All suggestions gratefully received

[Mark Thomas]

Being a new site, the Unsung Composers Forum is work in progress and so it gives us all the opportunity to create a site which over time has the features which its users want it to have. It begins life as a bare Forum because we were eager not to delay the replacement of the Raff Forums any longer than necessary.

The layout and feature set of the Forum itself more or less replicates the old Forums but it need not - you'll see by looking in the Help pages that there are more features (a Calendar for example) which could be enabled if we all feel we'd like them and, perhaps more importantly, would use them.  Don't jump straight in but have a look around, get used to this new Forum and then let us know what's on your wish list.

Secondly, the sub-forums, of which this is one, aren't fixed in stone. They're what Alan and I felt was needed to begin with. You'll see that we thought it might be sensible to split out news and discussion of new recordings, for example. We can add more or have fewer. Once again, your input is very welcome once you've used the site a bit.

One idea we have had is of building up a comprehensive listing of unsung composers' web sites such as those for Felix Draeseke and Joachim Raff. A list of CD and download retailers is another. These could be either further sub-forums or a static web page. No doubt you'll have other ideas and, again, we'd like to see them.

Inevitably, there's a caveat. As I'm providing the web space and am ultimately responsible both for what's published here and designing and coding the site, I'm afraid that I reserve the right of veto! So, no change there then... 

[peter_conole]

Hi Mark

As already said, congrats. I take it as read that the site is still devoted to the glorious memory of Joachim Raff, the greatest of all unsung composers and one of the Glorious Six of the romantic era. But perhaps (tongue in cheek) that sort of remark could be a minor topic for initial discussion...

regards
Peter

[Yavar Moradi]

Perhaps not the most helpful suggestion...but both my wife and I think the layout and colour scheme was better before. I can get used to this one though...

Yavar

[JimL]

Perhaps you could add in a little bit of artwork?  Maybe a collage of a bunch of unsung composers (with Raff featured prominently, of course ) would spruce the place up a bit, no?  It would make it a little more homey, like the last Forum, with good old JJR looking out at you from the Home page...

If you'd like I could see if I can scrounge up a handful of unsung composers' photos or portraits, splice them together into something like what I have in mind, and then email it to you as an attachment.

[Mark Thomas]

I do agree, it is rather stark at present but I was focussed on getting it up and running. A lot of design time over several months went into the Raff site, tweaking and perfecting a look with which I'm still very pleased. But I had the luxury of being able to take as long as I wanted because the old site was still up and running. This time around, as we were offline, I didn't want to keep people waiting for my artistic juices, such as they are, to flow. So once I'd homed in on the software, it was a question of choosing one of its "themes" on which to base the site and then committing to it, whatever its imperfections.

There'll certainly be a softer and more welcoming banner in the near future (my wife is working on that) and over the next few months I'll be adding tweaks and changes to improve both the usability and the look 'n feel. For instance, last night I increased the size of the font in the breadcrumb trail below the main menu because it was way too small before. There may be more radical changes too, we'll see...