Daily Dischord 3 Has Arrived!
Well the title says it all. You’re looking at the grand spanking new Daily Dischord. After months on end of development and design work, being refined and just plain torn up, we have finally come to love this current incarnation and hope you do to. Below I plan to go over a few new features that we have introduced, features that aren’t quite up to scratch yet, and features we expect to see in the future, and I really hope you make the most out of these features, as they really do enrich the experience! Without further gibbering, here we go!
Current Features
Slick New Design
Obviously, the number one new feature here is the modern design that we now have applied to our website. The last two versions of Daily Dischord dated quite fast and our hope is with this current design we will be able to mould it into something new quite easily when required to move with the times! A couple of notable features, we now have a very slick “featured articles” slider on the homepage. This slider will be updated regularly with articles from reviews, news posts or blogs that we really think you ought to read. It’s fast and works on all browsers. We also have a more neat two column layout, with featured reviews, featured videos and recent comments on our sidebar on the right. This keeps the main focus on our main news content which you can find under the slider. The sidebar has the potential to include many more attributes so expect some exciting widgets to be found there over the next few months. One example, we plan to let you tweet to your Twitter account from this very website, on the homepage. Are we good to you or what?
Facebook Connect
You probably noticed from looking at the homepage, we now let all our users register and sign in to the website using their Facebook account. This makes logging in so much easier as if you are already logged in to Facebook, you simply press the connect button and you will then be able to comment on all our posts. Cool huh? Further functionality will be included here, such as your Facebook stream appearing in a future profile page, the ability to post to our own Facebook page via the homepage, and whatever cool features Facebook come up with in the future. Facebook is forever growing, and we are delighted and excited to be working so closely with the most popular website on the web.
Review Ratings
If you’ve already took the time to read one of our reviews, you will have noticed that you yourself can now review our albums from a score from 0 to 10! This is an exciting feature we have wanted to include for some time now, and not only can you comment on the reviews, now you can actually have a say in how you would rate the albums/gigs. An average user rating score will be calculated on the fly as soon as you vote, and over time we will start to show you what the most popular albums are on Daily Dischord. Just another example of how we are trying to make things a bit more engaging for you around here.
Gravatar Profile Images
A lot of you may not have heard about Gravatar so let me go into some detail about what this website offers. Quite simply, it offers a centralised avatar that you can use on thousands of sites across the web. This means that instead of uploading an image of yourself for every website, you just use your Gravatar account (which in this case, is automatically detected from your email address). Gravatar is slowly taking off, and many predict this is the way avatars will be used on almost all websites in the future. All you need to do is visit their website, register, upload an image, and then your on your way!
YouTube Integration
As you can see on the homepage, we now have the functionality where you can stream videos from YouTube. Not only do we embed videos but the videos are integrated with the site meaning if you wish to view the video in full screen, you can do so without leaving Daily Dischord. We will have a featured video at the very least updated every week and over time will be integrating YouTube features further into the website. Watch this space!
Bugs in Current Features
Review Sorting
One problem identified early on was that the sorting of reviews does not function correctly. I plan to have this issue fixed as soon as I arrive back from my holiday around the middle of October and apologise for the inconvenience this may cause.
Edit Profile
Due to some security issues we have had to disable the ability to edit profiles at this moment. A workaround is currently being implemented as a priority and will be introduced as soon as possible. You’ll hear about it in this blog first. If you urgently wish to edit your profile, please contact myself or Mark (mark[at]dailydischord[dot]com) and we will help you out.
Future Features
Twitter Integration
We really do value Twitter at Daily Dischord and understand it has now become a massive phenomenon around the world. It’s for these reasons we are excited to announce that full Twitter integration will be implemented into the website as a matter of priority. Such features you can expect are a feed on your profile page, the ability to tweet from the homepage, the ability to login to the website using your Twitter account, and many, many more. This is quite exciting and once the feature arrives, we hope you enjoy it. At the moment, you can share all of our articles by clicking the Twitter link at the bottom.
Events Calendar
One function we really wanted to include in the website was the ability to have a unique calendar for every user registered to the site. This calendar will link with your accounts at last.fm, songkick, bandsintown and Facebook, allowing you to pull all your events into one calendar. This feature has the ability to scale to a massive size, so to say we are excited is a big understatement.
Ticket Sales
If you are local in the area of Aberdeen you may know that Daily Dischord also has a gig promotion company. Over time we will begin selling tickets from this very website, allowing you to buy tickets from us using Paypal, Google Checkouts and many more transaction systems on the web.
I hope we have given you a taster of what is to come here and what you can currently do with the website. We are so proud of this new chapter and hope you take the ride with us to make Daily Dischord the place to be for all music goers. Keep your eyes peeled on the DD Blog for all future updates as we include more and more features into the website.
Thank you for reading this far, and have fun!
