What Are the Three things You Would Change About the Show-Guide?

Hell - i'll even start.
We're going to create a new database exclusively for LOCAL BANDS. That way, when you're checking out 'Burials', 'Caregiver' or 'Typhoon' - you get info on PDX, not some shitty German techno band.

^With that change, The Artist pages are going to change.. tell us how!

Is it possible to have a more mobile friendly version of the site? Or at least a mobile friendly calendar? Don't really need the blog or shoutbox when I'm out and about.

Mobile Version : how's about this for starters?

http://pc-pdx.com/show-guide/mobile/


see, ask and we will build it - give us more feedback!

sometimes the tags i use end up reverting to ones that are totally wrong, after i went out of my way to correct them.

Gotcha- That happens when somebody updates the show after you do. I will create something that will prevent the auto-updating / overwrite of manually entered tags.
Thanks for the note.

How about doing a browser detect and forwarding to the mobile site with a dismissable link to go back to the normal site if auto redirected.

Free code to get started: http://detectmobilebrowser.com/

I had a lot of problems with those dumb slidey things in Mobile Safari, so a mobile site is very welcome.

On that subject, a lot of the newer AJAXy stuff, while flashy and cool-looking, can detract from real usability. Function before fashion!

That's great feedback.

Most of the Ajax stuff was for functionality (but not with mobile in mind) - please let me know what you think is 'flash' and we'll shape it up and whip it good.

Would it be a good idea to allow user preference on some things like 'disable the dumb slidey thing' (a ton of people like it, maybee some HATE it too?).

Mobile people can try this for now:
http://pc-pdx.com/show-guide/mobile/

This will end up as a shorter url and actually coded for mobile - i just spent a few hours on it last night for a temp solution.

You could probably make the slidey thing mobile-friendly without too much effort. I'm just old-fashioned.

How about an RSS feed?

like this?
http://pc-pdx.com/feed/blog.aspx

Some overall design points:

The blue sliding thing on the top is strange, having the buttons highlight blue on mouse over instead would be more intuitive and probably much easier on mobile/old/experimental browsers.

Secondly stop having the guide look up as much info as it can whenever my mouse travels over something on its way to get somewhere. Seriously this is super annoying and you're probably making unnecessary database calls back to your server every time somebody runs a mouse over something. If I want more info I can click on something. This would go a long way towards addressing mobile concerns as well.

Third, I know the wiki thing is great but some sort of version control where I can see earlier edits of the post would be great so that I can a) get a better idea of what is going on by seeing what two different people tagged an event as and b) spot vandalism/trolling easily by noticing that one version of the show notice was noticeably different than another.

If you run it this way you can sort of have the best of a posting based system in that each person's edit will have to stand on its own but keep the front page from cluttering up with multiple notices for the same show.

All in all though the overall look and scheme is very usable since the last major reboot a few months ago. Keep up the good work, I love the guide.

-Des

Hey, sweet!
A bunch of people love the info from the bottom-slider.
Getting the band / venue info has been much requested and praised.
Flipside is I know that not everybody likes that. I'm thinking about the membership more and want to expand it so that you can operate the site to your preferences:
Turn off the slider if you don't want it there (ps -> it's cached as can be, no unnecessary DB calls!).
--Any more ideas here?

There is a mobile site that will be ready over this weekend.
We've already updated the site with a mobile-device style sheet so you shouldn't see most of the extras if you're reporting a mobile browser.

Version Control:
THIS EXISTS!
IF you go to a show-detail page, there's a "View show history" that will tell you when and what was updated. The editors IP is also tracked and noted.
Don't worry too much about trolls etc.. I spend a TON of time ensuring that crap like that doesn't stand. First, it happens very rarely - which is AWESOME! The community around this site really gets it and there aren't many fuckups left around here.
So - it's very rare that Vandalism happens on the show-detail. I check every thing that gets posted and the bullshit is immediately wiped away.

We have a pretty good system in place for avoiding duplicate show postings.
The dups you do see are from the new 'Show-Bot!' that i've been working on to do auto updates from the press releases that we get from the Venues. -This helps us to keep the venue info as up-to-date as possible. It's still a bit fresh and not all the bugs have been worked out (everything is a work in progress here!) so an occasional duplicate has been getting through. -the most important thing there is making sure we aren't writing over user input because, often the bands+fans know more than the venue..

I try to keep everything straight - delete any duplicates, take down stupid pictures of peoples dogs that aren't bonified show flyers.. Ensure that everything is in a similar format (notes are separate from band listings etc..)
All that being said, there is a versioning system in place for the show info!

I am going to be redesigning some things and restructuring some key ways the site works - like some of the layout. There's an obvious need for some of these updates if you don't inherently see/get how to look at the show history or update bios etc..- that'd be my design fault (anybody to help?).

Thanks -Des,
& Seriously guys - the info a feedback that you're posting here and sending me in emails makes a big difference. This site isn't going to get better unless you tell me what to do!

One more thing about the info bar. If I 'minimize' the bottom info bar it pops back out as soon as I scroll over any of those items that it interacts with which, while sometimes having useful info, usually just informs me that yes, that is my friend's band and, indeed, The Know or wherever hasn't moved since last time I was there. Its a neat feature but I would like to be able to turn it off or if it would stay out of the way once I hit one of those arrows that would be great.

Thanks for pointing out the version control, that is exactly what I was thinking of.

Cheers,
Des

It will pop out again once you hit a slider spot (trademark-ding!) but, if you go to a new page or decide to click through - the bar goes back to the hidden position (**w/ cookies enabled**). -It's close to perfect without personalization.

SO, Expect to see some personalization stuff come out of the membership area sometime soon. Any other ideas to toss into the personalization wish list?

WOW, the site looks very subtly better - did anyone notice this in the last few days?

We're doing some big feature updates too- 'got a good list going. We're creating some personalization to dis/enable the slider as per Des' commentary.
Do you have anything to add?

MOAR BOOBZ!

Amazing that you have the list you do, the promotion in this town is being managed by you alone as far as I can tell. Nice work

seems like pc-pdx.com draws many like-minded people--- it would be great if there were a section devoted to musicians seeking collaboration!!!! Thanks for your work on the site.