Caught you by surprise? Us too... our development team is ahead of schedule!

Seriously though... MusBook is now divided into several nice chunky parts that will soon change the way you interact with music. Upgrading the navigation (menu) bar was the start (sorry if it's made a couple of things less obvious - there are a couple of usability things that have arisen as a result, but we'll fix those really soon).

In a week or two, each of those big chunky buttons will lead through to a wonderful world of musical discovery... 'Music' will take you to a music center where you can interact with music in any way you please, 'TV' will take you through to a brand new Internet TV station run by our very own TV Guru, Mathew Tucker (former producer of Melvyn Bragg's South Bank Show on the 'ITV' channel in the UK), and not far away is ConSanFron, your gateway to Classical Music.

All these things are coming online during August, so standby for a great new musical experience.

Oh, and if you're in or near London, our colleagues there would love to hear from you if you're interested in helping us out with a MusBook testing session - we'll be getting people together in late August to test out the new site before we launch, so if you want to be a part of our musical revolution, please drop us a line!

support [at] musbook [dot] com

Yours,

Justin @ MusBook Support

Hello everyone!

A lot of behind the scenes changes in the last few days - little URL bugs being ironed out, some debugging, a bit of repositioning of some small things that you would only notice if they were in the wrong place (and we hope that now you won't notice at all!), and further preparation work for our big navigation/TV upgrades, coming in the next fortnight. Did I not mention that before? Well, it's on the way now! Big changes coming soon...

Today we added a 'TV preview' box to the front page, just on the right hand side. For now it links through to the video pages, but within a week and a half, it will link you to the heart of our new Internet TV station. Excited? You will be when you see what's coming up on MusBook TV...

Feedback welcomed as always! support [at] musbook [dot] com

Justin @ MusBook.com Support

One more update for today! We have moved the advertising column to the right of the site (and added one in the header too). These are important for us, as they will start to bring in the revenue that we need to keep growing the site. Are you happy with them? Do you like them where they are? Are the ads useful to you? (That's important too!).

Also, as a result of this, the site itself has now moved further to the left. Does that affect how you use/view the site?

As always, we're really grateful to hear your thoughts, and only an email away: support [@] musbook.com

Hello all!

Well, just in time for the weekend you'll have noticed a big set of changes to the front page of MusBook... finally a bit of color returns to the site, as we re-introduce the 'newest members' box along with a great little dropdown menu that will take you straight to a world map of other users. Want to connect with choirs around the world? Click the dropdown and click choirs, and you'll be magicked across to a world map with everyone there! We do need to improve the way the map and the results are laid out, but we'll get to that soon.

Back to the front page... there's a new TV listings box on the right which will start showing all the latest MusBook TV programming (we hope to get that started next week). You'll find the recent activity feed now shows 30 pieces of recent activity on the site, and the latest job listings, posts from the MusBlog (that's this blog!), Groups, and events are now available all from the front page.

If any of you used the old MusBook Test Site a few months ago, you'll remember the layout, and we've brought across a lot of the design from there - we didn't quite get it right, to be honest, when we started this Beta site, because we experimented with putting content first on the front page, before the social network activity.

But MusBook is fundamentally a social network... it may be a content site and a TV network too, but social activity and networking is what's at the heart of the site. We won't be forgetting that again in a hurry!

There are *loads* of new innovations lined up for the next few weeks - our developers in the India office have a to do list that's longer than you could believe! - and we can't wait to show you what's coming up in August. But in the meantime, we are very grateful for any feedback, suggestions, or ideas that can help us refine further what's already on the site, so please don't hesitate to write to us at support [at] musbook.com and we'll do our best to make your ideas a reality!

More news next week!

Yours,

Justin @ MusBook Support

PS our Melbourne office is now updating the new Job listings service throughout the week! So you can find more bang-up-to-date music job vacancies than ever here on MusBook.com. Click here for the Classical Music jobs!

Hi Everyone!

This week on MusBook we're continuing to improve all the tiny little 'usability' things that make your experience of using the site smoother. We're addressing boring things like how easy it is to post comments on blogs and videos (you can comment on blogs fine now! Everywhere else, you might need to refresh the page to see what you've written. But we're sorting that). Many more little details like that.

