i'm in the process of doing a lot of upgrades to the site and if anyone has any constructive suggestions about how to make things easier to navigate or anything else, here is the place to talk about them.

i have not yet uploaded any of the updates, that won't happen until they are ready.
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if i login while viewing posts(so that i can make a post myself), it takes me back to the main page, and i have to click "the piano lounge" again.  would be nice, if i didn't have to do that.  are you switching to a css layout?
how about a room for concert reviews?
i'll second dalty's request and ask for another.  

is it possible to set up an edit function so we can correct our typos and/or delete posts we regret posting?
i'm with dr. whack, editing your own posts would be nice.  

also, if you could make the session timeout a bit longer. (looks like it's around 30 mins at the moment).

also, would be cool if we could add comments to blog entries.
i like that idea of how to edit my own posts....
editing/deleting ones posts has the potential to make threads incomprehensible, imo. somebody writes a post, another person responds to it, then the original post gets deleted by it's author - now the response post is totally without a context.

i do like how on craigslist in the forums there when you make a post you are taken to a preview screen that shows you exactly what your post will look like once it's posted to the thread, and asks you if you want to make any edits before it's broadcast. just my $.02
double posts seem to be a problem, especially with newcomers.
not sure how to fix it though.
i would be very hesitant to allow comments to blog posts, that  just seems a little inappropriate. there was a post in another forum here that mentioned making the site more intuitive. rather than make it more intuitive, make it extra-sensory and then it will find what you want with not even a key stroke, heck you probably wouldn't even of necessity actually know exactly what you want, it would just pop right up on the screen all magically. now that would be way of the sweetness chart in my book, but i have every confidence that you scot can accomplish it. (cutting through the bs, thanks for only the greatest jazz piano site on the net)
thanks!
peace out.
how about a room just for gear- maybe people could write reviews of keyboards, amps, and other related items....
scot,

how about a room set aside for people to post recordings of their playing, or links to them,  like these:

https://www.pianoworld.com/ubb/ubb/ultimatebb.php?/forum/29.html


https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/board,9.0.html

ed
hi folks,

editing posts:  that's a good idea.  the way it works on some forums is that you have 10 minutes to edit your post. that way you can read it and say, "gosh, i misspelled something."

however with the database structure i use, it's not as feasible as that. the other idea to preview the post before saving is a lot easier and will be implemented first.

there is a room already devoted to hardware and gear- it's right on the main page called "software/hardware"

css: yes, a lot of stuff is changing to a css layout. in fact, you will be able to change the layout to suit you. colors, text, positioning (well, within reason of course).

posting recordings of your playing: well, there are a lot of rooms where you can upload your midi files. but sound files are to large and take up too much bandwidth. i'm already paying extra for bandwidth usage.  you can always upload your recording somewhere else and post a link to it here. the master class room is a good place for that.

keep the suggestions coming.

oh, concert reviews, nice idea.  how about doing it in th epiano lounge for now?  if concert reviews takes off, i'll make a dedicated forum for it.
If I'm not back in 24 hours, call the president.

Scot is available for skype jazz piano lessons (and google hangouts, phone call, etc...)
Use the contact link at the top of the page.
i already started with the concert reviews there ;-)
next one will come in next week.

another suggestion:
https://www.skype.com/help/guides/publicchat_create.html
or
https://skypecasts.skype.com/skypecasts/home
i'm looking at different chat options. in the past no one has used them and they eventually shut down, so it's not a high priority.
If I'm not back in 24 hours, call the president.

