PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Website Modernization Update Overdue

Website Modernization Update, I hope there is one to go with the new BB18, get away from the bright white background, have dark background with light text, something easier on the eyes.

Old
http://www.pgmusic.com/bbwin.htm

New
https://www.toontrack.com/
http://www.rapidcomposer.com/
https://www.xlnaudio.com/addictivedrums
https://www.reaper.fm/

Same with the forum, you can get skins/themes change the skin number in the link
https://www.virtualnightclub.net/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=previewskin&skin=24

Like this:

and..

Is this the same as the item in the Wishlist, or something different?

I hope not. I like it the way it is.
Why would I want a PG website flicking from advert to advert when what I WANT is to read what is on the PG WEBSITE.
Just because its trendy doesn't make it good.

+1

One consideration is printer ink. The current design requires very little ink to print. Another consideration is page loading time. Yet another is readability on a phone with adaptive design. And finally, I care about content way more than appearance.

Why are there two threads on this?

A properly designed website prints dark text on white just fine. No issue.


Dark colors load just as fast as light ones!


The current website is NOT responsive (mobile-friendly) so this would only be an improvement.


It is 2017; we can have both!

I'm happy with it the way it is.
YMMV

You can remember and re-live the good old days, File > Save Page As.

Below > File > Print > Frame > Hang on wall.

I'm not suggesting it to cater for older users only stuck in the past, it is purely to get the software out there on a higher level to a new generation of users and a younger audience as well (including Mario, he's all for new & change).

You can view it on an old CRT Monochrome monitor with a Hercules Graphics Card, you will get just the green phosphor on the black background.

Ask yourself.

Ha! Exactly!!!

Thanx for putting this old phart in with the younger audience!

I believe that packaging plays a very important part for many customers. I think that a lot of people are turned off my some packaging. Not just here but for any product that is available for John Q Public.

I'm all for anything that will expand PGMusic's customer base. Things like 64 bit, open all MIDI channels for MIDI and RTs and RDs and any combination, rewrite the menus, better packaging, etc, I think will do the trick.

Ps - I should have added more contemporary styles (both real styles and MIDI, RDs and RDs.

YMMV

The web site (as well as the forum) interface also needs work in terms of display on smart phones and tablets. I spend a lot of time zooming in and out just to get to the content.

Yes always zooming on the phone and that big bar at the top gets in the way.

Just trying openElement https://www.openelement.com/

For printing look at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/print-friendly-pdf/

https://www.printfriendly.com/

I created a whole PDF manual for Superior Drummer 3 with it, as they only have a web manual.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ed6c1hcgekq9g4k/Superior-Drummer-3-Manual.pdf?dl=1

Sure, PG's website (forums especially) is kinda quirky, but unique, and I find that I've gotten used to its quirkiness. So why bother changing the regular website. Now for mobiles and tablets, that's a separate issue that can be handled separately, way I see it.

well then there is this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnXOPAAip-4

Good video, but why did the new crappy designed product take over sales? Marketing and packaging! If the old better designed product used the same marketing and packaging then it would still be the number one product.

What this proves IMHO is that John Q Public goes more for marketing and packaging and not what is the superior product. YMMV

The website can be improved all you like, but I hope it does not take any resources away from developing the programs.

I remember Quicken used to let you buy a box (marketing and packaging) that had a CD in it. You would put the CD in, and then it would take you to the Quicken web site, where you could download the software.

That was for those who didn't want to just download the software, but wanted a "boxed" version.

LOL.

I'd vote for minimal & responsive.
(No, I have no small screen, only MacAir.)

OMG, now we are going after the Website design? Some of you guys really have too much time on your hands. Glad I am still working the day job or I would likely be the biggest complainer around here.

I'm just curious, what you find quirky about the forums (aside from not being great on mobile). But let's assume you're on a desktop PC using the forums, what do you find weird about it, and what forum do you use that you don't find quirky? (just to clarify I'm asking specifically about the forums not the rest of the site).

I’m not cooltouch but I like this forum. It’s fine on a desktop and ok on my iPhone. What I especially like is that you listen to suggestions and implement the good ones. No complaints whatever. Thank you for your interest, Andrew.

Andrew,

I don't have any forum issues either. I find its use straightforward and reliable.

Regards,
Noel

Play youtube videos full screen.
Larger images attachments Link opens in a new tab rather than leaving the forum.

Perhaps unrelated, but this forum seems to load faster on my PC now that Firefox just upgraded to Firefox Quantum.

The only complaint that I have with the forums is the fact that if I don't read a message, close out and then come back all of the messages appear as read. This is unlike some other forums where I can close out, come back and find those that I haven't viewed still appear as unread. I know this is minor but it does make it hard to see what you have or have not viewed. YMMV

I really only have one issue with the forums and that is they do not work well on mobile. I see you are on version 7.5.7. UBB claims that 7.6 pages are "mobile friendly" so a simple upgrade might address that, at least partially.

