Lately, I've come across some great ideas for chat formats... I know you are doing so much right now TLS but I wonder how much thought you are giving to increasing the sociality and level of interaction at BA?  There are some truly great chats out there that could do wonders for BA?

If you've got any specific sites in mind that you like, by all means, post some links here and I'll see what I can do.  I rather not write my own chat thing, so if we can find a better (free) alternative I'd be happy.  If it comes down to it and I've got to write something, then maybe I'll step up to it :P

Sorry everyone, for the lack of updates recently.  I've been redoing some of my previous code so that it's better for future alterations.  The next guy who works on updates for the site will thank me for not leaving my code the way it was.

so you're saying that users will create albums of their own songs?  An intuitive jump from that idea would be to allow users to create their own 'mix' albums of any users' music.  Effectively, that's a 'playlist', but under the covers, it would work the same as your 'album' idea.  Prolly want to let users mark their created 'album'/'playlist' things as "public" or "private", so that others can easily just call up a favorite album from kings, Marino, etc.

Yes....I follow...so in actual fact just the possibility of making multiple 'song lists' with a picture and some info would be enough. Members fill them in as they please , making up compilations of songs found on the amp.....what a totally funking excellent idea!!!!!
The key is that they must be easily seen/accessed by other members/visitors to your home page.

Some distinction between 'albums of ones own work' and 'compilation/mix albums' is I think very important though. If it were only where the list is displayed on the page.
I was thinking of the members with loads of songs , some are at 100, OK so the Projects function will deal with splitting them into 3, but also being able to split them up into your own Albums seams totally logical, especially when there is a function as "send to player".
My own songs I have divided into 'albums' here at home, seams like a logical thing to do, each one represents a period in my musical development.

Could it be made so that you can only enter your own songs into the 'albums' section , and each song can be entered a maximum of 2 times (once on an album and once on a 'best of' album), but that the 'Your own Albums Section' would have a prominent position on the page?

quickly clarify for me--- that last line:
"the 'Your own Albums Section' would have a prominent position on the page?"

do you mean your profile page would have your albums prominently positioned?

For any of you who care to be in on the low-level plan, along with the reorganization of the code that I've been casually doing, I'm also setting up an SVN repository for this.  For now, I'll be hosting it on my own machine at home, until I can get things more stable.  After that, I'll have the repository set up on our actual BandAMP server.

I think my ISP isn't allowing true port forwarding, so my computer may not be visible to teh internets, so follow these steps to have *true* live access to the website and its SVN:

Install Hamachi, found here: https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/list.asp

If you're using Linux, then I'd recommend a debian package called "hamachi-gui" ( found here: http://hamachi-gui.sourceforge.net/download.html ) which will give you a frontend to hamachi once you've gotten it installed with the actual installer.  Remember, install Hamachi first, do the first few steps included in its readme (about getting tuncfg up, etc), and then you can stop following the Hamachi readme once it starts talking about 'starting' hamachi and joining a network.  At that point, just install the hamachi-gui package. and you're set.

*ahem*  anyway.. so once Hamachi is running and you've got a nickname for yourself, join the network "PyndAMP" (the cliché python-ic twist on BandAMP).  It's password is "happiness" (kudos to any of you who keep up with hacker news, where a kid on the east code USA cracked a Twitter admin's password.. it was "happiness") for now.

You should be able to see my IP address that way, which is 5.239.158.174 .  If you're not on the Hamachi network, you will miserably fail to use this IP address.  All you have to do is put the IP address in your web browser once you're on Hamachi.

So... quick recap:
1- install Hamachi
2- join network "PyndAMP"
3- put 5.239.158.174 in your web browser.  My computer will literally begin serving you the website as I have it on my computer.

Soon the SVN will be set up at http://5.239.158.174/svn/ .  Once it is, you will need a specific username and password to access the SVN to download and make changes to the site's code.

I'll be putting this info in the thread's first post, as well.

Yes I was thinking about our profile page.
It seams to me that the 'personal profile page' needs to play a greater role in the bandAmp experience.
As members develop and grow and upload, some songs end up in the 'dropped zone' others will be in the 'working projects' section and then all the completed songs/projects go into 'finished projects'. I think the next step for finished projects should be their 'release' on Album, or in this case into the 'my albums' section.

Ok! I see what you mean Tim, no I'm not thinking of a new 4th section to go with finished/working/dropped projects though I see how I've made it sound that way. Finished projects would still be the last rung on the ladder and songs would not be moved out of the finished section.

I suppose the function would be part blog part playlist ; ultimately you want a page with links to your songs on it so they can all be sent to the player (I'm presuming the topbar player stays?), have an album picture and some explanations, dedications, apologies or thanks.
It would be part Blog in that it would have multiple pages (??a kind of sub-forum within the profile??) and part playlist because except for a picture and some text what you want is a list of songs on a page.
'Albums' could be a tab to a page with links on it to album pages and/or a box/menu on the personal profile page listing links to the album pages. And no the box doesn't have to be that prominently placed on the page as long as it's visible and accessible then thats good enough.

I would like to know what other members think of this idea.

A good I have Hamachi  (use it for C&C) I'll have a look at the site later today.

I'm doing something wrong, just dont know what!
I've got hamachi on, the new version, I've joined a new network, I've got pyndAmp connected Tim-Vis-Work star is green, but my browser wont load / connect to the IP address, if I right click the Tim-Vista channel I can copy location, but putting that IP address takes me to a IIS7 network page.........

You'll have to connect to "August", which is actually my computer's nickname.  You should ignore "Tim-Vista-Work".  I should take it off of there... My work machine runs apache on port 8080, and MS IIS runs on 80.  But all of that aside, nothing useful is on my work machine's web server but test stuff for work :P

My computer was off last night, but it's on now.  Functionality is very basic compared to the stuff you've been seeing before, while I rewrite some code.

Got August flashing but it turns yellow for no connectivity possible , answer on line says we need to manually set up/input a Location something or other ....... all the windows are now closed!

edit** we need to set up UDP ports manually , I presume it means we have to agree on a UDP port and then set it up manually

OK I just got in, started Hamachi and used your link in your first post to open the site
I only just realised that you've been updating the first post to   

I saw you there for a while... you were green and okay.  I ping'd you a few times, yada yada.  Maybe my computer was just in some goofy trance at the time.

Yes Tim I was there and surfing around, all the tab menu took me to 404s , the Media drop down took me to the Music, Lyrics, Videos pages but they were not as you had them in the pictures earlier there was only the large icon. And I couldn't get to your 'me profile' ..... but I was there!

But this is the site as you work at it?

Well currently I see everything listed as offline or I must be doing something wrong. Didn't have luck last night either. I am connected to PyndAMP and I see a few puters in the list, all with grey stars.

@kings-- yes, it's exactly as I work on it, so there are likely intermittent errors as I experiment with code.

@PX-- Yeah, if "August" is offline, then my local web server is off too.  I try to keep the computer on during daytime hours in the GTM -7  timezone, though I'll also try to leave it on overnight for the curious, since I know that much of the audience doesn't live in the U.S. of A.