Neil

Good idea. Done.

I'm actually going to be re-working the sponsorship rates again quite soon and will be offering more 'deals' as well. As I think I mention on the sponsorship thread, I'm perfectly open to negotiate on sponsorship rates. They are really only there for a guide more than anything else.

Apologies for the short notice but this web site will become completely inaccessible probably sometime this evening and for maybe a period of time tomorrow. This is to facilitate the installation and configuration of a dedicated firewall for the web site to enhance security. If you don't know what one is then ask about some geek is bound to answer. Update: Web site is now back-up! New firewall successfully installed and configured.

With my flat move complete and my holiday over it is now time to turn my attention back to aberdeen-music.com. As many of you have no doubt noticed the moderation and administration of this web site has been severely lacking in the last month or so and especially in the last couple of weeks. This has lead to numerous problems including significant delays in new registrations becoming activated, forums not being moderated, events not getting added to the public calendar and technical problems and queries not being replied to and addressed. For all this I sincerely apologise but for the most part it has been out-with my control. These recent problems have proved to be a painful reminder of addressing one particular issue. That issue is the lack of volunteers on board to help me out with the daily running of this web site. In fact, this issue is now so bad that there is in fact no aberdeen-music.com staff except for myself! And so I must address this as soon as possible. Here is the deal. I need three volunteers to help me out with running this web site. The tasks you would likely get delegated would be forum moderation, calendar administration, new registration screening and maybe other more technical tasks yet to be decided. I would ask that anyone wishing to put their name forward meets the following basic requirements: 1. They are 18 years old or over. 2. They have their own connection to the Internet (i.e. they don't just have access to the Internet via work or University etc.) 3. They are a registered member on this web site (duh) and access this web site on a daily basis. 4. They don't already perform a similar role on another online community web site (I need to know you will be committed to aberdeen-music.com). 5. Have the interests of the local music scene and Aberdeen's online community at heart. 6. You are considered to be a member of good standing on this web site. i.e. You haven't been banned or warned about your behaviour on the forums. This is a volunteer role and so, like me, you don't get paid and have to do this in your own spare time (or sneakily do it when you should be working!). In saying that, if your application is successful, then you would become a Staff member and automatically get access to the private Staff forum and get all the same perks that the Supporters and Sponsors get. If successful, you also get the joy of being berated by other forum members for being a moderator. If you want to apply then please send me a private message only even if you have PM or e-mailed me in the past. And let me know why you think you would be a good staff member and the kind of things you would like to see yourself responsible for doing on this web site. The final decision of who gets made a staff member is mine and mine alone. I'll post a further announcement when the three new staff members have been decided. Good luck!

Supporters are people that have signed up to this scheme: http://www.aberdeen-music.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14508 And Stripey, I think you should reconsider calling these people "suckaz". Considering they, along with the sponsors, are critical to giving me the funds to continue running this web site. As you spend so much of your time on this web site then I think you should be rather thankful of this.

There is a list - but it isn't public.

Well answered Mr. Jack. The pop-up notification box is optional. You can re-activated by following the instructions above. If you have re-activated it and it still doesn't appear to be working then check that your web browser is not blocking pop-ups.

Flash, the formatting looks just fine. I'll update the sticky post in the Gigs Annoucements forum to better define the standard. Might add an FAQ entry for it as well.

Flash, as it happens Dr. Drakes raised the same point. As I'm the only person that can add events to the main calendar then I'll simply not add events to that calendar if they are at a venue that already has it's own calendar. That should hopefully avoid this kind of issue cropping up. By the way, I'm happy for you and the other venues with calendars to annouce club nights as well as gigs. However, I don't think it is appropriate for drink promotions to be added to your calendar - the only reason I say this if that I have just removed such an event from your calendar.

Not a big fan of musical classifications so I'm probably going to mention a lot of artists that don't count as being "electronica" to some people, but what the hell. In addition to DJ Shadow, UNKLE and Boards of Canada (all of who I like lots) I've been recently listening to Plaid, Telefon Tel Aviv, some of Autechre, Tweaker, Four Tet, and Clint Mansell. Can't say I listen to anything I'd count as experimental to be honest.

