I really like the changes on the news page Rob, though I'd question the use and effect of the light grey type in places, but excellent idea to have a section (on the right) highlighting the important new releases complete with thumbnails.
There's one thing I remain unsure about though and that's the initial Metamatic.com page which now has only a textless graphic acting as the link. This threw me at first, it was a bit like arriving at an entrance that's missing the door number, now everytime I come to it I feel a unsure if anyone's going to be at home, (something that's also still compounded by the lack of seeing any user names logged into the forum since the alteration last spring).
The blankness of the opening page confused me too. As nothing happened for a bit and there was no "click here to enter" indication, I gave up and assumed the site was down for maintenance. Since then I'd been going straight to the forum by typing in
www.metamatic.com/forum and it was only when reading the post above I realised you can access the forum through the opening page after all.
One other thing that surprises me is the lack of new posters visiting. You would think after all John's collaborations with all these new and happening artists that some of their fans might have been tempted over here. I have no idea how the average search engine works, but I'd espect anyone typing "John Foxx" into google would be sent here?
I'm really pleased that you like the right-hand side bar which includes all of the key news about
Forthcoming Releases,
Recent Releases and
Forthcoming Events. I'm also particularly happy with the
A-Z which in itself was one of the key reasons behind the redesign - a way for visitors to find out more by being able to search against specific items. While the accompanying pages are quite sparce at the moment - I've tried to bring across at least as much information as was available on the previous version of the site. This hasn't been possible in all instances, but take a quick look at the page for the
Metamatic album, and you will see a number of the versions of that album listed - all of which take you to pages which will (in time) provide more 'release specific' information. The
A-Z currently lists things like track titles and single / album releases, but the intention is for it to grow into a full and thorough
John Foxx index.
The 'light grey' text will in some instances (though not all) be a link - this will be particularly useful when track titles are shown. Also the 'breadcrumb', located towards the top of some pages (especially in the
Discography), should help with the navigation throughout the site.
Unfortunately,
The Forum has had to take a bit of back-seat to enable me to concentrate on re-building the rest of the site. There's already been quite a bit of feedback about it's useability - and I'll try to incorporate as many of those suggestions / comments as I can. The main problem is that the 'upgraded version' (which our ISP insisted that we have to reduce the number of spam attacks it was attracting) has so many 'whistles and bells' that any changes to it are incredibly complex when compared to the previous version. One option was to start afresh with new forum software, but that would mean that all of the existing content would be lost - and I certainly didn't want that. In an ideal world
The Forum would 'look and feel' like the previous version, but with all of the enhanced security that the new version offers. I'm currently speaking with the software developers to see how that can best be acheived.
As for the rest of the site. The 'blank' opening page was out of necessity as I simply ran out of time if I was going to upload a 'new look' site on the 1st of January - which is what I really wanted to do. I will endeavour to add in some appropriate 'click here to enter' text in the next few days when time permits.
Rob