Being an old-timer who first enjoyed BBS using a Hayes 300 baud Smartmodem, I have been using these sorts of forums for many years. Therefore, I am quite comfortable with the forum here and find it to be adequate for the purpose at hand. With that said, it does look old and that will be a big turn-off to any younger demographics that PG may be interested in pursuing.

I'd love to see what I've already posted to easily, eg with a flag setting. Especially for people's songs. As I get older I get more forgetful.

On the cell when you zoom in the top Black and Gray NavBars fill the screen and gets in the way.
<<< this seems to set the size too big.

On the Desktop Main pages when you zoom in to the page width the NavBars just takes up too much room.
You could make it more compact or scroll it up out of the way and just have a floating ^ up arrow to take you back to the top.
See how you have the Black & Gold and gold text on black, that's what you need the new website to color coordinate with.

See you have your new logo and colors but you have all the old remnants like the old PGmusic logo in the NavBar and the old colors.
The whole website needs to color coordinate with the new logo and colors.
If I sat there for a few more hours it would be done.
Something like this:
View Full Screen

and further (I'm doing all this but behind the scenes PG maybe have the new site all done):
View Full Screen

Not impressed - dull and lifeless

jazzman

Very impressed - exciting and modern!

I have enough problems when they change the year! I hate change! Leave it as it is!...Hank

I like it as it looks much more modern I think it would help sell more copies of BIAB too

You need to convince more of the younger crowd as older users are already fans and probably don't really care that much about a redesigned website. However for the future of the software a younger crowd need to be encouraged too without alienating the faithful of course.

Young people are used to the idea of appearance trumping content. If software (which might be amazing) looks dull they'll probably go for something that looks cooler even if it might be fairly useless.

The younger crowd have been brought up expecting certain design standards whereas maybe the older crowd are looking closer at functionality. I am generalising but I think there is a basic truth in this.

Yes that says it all, the old uses don't like change and prefer EGA graphics not modern 4K, but they need to look at it from a company's perspective and not expect the company to stay in the past just for them only and not move with the times, how many companies fold up due to this very issue. They were young at one time, rebels, and wanted change then, they didn't stay with the DOS version.

Thanks for all the feedback. I think we're more or less on the same page with this. When the current design was done, maybe 7 years ago, when we were still worrying about supporting older Internet Explorer browsers and HTML5 hadn't taken a firm hold, we were just on the cusp of mobile becoming a big issue in web design - it was just a passing thought. Web technology moves fast! Designing a site today, and you wouldn't even CONSIDER not designing a responsive site. I wonder what we'll have in 7 more years?

I noti

Thanks Andrew !
Just gets a bit more noticed here than one of the coins in the well.

The website needs to reflect REAL not colorful cartoon pics of music coming out of a computer but REAL INSTRUMENTS from a REAL STUDIO.

EDIT: See, as you zoom you get the compact menu:



View Full Screen

I don't find anything particularly weird about the forums. And by "quirky" I mean non-standard. I'm a member of a lot of Internet forums on topics ranging from photography to motorcycles to guitars to composition software. I find that a company that wants to have a unique presence on the 'net frequently has its forums customized. Personally I don't care for this because invariably I have to get used to that particular company's way of getting things done with its forums. There are a few very popular forum software packages used broadly on the net and the good thing about them is, once you've gotten used to one's layout, you're used to them all. I don't see this as a bad thing, okay? Makes life easier all the way around. So, it's possible for an entity to customize the look of their software to any level they desire, while retaining the same function that a forum user like me is used to. PGM doesn't do this. They have their own forum design, and it's one I've had to get used to. But now that I'm used to it, I just really don't see the need to change it. Unless perhaps PGM wants to install one of these popular forum software packages so its forum behaves like the rest out on the net do. And I kinda doubt PGM will want to do this.

As for specific forum softwares, there are several that are popular. They often have commands/menu selections in common.

phpBB is a popular open source package that can be heavily modified Here's an example of a lightly customized phpBB forum:
https://www.astronomyhouston.org/forum/

ProBoards software:
http://aurorah.proboards.com/

XenForo is becoming popular:
http://www.xs650.com/forums/

VBulletin has been around a long time.
http://forums.turbobricks.com/

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera . . .

+1 I use a few websites that look pretty much like this. I don't particularly care what they look like as long as I can read the info without going through a lot of clicks.

My remark on small screens came from some research on the growing number of users. It's about not excluding the audience. I doubt anyone in this forum visits on a portable device, due to the nature of the program activity. The big display is so helpful.
Formatting technology changes so regularly. At one time, web designers thought the displays would change according to the device detected. Didn't that turn out to be an underestime!

Most of my visits to this forum are from an Android phone.

and mine are on an iPhone.

How interesting, Matt and John. Your comments took me by surprise, though this is an area I have lost touch with. I did grab the right edge of the screen and pull it to the left & was surprised to see the forum could still be read. Even without liquid CSS, the job gets done.