For those of you that are sponsors of this web site as well as representatives for local venues then I have some rather good news for you. As you know the current system in place for getting events added to the calendar is rather clumbersome and there is quite a delay in some cases before an event you have announced gets added to the calendar. This is simply because I often don't always have the free time to go through all the posts and get them added to the calendar. I have now found a solution to this problem since upgrading the forums. I have now created a calendar for each of our sponsors so they can add/edit and remove events from their own calendar as and when they please. Unfortunately, only one moderator can be assigned to a calendar and so these have currently been assigned as follows (if you want these changed - please just contact me): Dr. Drakes Calendar - DR DRAKE (Sharon) Moshulu & The Bassment Calendar - Ross The Lemon Tree - Jamie The Moorings Bar - Flash@TMB I would appreciate it if the calendar moderators above could make the title of the events they add to their respective calendars fit in with the formatting style of all the other calendar entries (e.g. [GIG] my gig @ my venue). Just like the Public calendar (which is still there as before) any events added to your calendars will automatically be displayed on the forum home page. I will still add gigs manually to the calendar for those announced in the Gig & Event Announcements forum but hopefully by having these new calendars the number of new gig announcements should start to fall as I hope you will add your upcoming gigs to your own calendar! I also intend to have upcoming gigs displayed on the home page of the web site and on the thread display page in the same as they are currently displayed on the forum home page. So this will further increase the exposure of any events you have added to your calendars. May I also take this opportunity to remind all our registered members that you all each have your own private calendar which you can add/edit and remove your own entries to and from. You can access this calendar by selecting "My Calendar" in the drop-down menu in the Calendar section of the web site. If anyone has any problems or questions regarding the calendars then, as always, please let me know.

Well spotted. They are indeed two of the same. I should have spotted it as well as their IPs are completely identical. Snookum has now been banned.

Apologies to you both but there would have been a delay before you were upgraded to Supporter status due to a problem with the subscription system. The PayPal side of things is working fine but the forum software is not automatically upgrading you so I have to do it manually by myself for now. You will not be able to change your user titles I'm afraid (no-one can - not even forum moderators). I'm enforcing this so it is always obvious who is a forum moderator, sponsor or supporter etc.

Please read this FAQ article for information on how to become an aberdeen-music.com supporter!

I'll talk this over with the AUBL guys when I catch up with them as I don't want to end up stepping on their toes. I know Rico is a very busy boy at the moment and so probably doesn't get much time to update the AUBL web site - I know the feeling all too well! Anyway, I'm interested in everyone's thoughts regarding this idea. I've got plenty of space and bandwidth to support such a feature on the web site. Would people be interested in seeing an aberdeen-music.com local music chart? And if so, how would you like it to work?

Don't worry. There will be an opportunity to get more space and this will be announced soon. It will be at a price I'm afraid though.

Alternative Nation (http://www.alternativenation.net) is probably your best bet.

Knock yourself out guys. The gallery has been re-opened.

Finally, the Gallery section of the web site has been re-opened. As you may notice the gallery has one or two extra features since it has been upgraded but you will almost certainly notice the absence of any band photo categories. Why? Well, I've decided to do things a bit differently as the problem we had before was that only moderators could move photos into the band categories and categories had to be manually created for each band upon request. This proved to be rather frustrating and rather understandably the band photo categories had few photos within them. So instead I encourage you all to use the Photo Album feature (use the Album Admin link in your photo gallery section). What you can all do if you wish is simply create photo albums for your band's photos to be added to. Then publicise the direct link to this photo album to everyone. So, for example, I have an album of my Reading Festival photos that can be viewed using this link: http://gallery.aberdeen-music.com/showgallery.php?cat=3001 As long as you are a registered member on this web site then you will be able to see all the photos within the album and comment or rate the photos if you wish. If you are a band then this can be a handy promotional tool. Simply create album for your band, upload the photos to the album and then use the direct link to link from your band's web site, post it in a sticky post in your band's forum here (if you have one), stick the link in e-mails, private messages - the possibilities are endless! I hope this system works out to be much better. The only downsides of using the photo albums in this way is that firstly have to be registered member of forums to view the photos within the album and secondly, only you can upload and assign photos to your own albums. Other members cannot assign photos to your albums and so it is not possible to collaborate when creating a photo album at this time. As always let me know if there is any problems or if you have any feedback. Have fun! 8)