Playlist' and the top 5 will soon appear in your main profile.
Morrissey also suggested additional lists, which you could title yourself. Ie... bands I saw live 2005, my favorite metal albums, etc... this is a strong possibility and I will look into it for the future. Your suggestions are welcome.
- Fixed search for musicians bug
- If a url is blank, it will no longer display "http://" with no web address
- Added the dig count to the albums page
- Removed the credit for band bios while I think of a solution.
- 2005 rankings on main page now require 5 user ratings
- Added option to click 'dig it' on an album, for an automatic, rather than manual process. The layout for the new digging box is still being considered: it is not final
- Additional comment pages on news items now work
- You can now sort news by latest reply as well as by news date
- News comment bug fixed
- In an effort to make the recommended lists slightly better, the most popular bands have been banned. Therefore, not every alt/indie review will recommend Radiohead, and not every metal review will recommend metallica. These bands are so well known that having them in the recommendations seems silly anyways.
The banned list: Coldplay, Metallica, Green Day, Nirvana, Rage Against the Machine, RHCP, Tool, Radiohead.
This can be expanded as necesssary. As time increases and we get more users/ratings, the recommend lists should continue to improve.
- Still working on the band descriptions, they are currently useless
- Full charts feature re-added to the site
- Re-added the all time charts to the site, viewable under the weekly charts box, along with the expanded weekly charts
- 0 Ratings removed
- Band bio credit re-added... there are now checkboxes telling if you are making a big change, or a minor one. Obviously you won't get credit for minor, but it's appreciated
- Added profile pictures. Your avatars will remain for your posts, but you can now upload a 150 x 150 picture for your profile only
- Brightened the text on the main pages for dark monitors
- Fixed a problem with digging an album
typing
http://sputnikmusic.com/rock
will get you to the rock page, etc. This will soon be extended to all genres
- Changed the band edit system on both the mod and user sides (mostly behind the scenes). Errors should be less
- Added weekly ranks to the albums... a little more statistics never hurt anyone :)
- Site reskinnin & skin switcher today
- Improved the weekly charts to allow more movement
- Journals added today. You can access your journal under your usercp, and access others under the profiles. You can comment under other people's journals, this also acts as a sort of shoutbox. Currently no support for multiple pages of journals or journal comments, but this will be fixed in the next week or so as the journals begin to get more use
- Musings also added (full page articles you can write)
All of this stuff is still BETA
- Journal comments form changed. Now comments are made per journal entry, to keep things on track. I'm considering having a separate shoutbox, with the old format
- HTML ability added to journals and muses
You now access your profile as follows
sputnikmusic.com/user/yournamehere
http://www.sputnikmusic.com/user/mx
The 'favorite albums' feature has been suspended, because as Jom pointed out, it is superfluous, as you can already rate albums and dig them if you are currently into them. Although an all time favorites list is valuable, a list of your top rated albums is pretty much the same thing.
Now you can add new albums instantly after you have gone through the album approval process once
Your album ratings are now ranked alphabetically as well as by rating
Overhauled registration
Usernames with spaces now have profiles
Reorganized main page
Big change today:
You can now rate albums from any band page, as well as on the review page.
Bug Fix: You can now submit albums from the band page correctly.
Bug Fix: New albums without a tracklist will no longer display the example. Additionally, if the release date hasn't been filled out, it will no longer default to 01/01/05
- Latest albums for each genre now appear in the genre forums here at MF
- Double spacing should be removed for new news items
- Band picture upload fixed
Switched around the navigation & search box
News section revamped completely, you can now switch between news genres on the main page, and there are featured news items.
Muses are now linked from your profile, and have been placed in the right bar of the main page
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