I think setting up a user benifets thing for posts is good..and the reward could be you move up in levels...like you start at like...Newbie or somehting that says below your name, and you can move up to like Guitar Wizard (lol...zachs login name)...and stuff like that.

Well I maybe we dont need an ENTIRE re-write of the site, maybe just some new 'flash' and stuff to encourage people to stay and read...
But we do/possibly/need some ads maybe. Maybe just one at the bottom of the page?

sure. I second that

...but ads are not part of the philosophy of this site. This site is for free.

the top posters can be seen on the front page. Well I know that I am a wizard and a newbie but who cares?

Okay, I can understand exactly why you have your particular opinion, TK.  I just think that we've demonstrated just how little we get done when there's no funding to support somebody to maintain the site.

We've yapped and yapped about the kinds of changes we'd like to see, but nobody will ever be able to stay on top of this unless they devote a lot of time to BandAMP.  And nobody will devote a lot of time to it unless there's some sort of benefit.  Nobody's dayjob will profit from babysitting BandAMP all day everyday.

Besides, I've never said that the site would no longer be "free".  Facebook is "free".  I fail to see how seeking some support from 3rd-party sites is a bad thing.

Ultimately, the kind of rewrite that I'm petitioning for is much bigger than just little extra blocks on the main front page.  I'm going to work on a conceptual design image (non-coded, just photoshop'd) to show the kinds of things I'm talking about.

As far as Downchuck's progress goes (sorry, i forgot to address this in the first post), I'm afraid that we're eventually going to wind up with the very same problem that we've had since Mud left..

I respect the man a lot-- anybody who takes on that project has guts.  However, the last thing we need is another closet-coder who doesn't have anybody else in contact with him.  Coders like that are talented, sure, but THEY lack the communication that you've said that we need.  If the coder lacks that communication, how can the site ever become what the voice of the community says?

I think that with some initial investment, we should get BandAMP running on our own schema; Our own database, servers, etc etc.  I know that's a big thing to suggest, but as a full-time programmer I know that starting with a clean slate is going to yield better, faster, and more effective results than trying to survive hourly updates from the bandamp database.

I know that I was lukewarm about helping out before, but I'm serious about it this time around.  I've got the resources and knowledge to tackle this thing, and if we can never get features implemented into this site because the code/coder (notice the singular "coder") is out of touch with what's going on, then is it really any wonder that the community isn't sticking together?  We're not getting what we want out of BandAMP.  It's that simple.  (Yet so complex to fix.)

True true..
For now...at least at the moment, BandAMP may be ok, but in the long-run, I think we should completly redisgn bandamp...a complete overhaul.
Take Mud's stuff, and make it better.
Speaking of Mud...whyd he leave?

I guess what I am saying is, is that we shoud leave this site up and running, but work on a BandAMP 2.0 like TLS suggested. Then we can compare them and the codes, and make changes and make things all for the better.

He was a developer for a major lyrics site, so he was well-off enough to make bandamp (free of ads, one might mention.. "pure", in his words).  After a while, he was trying to move along to new things, and so he left the servers to us, and said that he'd be willing to still maintain the site's needs (like more storage space, when that became necessary).  In the end, he turned the code over to us a few months ago.

It's probably easiest if you just read his post:

Power to the People

Needless to say, his departure was not on bad terms; not at all

@TLS: That works,too.

Gives me people a bit more choice in this pretty much choiceless world.



But we need need to take our time with this. Last time I think we tried to hurry it along and then it just sort of got us into a train wreck mess. So time and a lot of patience will be needed :] and a lot of support.

[ramblinggg]

Wow...power to the people.
That was momentous. And here we are now. Like a year from there. We haven't done much....
But this is a great time to start. Slowly we will work our way up!

Is the code even cleaned up yet?
I could print up a whole crapload of fliers and put em in guitar center and other music stores...(that is when we got all this code business fixed up).

Well people talking about this for years isn't gonna do much. Lets get out there and make this happen.

Precisely.

I intend to spread the word once we get this cleaned up, too.  (I wouldn't say that the code is "cleaned up yet"... We've made little improvements here almost all due to TK, but it's not straightened out.)

Ah ok.
Well, I say the first order of business is to get the code easy and readable, "cleaned-up", before we start making any MAJOR changes.

well, that's where my opinion differs; nobody can read the current code.  It's just been magically working for us, but it's been going to slowly recently.  Nobody can fix it very effectively because nobody can read it.

Hence, I'm calling for some action to just rewrite the thing and get this boat moving.  We've got the proof now that we've been stalling for a year.

Ohhhh okay I think I understand now.
We start from scratch cause this code is so far gone.

Yes, and I want to do it properly.  I do *not* want it to just be one guy recoding this thing.  I think that if Mud wanted this to go opensource, then we should go that direction.  Set up an SVN repository.  Allow people to truly make changes and adjustments, new themes, new content.

I feel like we're handcuffed.  After Mud, it was JimDaADTman, and now it's nobody.  Nobody has access to the code except for just a few people, and frankly, the job isn't getting done...   I have nothing against those people who have access to the code, but I think that if nothing can be done with it, then we should just move on and do it *right*.

Hey everyone, go to this site:
http://www.quantcast.com/bandamp.com
to see BandAMPs traffic and how it is tanking.

And this
http://www.quantcast.com/bandamp.com/traffic