*A Welcome to the Shades of Blue Blog
Welcome to the new look Shades site and the Shades Blog.
The blog is a replacement for the forums on the old site and all registered users can post entries to it (and comment on other entries). The entries are arranged in alphabetical order (unlike the old forums which were date sorted). You can post by using the "Post an Entry" link that can be found in the left hand column of the site.
The Shades site has been completely revamped. In particular...
- Virtually all the content on site is now data driven, which doesn't probably mean that much to anyone but me - just makes it a lot easier to maintain.
- All the entries in the "Categories" of the site can now accept comments from registered users. This includes the Artist Biographies, Labels, Editorials, Reviews and Literature sections of the site. Entries are arranged in alphabetical order (and in the case of Artist entries, that's in the format First Name, Surname).
- A lot of what might be termed outdated material has been removed - some older stuff has stuck around, but that's mainly because it still seems relevant.
- All of the CD links have been updated, so as at the time of writing, anything recommended should be available in the UK.
- The Newswire, Desert Island and Links sections have been dropped - they weren't used much and, when they were, they became a haven for spammers everywhere.
Hope you enjoy the site (and post away!)
Welcome back......
I'd been visiting the site for a while and was wondering why the updates were getting less and less frequent. The new site is very "bloggy" (no criticism) and I think it's easier to get around - you've cut down on the clutter and if it means more articles and reviews all to the good. I may even start contributing :-)
I am going to miss the links section from the previous version - you'd be surprised how much I've learnt from visiting sites recommended on your links pages - any chance you'd reconsider reinstating a links section? Other than that, pretty good content, look forward to some new stuff!
Good job - shame you've lost some of the interactive stuff (e.g. desert island) although being able to comment on all the other pages is a good replacement. Like the design though - as oldmodman says, quite blog like but using Movable Type as a CMS has worked well here......and I guess some of the content is still outside MT, so you've integrated that stuff well
One thing I think would improve the blog (rather than the whole site) is a bit more information on the Blog index. Instead of just listing the entry it would be good to know if there are any replies / comments on the entries before going into each entry on the off chance. I can see why you've limited the detail on the other indexes (e.g. artist biogs etc.) but more info on the Blog index would definitely be worthwhile
With reference to the comment above from westgrandbaby...
It's taken me a while to figure out how to do this without screwing up the listings in the other categories but at last I've got there - the grey cells just don't work as well when you get to my age!
On the Shades Blog the title of the entry is now listed as before, but it now has details of the date and time posted, who posted the entry and how many comments have been made against that entry.
Hopefully this is what westgrandbaby was after :-)
Just to feedback and say yes that is what I was after, thanks - just means I can look and quickly see if there are any comments added to the topics I am interested in.
Would prefer the entries for this section to be in date order though - newest at the top :-)
For westgrandbaby...
Don't forget that if you tick the "Receive Email notification..." checkbox when you post a comment, you'll automatically get an email when anyone else posts to that entry. Saves you having to look at all the entries on a regular basis - not that I'm suggesting you don't regularly visit the site though :-)
As for the entries in date order request - haven't figured out how to do that yet without screwing up the other categories or rewriting all the templates. So I might pass on that one!
For westgrandbaby...postscript
Changed the setup so that when you're in a particular category (say the Shades Blog) the left sidebar menu displays the last 10 entries for that category - latest entries first. Hopefully, this will give you the best of both worlds :-)