Thursday, February 3, 2011
Watching museums
The Economist has a nice blogpost about the Google Art Project. It allows you to walk around in 17 museums (in Streetview style) and see paintings in incredible detail. Mostly classical paintings.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Happy new year!
I wish all the visitors of Classic Cat a happy new year!!!
As you can see in the history there quite a few new entries. Classic Cat has now for the first time more than 7000 audio entries. This includes the first about 100 lp recordings from European Archive. I also created a helpfile for orientation on the European Archive website.
You probably haven't noticed the updates in what appears under the "Visitor's favorites". I tried to make it more relevant by giving more attention to newer entries. Some users have the habit of putting all the performances of a certain work in their favorites. This used to increase the chance that that work would be shown in the Visitor's Favorites. I repaired this.
If you have any suggestions for further improvements please let me know!
There are now some 1400 registered users and 400 favorites in the system. Some of the users may be spam (I deleted some 1000 spam users - recognizeable by their websites), but most are probably people who erroneously believe that you need to register to get to the music. The number of unique visitors stays rather constant at between 4000 and 5000 a day.
As you may have noticed in your Favorites Classic Cat is a dynamic website. When one of your favorites is no longer available the link will disappear not only from Classic Cat but also from your Favorites. Sometimes - but not always - it will reappear if the link becomes available again.
Some other updates: you can now reset your password and the link on your screenname when logged in now points to your favorites page. The latter feature is at the moment only implemented for the home page but will be rolled out for the whole site with the next update. The user page itself is still there when you click on your username in your favorites page.
I received this year about 50 dollar in donations. It seems to have helped that I mentioned them in a previous blog entry. Below is an anonymized overview:
8-8 A.A.N $3,50 Westbank
17-9 E.P. $ 10,- USA
22-11 K.C. 1,- USA
28-11 A.A.N. $0,75 Westbank
8-12 J.D. $ 5,- Brazil
19-12 C.C. GBP 10,- UK
23-12 C.G. $1,50 Malta
31-12 J.T.L Euro 10,- Spain
My thanks to all the generous givers! Classic Cat is an extended website that takes a lot of effort to maintain. And I keep trying to make it more useful for its visitors.
As you can see in the history there quite a few new entries. Classic Cat has now for the first time more than 7000 audio entries. This includes the first about 100 lp recordings from European Archive. I also created a helpfile for orientation on the European Archive website.
You probably haven't noticed the updates in what appears under the "Visitor's favorites". I tried to make it more relevant by giving more attention to newer entries. Some users have the habit of putting all the performances of a certain work in their favorites. This used to increase the chance that that work would be shown in the Visitor's Favorites. I repaired this.
If you have any suggestions for further improvements please let me know!
There are now some 1400 registered users and 400 favorites in the system. Some of the users may be spam (I deleted some 1000 spam users - recognizeable by their websites), but most are probably people who erroneously believe that you need to register to get to the music. The number of unique visitors stays rather constant at between 4000 and 5000 a day.
As you may have noticed in your Favorites Classic Cat is a dynamic website. When one of your favorites is no longer available the link will disappear not only from Classic Cat but also from your Favorites. Sometimes - but not always - it will reappear if the link becomes available again.
Some other updates: you can now reset your password and the link on your screenname when logged in now points to your favorites page. The latter feature is at the moment only implemented for the home page but will be rolled out for the whole site with the next update. The user page itself is still there when you click on your username in your favorites page.
I received this year about 50 dollar in donations. It seems to have helped that I mentioned them in a previous blog entry. Below is an anonymized overview:
8-8 A.A.N $3,50 Westbank
17-9 E.P. $ 10,- USA
22-11 K.C. 1,- USA
28-11 A.A.N. $0,75 Westbank
8-12 J.D. $ 5,- Brazil
19-12 C.C. GBP 10,- UK
23-12 C.G. $1,50 Malta
31-12 J.T.L Euro 10,- Spain
My thanks to all the generous givers! Classic Cat is an extended website that takes a lot of effort to maintain. And I keep trying to make it more useful for its visitors.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
About the last update
About a week ago I did some major update of the site. Google ads are back, but the main improvement are some new links (and the removal of quite a few dead ones).
I have added the first entries from the European Archive. It remains to be seen how visitors pick this up as it is a rather Spartan website. In some cases you have to look at the image of the cover or the image of the record itself.
There is still a long way to go: I have added at the moment only 40 of the 842 records.
In the mean time I keep looking for extra financial sources. On advertising alone the website is not sustainable and donations - my thanks to those who did give - on the website stay rare.
I have added the first entries from the European Archive. It remains to be seen how visitors pick this up as it is a rather Spartan website. In some cases you have to look at the image of the cover or the image of the record itself.
There is still a long way to go: I have added at the moment only 40 of the 842 records.
In the mean time I keep looking for extra financial sources. On advertising alone the website is not sustainable and donations - my thanks to those who did give - on the website stay rare.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Last weekend the site was down
Last weekend the site was down due to some problems with Bluehost. Occasionally the database goes down due to excessive data traffic and I had built in a function that sent me a mail when that happened. They saw my site sending too much mail and concluded that it was a spammer. Never mind that I had informed them before why I sometimes sent a lot of mail. Obviously their organizational memory isn't that great.
In the meantime I haven't solved the problem of the occasional downtime for the database. Fortunately not all data are in the database so that the visitor gets at least something when the database is down.
In the meantime I haven't solved the problem of the occasional downtime for the database. Fortunately not all data are in the database so that the visitor gets at least something when the database is down.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Little update
Today I did a little update. Some 100 new performances (too few to make an update file) and some small changes to the website.
I deleted the vote section. Nobody used it and I had the impression that it discouraged people from using favorite lists.
I noticed that the link to this blog in the menu is wrong. I repaired it for a few pages. The rest will have to wait for the next update.
I deleted the vote section. Nobody used it and I had the impression that it discouraged people from using favorite lists.
I noticed that the link to this blog in the menu is wrong. I repaired it for a few pages. The rest will have to wait for the next update.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Moved to a new server
I have moved to a new hosting provider: Bluehost. I had once again walked into the overcomplicated way things are implemented at GoDaddy and wasted a day with it. So enough was enough and I moved to the account where I already had hosted OpusFinder. I hope everything keeps working as it did. If you find problems please let me know.
The menubar on Classic Cat keeps puzzling me. Sometimes it nicely fits in and sometimes it starts in the middle of page and wraps around. If there is any html-guru around who understands it I will be happy to hear from him.
The menubar on Classic Cat keeps puzzling me. Sometimes it nicely fits in and sometimes it starts in the middle of page and wraps around. If there is any html-guru around who understands it I will be happy to hear from him.
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