What to do with SongFight.NET

Billy's Little Trip · Tue Sep 04, 2007 11:12 am

Also, I don't know a lot about these things, but if bandwidth and Data Transfer are not an issue, it would be really cool if SF net offered something like my space, so band members can make a page.
I understand hosting media is the expensive part, but again, embedded player links of a bands music and videos hosted elsewhere, can be added to their page. I'd love a nice simple to use "free" website for my band that I can put as many songs on as I want, AND it's easy for people to visit and navigate.

signboy · Post by **signboy** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 11:28 am

The audio app on

facebook

is a good method for that, you feed it a link, and it plays from that. That way, you're not actually storing the songs, just providing a player that looks nicer than links.

Post by **Lunkhead** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 11:33 am

Just to respond to BLT, it might not take a lot of code to add this Flash MP3 player to the fight/band pages in the archives:

http://musicplayer.sourceforge.net/

You'd just need to have a URL (to a PHP page, for example, since that seems to be the language du jour here) that could write out the song lists in the XSPF format, which is a fairly simple XML format.

Also the Del.icio.us "Playtagger" is a nifty JavaScript that puts a little ">" play icon to the left of every link to a ".mp3" file on a page automatically, if you just include their JavaScript file:

http://del.icio.us/help/playtagger

I think one of the things that's really popular about the MySpace band pages is the Flash MP3 player, since it lets you listen to the songs immediately with no download/wait time/etc. The above stuff could bring that same immediacy to the SF! archive.

Jefff's idea sounds really good. I would love to make something like that, but I'd never be able to find the time, and I don't know PHP anyway (only Java).

Hoblit · Post by **Hoblit** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 12:26 pm

The world does not need another Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, Orcut, and the countless other social networks... besides there a ton more BAND profile websites to boot. Making our own exclusive one is kind of redundant.

While the flash player idea is decent... it would server better, as stated, as an improvement on the stream all function.

I can see the page being good for marketing indie news and leaning heavily on the songfight community but I fear it would just end up the way of spewgrass. I love the idea of spewgrass, don't get me wrong... I just find that I don't visit the site any more and I'm not sure of how often it gets updated these days.

Jefff · Post by **Jefff** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 12:36 pm

This looks pretty close to what I'm thinking of: http://projects.radgeek.com/feedwordpress/

It's a plugin for Wordpress that grabs posts from RSS feeds and reposts them to your blog. I'm not sure what blogging software runs currently on SF.net, but if it's Wordpress, it might be really easy to give this a test run.

Post by jb » Tue Sep 04, 2007 12:51 pm

Jefff wrote:This looks pretty close to what I'm thinking of: http://projects.radgeek.com/feedwordpress/

It's a plugin for Wordpress that grabs posts from RSS feeds and reposts them to your blog. I'm not sure what blogging software runs currently on SF.net, but if it's Wordpress, it might be really easy to give this a test run.

I use that plugin on http://whyohwhy.net and it works pretty well. WordPress requires maintenance, however-- there keep being security holes that need to be plugged and stuff. But that's what I'm thinking of using right now. Also, the way that plugin works, it imports the feed entries as articles into WordPress. Good and bad-- good because then we can comment on them on sf.net, but bad because then sf.net stores content and has a mysql db that can break, etc.

But yeah, that's the best thing I've seen so far. It would even take the existing items on the RSS feeds and integrate them according to date, and they could be categorized and stuff. It would take me a while to implement , because of course a standard template would not suffice.

(Currently, sf.net uses Blogger.)

Jefff · Post by **Jefff** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 12:59 pm

I'd be happy to put some time in on the Wordpress Theme, which would definitely need to be custom.

Caravan Ray · Post by **Caravan Ray** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 1:29 pm

Billy's Little Trip wrote:I think it should be a porn site.

Yeah! Songfighter porn! I'm strapped naked to a bed with a tennis ball in my mouth even as we speak.

Niveous · Post by **Niveous** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 1:43 pm

Hey! You started without me again. I thought we had a talk about that. You are such a bitch, Ray. I hate you. You can find someone else to give you golden showers.

Hoblit · Post by **Hoblit** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 2:37 pm

Caravan Ray wrote:
Billy's Little Trip wrote:I think it should be a porn site.
Yeah! Songfighter porn! I'm strapped naked to a bed with a tennis ball in my mouth even as we speak.

Two Words: Gerald's Game

(awesome book)
(very very creepy subplot)

Billy's Little Trip · Post by **Billy's Little Trip** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 2:39 pm

Hoblit wrote:
Caravan Ray wrote:
Billy's Little Trip wrote:I think it should be a porn site.
Yeah! Songfighter porn! I'm strapped naked to a bed with a tennis ball in my mouth even as we speak.
Two Words: Gerald's Game

(awesome book)
(very very creepy subplot)

This can be the cover art Not Safe For Work Warning!
Song Fight.net cover art

Sorry jb, we're getting a bit off topic, aren't we.
I still like the idea of SF.net being more like a band my space, but better.

bz£ · Post by **bz£** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 2:40 pm

I'm afraid that I still don't see why this should be separate from sf.org (except for the Caravan Ray porn, which deserves its own domain). I mean, take whatever grandiose idea you might have for an aggregation of links, blog excerpts, video samples and whatnot, and add a section at the top that lists the current week's title and entries, and yay! Everything in one place.

