Royalty Free Music Website

[teknoaxe]

Hello Everyone!

http://www.teknoaxe.com

I'm curious to see how you guys like my website. It basically showcases and allows for users to preview and download music that I've produced. I programmed this website in Perl Script, so when I add music titles to the site, all I have to do to make these titles register is to update a .csv file, and things will automatically show up. The perl script will then read the .csv file and create dynamically generated pages to reflect what's available on my website.

Also, I just added the ability for my site to detect whether or not you're viewing my site from a phone or not and the site dynamically writes a slightly different "mobile" site that can download my music via standard link, instead of the direct-download .php code that I have on my regular site.

There are five pieces of code that run the site. Currently, I'm looking into providing a better experience to mobile users and also possibly making the genre divisions on the Music_code_2.pl page a little more streamlined. There are no real drop-down menus to speak of, but maybe in the future, I might add more functionality to the website that might require the use of such drop-down menus.

Any feedback is appreciated.

Thanks!

Matt

[teknoaxe]

Addendum:

I've added some coding to the "related music" section that will allow myself more direct control over what displays there. The reason is that I feel that people would like to know what is more like what is being played or what they're downloading instead of some random selections governed by the tags that sort the music into the categories in the music_code_2.pl and genre_code.pl pages.

It's somewhat done. The code is there, but now I've got an entire column of new values to update on the .csv file. :P Extremely tedious.

[webcosmo]

Hi, the comment system looks a bit like FB - just noticed it`s actually the FB social plugin , and the problem i have is it`s got horizontal scrolling. In terms of design, i think it needs some improvement, like some contrast there and those BG images are kinda big...

[teknoaxe]

Hi, the comment system looks a bit like FB - just noticed it`s actually the FB social plugin , and the problem i have is it`s got horizontal scrolling. In terms of design, i think it needs some improvement, like some contrast there and those BG images are kinda big...

What web browser are you working with? I'm not seeing the horizontal scrolling on the facebook plugin at all. There may be a way to fix that if I need to. I can definitely detect what sort of browser you're using and then make the correction in the code.

[teknoaxe]

In terms of design, i think it needs some improvement, like some contrast there and those BG images are kinda big...

In anycase, I just took care of the contrast, for the most part. I put in a background image that's slightly modded from my YouTube page, then fixed some section issues on the page (for some reason I put some extra download section that was underneath the tool bar. That's no longer there. I also darkened the aside bar a little bit. For now, my background image is fixed and not repeating, so I think it adds a nice touch to the design.

The only think I would like to do at this point is somehow make it so the content and aside sections don't have a background color, but rather have a transparent background so the real background image shows through. Is there any way to do this in the css file?

Thanks,

Matt

[teknoaxe]

I got it. Yay!

[arhitect]

Make some logo and put it up,... that's important part of what you represent. Also try to work on the design part more, to make the site look as good as you can. for statistics i recommend that you use Google Analytics, as it covers everything you need to know about your visitors.

[teknoaxe]

Make some logo and put it up,... that's important part of what you represent. Also try to work on the design part more, to make the site look as good as you can. for statistics i recommend that you use Google Analytics, as it covers everything you need to know about your visitors.

Thanks for the input.

As far as a logo goes, do you mean like the header? I realize that there's only a text header there at the moment, but I also read that google bots and such, who analyze your content, sort of need something like a text header there to know what your site is all about. I have reset the menu bar so it's not over extending the grey area of the background image, though, and I like the effect myself.

I also have google analytics on my site as well. Most of my traffic is generated through YouTube, of course, which goes directly through the link pages instead of the home page. But I sort of designed the link page to have sort of a similar way of operating as a YouTube view-page, with related music on the right.

But according to analytics, nobody uses anything in the aside at all. Usually, they either go back to the genre page they came from, or they go directly to the music category page. I wonder if this is because the aside is something that people don't usually use, or did YouTube just totally kill the relevance of clicking anything in the related videos section on their site as well.?

[webcosmo]

Sorry, forgot to add, i was using Chrome on a screen resolution of 1280x860. Now i see you took care of the scrolling issue.

[teknoaxe]

Sorry, forgot to add, i was using Chrome on a screen resolution of 1280x860. Now i see you took care of the scrolling issue.

...Did you like all the other changes I made?

[claire0917]

Ok, the layout is good, but you have a lot of things in there that distracted me. My eyes keep going to the axe logo for some reason and also to the social network icons. I think people should focus on the Download and Permission Form so better to have nice image buttons for them.

[teknoaxe]

Ok, the layout is good, but you have a lot of things in there that distracted me. My eyes keep going to the axe logo for some reason and also to the social network icons. I think people should focus on the Download and Permission Form so better to have nice image buttons for them.

Thanks for the input! Although I have no buttons yet (I will try to come up with some) I did make the social buttons smaller to de-emphasize them in the layout, though. Not sure what to do about the axe on the background, though. Basically this was modified from my YouTube channel for consistency, at least up to the point where YouTube changes our channel layouts AGAIN. But I still like the background.

Also, for any of you out there wanting to try this, The home page and link pages are set up for special layouts when you access the site from a mobile device, like an iphone or a tablet. If you guys want, try it out there. I'm specifically interested in how the download button works for android and iOS platforms, and I guess Windows Phone too, since that's going to take over the world in a couple months, right?

Thanks!

[smanaher]

Teknoaxe,

I think you have a pretty good start here. Your overall design and layout are pretty good but I think you need a few tweaks to really make things look professional.

I agree with the other member about the logo. Having the text there is good for now but a nice logo would help to balance out the top of the page and make the overall site more professional.

The other thing I noticed is the grey background that is delineated all the way up to the top of the site. This just doesn’t jive. It would look nicer if you had some kind of solid color at the top or a banner of some sort and then broke up the great background further down the page.

Your top menu looks kind of bland and there is too much space between your menu items. Try and add a gradient effect to the background, move the menu items closer together or you could make them into buttons.

Here are some cool web design examples to give you inspiration,

http://www.designyourway.net/blog/in...r-inspiration/

Hope that helps,

Shawn

[nsdub]

The text at the top is kind of brutal. I really think you can get away with Logo, content. That's it.

I don't think having the menu in a band is doing you any favors. Why not switch your menu to a nav bar?

[webcosmo]

...Did you like all the other changes I made?

I would suggest you to use thhose backgrounds to create a banner and some logo, and leave the background clean. The background is ... in the back, so it shouldn`t jump in your eyes, which is what it does now, distracting me from looking at the content. Use a grey background and that`s it, you`ll see it will look better. Check similar sites for examples.