Klondike Audio 2.0

Hey guys! Some of you might remember that back in April, I launched my music site Klondike Audio. After running into problems with maintainability, and to be fair, a slippage of motivation, the site eventually languished. So, I have gone into a hidey hole for the last couple months and made some important design and feature improvements that should rectify all of these problems. Plus, I think the site looks a hell of a lot nicer than before.

http://www.klondikeaudio.com

I've put a lot of work into this and I'm really excited about this site. As I've said before, I have very fond memories of Bigmog's website back in the era of Web 1.0, and I found many a great song and leads on more music from there. I aim to provide just that, and to give a place where other fans can celebrate songs together. I totally respect and love Song of the Week, and I find new songs from them all the time, so I'm happy to hop into the same world with my own approach.

The site is starting fresh with 12 posts, and 27 songs in total available for download. To start, I will be posting 4 songs per week, which usually equals about 10 MP3s. I've made the posting process a little easier on myself this time around, so hopefully I can increase this as time goes by.

I have a user login/registration system, which is *not needed* for downloading songs, but if you do register (and I made it about the simplest thing you can imagine) you'll be able to post comments on songs, and you'll even get a personal little message from me, along with other benefits to come in the magical future. I don't ask for any personal info, even your email address; the process is completely simple and exploitable, and I look forward to thinking up creative anti-spam measures in a couple months from now (if that!).

So check it out, tell me what you think. Even the diehard game music fans here will likely find something they haven't heard, and perhaps find new joy in some they have. I hope you guys like it, and hey, maybe add it to your podcasts.

Enjoy!

Jam it back in, in the dark.

It's nice to see it reviving. I used to check it out from times to times and found out about a couple of nice songs I didn't knew were so good, and I liked reading your comments. I'll start back at keeping an eye on the updates. Good luck with this second incarnation and thanks!

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Although I wasn't exactly the most religious person with regards to keeping tabs on the latest postings, I must say I enjoyed reading the comments. The little game graphics/pictures were a nice touch. Hopefully, I can clear my own glut of VGM backlog and find time to listen to new VGM on your site.

By the way, happened to come across a poster on your audio site who went by the name of BIGMog. Could it be...?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Elorin, I left Bigmog a message last night letting him know about the site, so I think there's a strong forecast of YES.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I'd like to bump this thread, since I've continued working on the site and added a place to make requests, and the ability to go through the whole archive of songs. There's well over 100 songs available for download now and I think the site is looking pretty good.

I'm still working regularly on it, so if anybody has any suggestions or complaints, this is a good time. I'm looking into making some kind of rating thing for songs, but currently I'm not sure how to implement that in a clean way that actually increases the value of the site for users.

I was speaking idiomatically.

hey

as far as the flash thing goes, i've seen this used at www.sgxmusic.com. he has a "SGX work in progress preview" on the right side under the banner that plays a little ditty of a track he's working on. that's the only way i think i can help.

as far as the site goes, i still love it, but i have no idea what i would do to improve it. i actually like how it's really just sort of barebones and doesn't have too many features. maybe i'm just a minimalistic dude. i do think it would be cool if we could comment on your news posts though.

the rating system i think could be pretty friendly to people who just stumble on the website and want to check out what it has to offer. in that case, it would be cool if users could sort songs by rating (maybe sort of like the tiers in vgmix). so i think that might indeed be a good feature! for people who just d/l all the songs i dont think it will matter much, but it might be fun to rate songs

finally, "D. Wise, E. Sischer, R. Beanland" <== it should be E. Fischer. (actually according to mobygames, it should now be E. Novakovic now b/c im guessing she got married)

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

It'd probably be better to begin the rating system while the site's song database is still small, too, so that there's fewer songs in the archives that people would have to go back and rerate. Hmm.

Commenting on news posts is definitely a plus. I've given myself some inconveniently strict UI limitations though, so I'd probably have to cave and make the news post and comments go into the main frame of the site. I know, a tragedy.

I'm still interested in developing and updating the site, but I've been a little disappointed at the traffic plateau I've reached. I'd like the site to be just a little more lively. If you know anyone who would like the site, please tell them.

FELIPE NO

Hey, Klondike. I personally haven't been paying as many visits to your site as I'd like to, out of my own laziness and other generic factors like this. Still, I thought I should let you know that I appreciate your work with Klondike Audio. Whenever I do get around to visiting, I'm happy to see more of a selection of songs to listen to~

As for suggestions, there's been some good ones mentioned in the thread already, such as the rating system and the ability to comment on the news posts. Would it also be possible to upload avatars in our profiles so that they show up next to our comments (or if you don't have the necessary webspace, allow users to link to offsite images)? Don't get me wrong; the current setup makes things crystal clear, regarding who the comments came from. Personally, though, I've always been a fan of using avatars to add more personalization and maybe it would also help with immediately identifying the people who comment on the songs. Just a thought.

Keep up the great work! About spreading the word, would you mind if I put in a link to the site in my signature as well?

How ya doing, buddy?

Oh, I wouldn't mind that at all! By all means

Avatars might be nice. If I do it, it'd be small -- probably about the size of that chocolate bar in your signature. A little bigger than Digg's, but not much. More generally, I could definitely expand "user profiles", and I've been meaning to do more with the User Profile box to the left of the news bar than just giving everyone a personalized message. Thanks for jogging me on that, and thanks most of all for your words of support!

Jam it back in, in the dark.