I notice a lot now that the even newer generation of website design have a video background:

https://truefire.com/online-guitar-lessons/

I haven't looked at Truefire's website in a long time. I noticed one of the instructors is Tommy Emmanuel, I bet that's a treat!

Personally I find background videos to be a distraction from the message imprinted over the video. I noted the background video was only used for the first and last screens of the homepage. The meat of the homepage message, which is a description of what the site offers, has a very simple background and static graphics.

I don't care for the front shade transition between screens either. A simple scroll would be more effective in my opinion.

My website provider, Wix, has an extensive collection of web templates. I sample new templates every couple of months just to keep track of new trends. I like eye candy but it can be a fattening distraction.

I'd like to see PG Music's website restructured so the site would be easier to search and navigate. I'm not sure what changes I'd want made though as I'm not a designer, I'm just a user.

Jim, a comment about searching (not navigating): some of us Google the PG site to find forum topics, rather than use the forum’s built-in search function.

This forum software has served them well since 2000 when they made the change. Only thing I don't like about the search function is the 5 year limit. Most of Mac's posts have disappeared as a result. However as Matt mentioned this forum is indexed extremely well by Google, often within minutes of a new post.

I do see the forum needs to keep up with the times in some ways, like the newer browsers. In Console I see some Header warnings due to below
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Forbidden_header_name


If this is in regards to the main site, I did a 'view source' on the home page .. warning; this can not be unseen. There's a whole lot of old content just commented out and it is rough to look at. Also a lot of JS 'fixes', it really could use an update.



Can you explain that Ed? Isn't that what responsive design and Google's 'mobile first' initiative is all about? I know more and more devices come along every day but the goal is that the site does just that; change to fit the device.

rharv,

While the default search time period seems to be 5 years, a little while back the 'Advanced Search' function introduced a 12 year limit. I was surprised to discover this not so long ago.

Noel

Thanks for the tip Noel.
I often use the Advanced Search when I do search and hadn't noticed this.

12 years is indeed news. That changes a few things. Thanks.

"Maximum date range is 12 Year(s). "
that's new.

In Reaper and KVR forums I can still go back and update/edit any old post.
In this PG forum you can only edit it for a few days.
I think that needs changing so the edit is always on and you can update info rather than having new post underneath like in Chord Picker Tool it ends up so long you have to scroll each post to take in all the info, when I could of just updated the first post.

+1

I have written a few threads like that. It would be cleaner to be able to update the first thread.

By the way, although I don't think it has been explicitly stated, I think the limit on being able to edit a post is 24 hours. That's not a scientific answer though.

I think it's more than 24 hours for Edit (image below)

I agree. Also one should be able to edit the subject line. If someone has a problem and it is corrected 8 days later then they should be able to add solved to the subject line.

+1

In the UBB forum the search period goes back 20 years !
In Reaper and KVR I can go back years and still EDIT:


UBB Eliminate time limit on editing posts
UBB "Edit posts" time possible to turn off
UBB Post editing time limits, removing

One thing to note is this forum changed format in 2000 (June I think).
I wouldn't expect to be able to search the old format (anything over 18 years), but it would be nice if the history on this format could be accessible.

Edit
Turns out it was end of May ..
yeah, I probably wore out my welcome by now

Yes, we had an active community that was ‘lost’ in the conversion to the new forum software. Many of us have more posts in our history than appears here. That old content had a few topics that would still be valuable today, like MIDI or reducing radio frequency interference - general knowledge like that.

If they still have the old format on hard drive there would be multiple format importers by now.

To get back to your original point Pipeline, I completely agree with you. I read a thing a few months ago that said millennials are now the largest demo in the country outstripping us baby boomers. I'm 72 btw.

Old folks are so used to being in the drivers seat it's hard to understand that from a marketing pov, nobody cares about us. I mean nobody. Except of course for all the medical device makers, special pills and of course all the really old actors pitching gold, silver and other can't miss "investments" at us all day on cable news. Mellennials don't watch cable news much they get it from social media. We can comment, laugh, make fun of how they waste their time or whatever but trust me nobody cares. That's how they roll and that's it.

The status quo definitely won't cut it for a music software company and all the old guys on this forum who say they like it just the way it is well, to put it bluntly this conversation doesn't concern us. It's about the future of PG Music that we all love so much.

It's all about our kids, it's their world now and all the marketing, social media and cool devices most of us never heard of. I know lots of you old guys are all over social media, right? Right? No?

That the point of this thread.

Bob

Thanks PG website looking Hot !!! Looking Hot on the phone also !!! All good for BB2019 !!!

High praise! One can only imagine what additional surprises PG Music has in store for everyone.

If anyone hasn't noticed yet, the web page footer has also received a makeover. The UBB (web software application) version number is no longer displayed.

I noticed it was changed over less than a half hour today. Looks really improved on iPhone.

Pipeline gets a special award: Revival of the Oldest Thread

, though sometimes site seems a bit buggy still ... i use Firefox BTW.