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Mix2r 2.0...
Heya everyone,
I just thought it would be cool to let you all in on what we are doing with the site...
Mix2r.com is built upon the open source Drupal CMS platform. Drupal recently came out with a fresh version, 5.0, which for many, many reasons is better than the version we're running here, which is 4.7.4. The Mix2r development team (yeah, its not just me!) is now working on moving to the 5.0 release of Drupal, as well as making some key improvements. By and large, Mix2r 2.0 will look much the same as what you see here, but we are adding two major usability improvements, namely:
- A new, uncluttered Music Upload screen. You'll choose a file, enter a title, genre, artist and maybe some tags and click submit. Once you submit, you will be given a status dialog telling you how much of your file has been uploaded. AJAX represent!
- A profile page that is kind of like what you have over on MySpace. Hopefully it can become a landing page that you'd want to use around the net. We'll have a flash based music player on each page as well that automatically displays tracks you've uploaded, so you can effortlessly point people to your music.
There will be many more tweaks, but the above two are the biggest ones that you will notice day to day.
Sometime after we launch the new version, we'll also be looking at an overhaul to our site's theme. Stay tuned on that, we have some great stuff planned.
Hmm..cool, thanks!
I'm actually experimenting with "less is more", and tightening up the front page so it gives you more in a smaller space. Good to hear I'm headed in the right direction. Its hard to design a site like this until you get a bunch of content -- which is starting to be the case!
The K.I.S.S. principle works well. I like sites that are minimal looking and not too cluttered.
The smaller font looks really nice.
One of the things I wanted to do here is not go the same way as MySpace, and effectively make this into an advertising vehicle. That said, eventually we'll have to introduce value add services so that we can make some $ to run the site. Pervasive advertising = free services, shitty cluttered interface. No ads = money comes from somewhere else, probably users :-)
I don't mind paying also because I know that it requires money to run a site.
I also don't mind paying some cash to help out people aspiring people like myself but is it a concern that some users may jump ship as soon as money is mentioned?
We really do want to create a community here, and offer a great free service. One of my inspirations is Flickr because it promoted community building and is free...but if you want to use some enhanced capabilities, you pay a nominal fee and get on with it.
Here on Mix2r, we'll probably at some point offer services like FTP access and large storage quotas / commerce capabilities and more for a fee...but we can't do that until the community grows.
Yeah, I worry that people would jump ship if you mention $...that's why we want to be transparent about it. We are musicians (and learning musicians) running this site, and all we want to do is make this thing viable. Bandwidth isn't free, servers aren't free...unfortunately. Hopefully, as we introduce some extras that cost $, the community will see that we're being honest and trying to promote music from the grass roots and support us. :-)
-matt
Joined: 2006-06-12