New Feature #2: Anniversaries
There will be a number of new features and improvements this week. I will create a thread for each one, as I'd like to get feedback without having everything clogging up a single thread.
The second new feature is an Anniversaries page. Behind the scenes I've been adding full release dates to every release, wherever the full date is known. I've had to go back through the first couple of thousand bands added to the site, so note that I'm probably only about a third of the way through that. Once I've finished, I will likely add Release Date to the individual Release pages.
When creating the Anniversaries function, I decided to focus on important milestones rather than every possible anniversary, otherwise there would literally be over 100 for certain days of the year. I wanted the system to be entirely automated, as I'm very keen to avoid more administration work wherever possible.
I had my artist create clan icons for all the 5 year marks up to 50 (hello Black Sabbath!), and applied a Clan sort on the page (FALLEN, GATEWAY, GUARDIANS etc.).
Let me know what you think.
I like it a lot Ben. What time zone does the page update take place under? Is it Australian ESDT?
I think it's U.S. time, or at least something similar. As much as I'd love to have the site in AU ESDT, I'm not sure that would be preferable for the majority of attendees.
The main problem I can see with this feature Ben, is when you see an album is, say fifteen years old and you immediately go "Shit man, I can't believe that's fifteen years old, it only seems like yesterday!" A feature that forces us all to face our own mortality. What have you done?!
Or could it highlight the immortality of classic metal & in doing so empower us to reach greater heights? I mean "Black Sabbath" is 50 years old & still unfathomably powerful after all. On the other hand, Andi might not feel as old as some of us when he sees these anniversaries. In fact, he may have the exact opposite reaction to the one we do.
With many of my favorite metal albums from exactly 15 years ago (https://metal.academy/forum/23/thread/297), sometimes older, I kinda have the same reaction as Sonny, though that doesn't make me feel old as much as 15-years-old metalheads having more talent than I wish I could (hello, Alien Weaponry). Great feature, by the way, Ben!
The cover images are no longer cut off at the bottom on the Anniversaries page. Looks better.
One thing that bothered me about the Anniversaries page was that releases with multiple clans were only being displayed with one clan icon (the first one alphabetically). That's been fixed now, so multiple clan icons will appear when multiple clans are present.