Scot is available for skype jazz piano lessons (and google hangouts, phone call, etc...)
Use the contact link at the top of the page.
i think, for this sort of topic, posts are actually better than chat because one has time to think through a post to try and word things correctly so people can understand.
oh, also, glad to hear you are switching to a css layout.  tables be gone!  have you ever played with ruby on rails?  i'm currently working on learning it for my new website.........i think it can be pretty sweet for sites such as this.  what is it exactly that you use now?  i'm not familiar with the .mvc file extension.(i assume it is referencing model, view, controller)
hi scot,
just to add to the thing you said about posting sound files somewhere else and linking to them from here. with youtube, you can copy a url they  give and then have it play directly in your own site, rather than from theirs.
i suppose it's not much different to going to a different site to view the videos, but i find dougmc's videos the very best way to learn, and it would be great to encourage other players to post up similar videos, and then be able to discuss them here.
.mvc is miva compiled script, which is the server-side programming language used on this site, dalty.

all these ideas sound great.
i'm not going 100% css. i'm still going to have the main layout framework made out of tables, but much more simplified than now.  

i would use pure css layout, but i'm not sure if it's ready for primetime, if 100% of all the possible browsers and pda's out there can deal with a pure css layout.

if there are different opinions on this, i'm completely open to discussion and web site examples.
If I'm not back in 24 hours, call the president.

Scot is available for skype jazz piano lessons (and google hangouts, phone call, etc...)
Use the contact link at the top of the page.
css is ready. if espn and numerous other high profile sites can use css, i would image ljp can.  i build css layouts everyday for my job, and i can tell you that this layout is a piece of cake compared to some of the things designers throw at us here.  you are right that 100% of browsers do not parse things exactly the same, but it really isn't a huge issue.  i would take flexibility, ease of maintenance, speed, and clean code over the latter anyday.  once you get over the fact that your site might look a tad different on different browsers, you'll love the flexibility that css layouts give.  as for pda's, you can make your layout flexible so it works in those, as well.  my two cents.
hmm, i just checked espn.com. yes, pure css layout, using absolute values for positioning and everything.  hmm.  this would also let me do something i've wanted which is allow visitors to set up their own layouts in their profiles.

um, any recommendations on how i might approach a pure css layout?  i am advanced with html and getting there with css.  i've learned most of what i know from https://www.csszengarden.com and https://www.w3schools.com however, i've only done one site that uses pure css layout and it's more of a hobby/art site.
If I'm not back in 24 hours, call the president.

Scot is available for skype jazz piano lessons (and google hangouts, phone call, etc...)
Use the contact link at the top of the page.
well, i would avoid positioning elements unless it's really needed.  are you going to keep the same look as the site is now, or are you redesigning it?  the way i would do this layout is header, nav, content, footer.......and the content section have two columns, one floating left, and one floating right.  then you clear the content section, and put in a footer.  

as far as resources, zen garden is great, and i would also check out sites of great css guys like jeffrey zeldman and dan cederholm.  i really love dan's simplebits.com site.  what site did you do in css?  is it still up?

i know it would probably take you a little more time to learn the css and implement it in the new version, but i think you would find that your site would be a lot more flexible and easier to maintain.  today, we pushed a site live that has about 80 pages or so, and there were a few sitewide changes the client wanted before we did it.  it could have been a pain.......but, it wasn't.  a few simple css tweaks and i was done.  gotta love it.
hi scot,  
if possible, it would be nice that the rooms in "my personal menu" also showed the number of new messages, like happens with the piano lounge.  
about the chat, why don't we all use irc or something already there?
thanks!
carlos.
hey - i just upgraded to firefox 2 and apparently i now have spell check for text boxes like this - it underlines my typos in red! it even suggests replacements if you right-click on the bad boy! maybe we can convince everyone to use it and you won't have to mess with any edit features??
"about the chat, why don't we all use irc or something already there?"

if we are going to do that, we might as well use this:

https://peekko.com/
it's not the mispellings that are important sometimes, it's just what one wrote. i'd like to have two buttons at the end of a message- preview and save.  for preview, you can see the message how it would be posted and then either click on "save" or "edit' if you want to go back.

on chat: irc isn't the way to go, it's fairly complicated for new users. i'd like to find a flash chat that i can link to my site and pass username variables to so that when someone here clicks on "chat" i can send their username so people know who's in the chat area.
If I'm not back in 24 hours, call the president.

Scot is available for skype jazz piano lessons (and google hangouts, phone call, etc...)
Use the contact link at the top of the page.
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