There's nothing about the names "songfight.org" versus "songfight.net" that suggests that one is the main website and the other is a groovy news magazine and web-log, so the whole distinction is just confusing to me. That's all I'm sayin'. Heck, sometimes when I'm at a strange computer and I want to get to the SF website I have to try both because I can't remember which is which. The ideas themselves are all cool, though!

erik · Post by **erik** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 2:58 pm

I think that if you have too much that's tangential to the contest of Songfight, it starts to detract from Songfight. Songfight becomes less about a songwriting contest, and more about a linkdump for things related to music.

Jefff · Post by **Jefff** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 3:13 pm

bzl wrote:There's nothing about the names "songfight.org" versus "songfight.net" that suggests that one is the main website and the other is a groovy news magazine and web-log

This is true and definitely something to think about. I think John tries to make the distinction on the current page by titling it "The Songfight Network". His vision of it seems to be a site focused on the Songfight Community as opposed to the competition -- imagine the difference between your most regular Song Fight competitors and your regular Song Fight Live-goers. (I for one am only in one of those groups.)

That said, maybe SF.net should redirect to SF.org and the thing we're discussing now should be blog.songfight.net or something.

drë · Post by **drë** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 3:23 pm

Caravan Ray wrote:
Billy's Little Trip wrote:I think it should be a porn site.
Yeah! Songfighter porn! I'm strapped naked to a bed with a tennis ball in my mouth even as we speak.

Niveous wrote:Hey! You started without me again. I thought we had a talk about that. You are such a bitch, Ray. I hate you. You can find someone else to give you golden showers.

Crap you guys! I found these 3 images. I have Photoshop, the internet and plenty of time.
The temptation is fucking KILLING ME!!!

Niveous · Post by **Niveous** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 5:24 pm

Fight the temptation, Dre. Fight it.

In the meantime, BLT, C-Ray and I should form a band called either "Bear" or "Burly".

Billy's Little Trip · Post by **Billy's Little Trip** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 7:06 pm

dre wrote:

Holy crap, I hope that mic bought John dinner after that song.

pegor · Post by **pegor** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 9:32 pm

a blog where songfighters post production notes and clips of thier songfight process.

a fetish site where people post pics of themselves being hit with musical instraments

a sidefight host.

a realtime webbased IM sorta thang ala the much lauded and underused IRC

the forums are under the net domain - no ?

online/realtime(?) collaberation site

fetish site for pictures of neckbeards and flesh hangin off of guitar strings

a much desereved revenue site w/adds and contests for the fightmasters monitary gain

a review site for indie music

a place where I can anonymously type random ideas without fear of repercusion.

pictures of carvanrays dirty dirty feet

EDIT: bored yet? I got lots.....

a login only forum member only weekly voting tally.
a login only place for people who have won X fights to voting for the current fight.
a login only voting site only for people who think rap sucks and lynard skynard rules!!

a video voting site for songfight song videos --- ahem!

a place to host podcasts of witty folk listening and reviewing the current fight, like Casey Casem ( or not)

blue · Post by **blue** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 12:49 am

Jefff wrote:One of us needs to find a feed-reading webapp that will turn SF.net into an aggregation of all Songfight-related blogs. It should be pre-packaged and easy to setup/upgrade, and then there should be an email address (or maybe some spam-unfriendly method) for sending JB feeds to approve. JB says "ok", they go in, and that's all there is to it.

done

http://joomla.org

you can set any of the content blocks to either user-submitted crap or rss feeds. i'm dicking with it for three different sites at the same time - including phpbb database integration. the phpbb bridge is currently stuck between revs, but i'm sure they'll sort it out soon.

this is the software formerly known as Mambo.

forgive the mess - i made a css to show the name of every one of the divs (because it's not f'ing documented), but you can see two rss feeds in blocks here:

http://b-side.org/joomla/

which each link to topix.net searches for gator football and basketball news respectively.

there's another site that has a joomla addon oriented to "community sites" : http://www.joomlapolis.com/component/op ... /Itemid,1/ - where you can see how the user-submitted news and article content works.

the community builder addon adds a bunch of crap for creating user tiers and contains the aforementioned currently-not-working phpbb bridge.

it's all very gay.

blue · Post by **blue** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 12:51 am

my goal for this on my site, btw, is to set those rss article links up so that a user can create a new forum topic directly from the article, slashdot style. so it'd be like a news blog with an actual decent comments interface, instead of the crappy ad-hoc one all of them use now.

but right now i'm busy writing scripts to steal sports schedules and stuff them into a pickem database.

btw, you can install joomla from the dreamhost panel.

blue · Post by **blue** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 12:53 am

wordpress is the devil's ass.

Caravan Ray · Post by **Caravan Ray** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 1:13 am

Billy's Little Trip wrote: This can be the cover art Not Safe For Work Warning!
Song Fight.net cover art

Wow, she's hot!!