Have you seen our exclusive interview with pianist Stephen Hough? And there are many more exclusive interviews on the way, with some outstanding musicians... watch this space!

OK, back to work... I'll update you again soon!

Justin @MusBook Support

Hello everyone,

If you've checked in today to see the latest classical music jobs, you'll no doubt have noticed that our age-old UK country listing and 'coming soon' pages for everywhere else have finally been replaced by an all-singing all-dancing new job search facility. There are three things you should know:

1) There are a couple of problems with links to the job listings themselves, which our tech people in our office in Asia are battling with overnight to try and fix. We hope that all should be just about in working order by early tomorrow. In the meantime, we beg for your patience!

2) We are just starting to transfer across all the job listings now. Therefore, it will be Monday (at least) before you start to see comprehensive job listings on the site. Come on... 4 days... it'll be worth it!

3) There are a few more bells and whistles that we need to add to the job search function before it's complete. At the moment you can't sort the vacancies by location, or set your listing to expire automatically. So if you can give us a week or two to get that finished, we'd appreciate it!

But we now have a fully international jobs listing service with a broader reach than ever across many types of music job, updated constantly throughout the week not only by us... but also by you!

We hope you use the job listings service to find the job or the applicant of your dreams... we're committed to making it the best Classical Music Job page in the world, so any suggestions, please send them our way!

Best regards

Justin @ MusBook Support

If you've been using MusBook within the last 48 hours, you may not have been able to access your activity feed on the front page of the site. Well, it's now all back to normal!

Also, our team is currently working on the new jobs listing service - as you can see they're tweaking it right now. We expect this to be finished over the weekend in time for Monday, but please be aware that there won't be a jobs update today.

Justin @ MusBook Support

Hi everyone!

Well, as promised, I'm going to be keeping you up to date with developments at MusBook throughout the summer.

We've been having some problems with the front page of the website overnight, but our development team in Asia is working non-stop to get it sorted out. We hope all will be back to normal within a couple of hours.

Improving MusBook's Usability

The work going on this week is unglamorous but necessary, and it is going to make your experience with MusBook a lot smoother. Essentially, we're combing through the entire site in great depth, sorting out all the tiny little usability problems that don't amount to much individually, but together make using the website a nightmare if they're not sorted out.

I'm referring to things like upload boxes not being in the most obvious place, buttons being faulty, broken links... little issues like that, which we call 'usability problems'.

The basic rule is: if you have to think about what you need to do, we've failed!

So, don't expect any major new features this week! Instead, we're focusing on the details, and making sure your experience is as smooth as can be.

Front Page / TV / Magazine / ConSanFron upgrade

We're going to restructure the site so that it's divided into main sections: Social Network, Music, TV, Magazine, ConSanFron and Shop. This should make it a LOT easier for you to find what you want - the site structure is just too complicated at the moment. We're deep in mockups for how the new 'front pages' for each section will look, and we will be rolling these changes out gradually over the next few weeks.

New Job Listings

This week, you'll also notice that our long-time job listings are being upgraded to a searchable tool that allows registered users to post jobs. We're still going to be the most comprehensive job listings around, as our Jobs Administrator in Melbourne will be searching the globe for all the latest postings, and adding them to the site. But if you want to use MusBook for your main vacancy listing, you can now do that: just log in, add a job, including a full listing, and post it onto the site.

We expect the job listings to be fully available by the end of the week.

That's all for now! I'll update you again soon.

Yours,

Justin Delleur @ MusBook Support

Hi everyone!

Today marks the start of a renewed effort to push MusBook.com from a well-meaning but slightly ad hoc startup to a world-class music social network for Classical, Jazz and Contemporary music!

As part of that journey, we'll be updating you via this blog, telling you about the latest improvements to the site, any errors that get fixed, and addressing any questions or queries that you have about where MusBook is going.

Starting today, we'll post about any major updates to the site right here on this blog. As ever, please don't hesitate to tell us if you have a question or query. If you need a response, email support@musbook.com and our support team will get right back to you. If it's not urgent, or you have a general suggestion, just post a message here on the MusBook.com blog!

To the best of success!

Justin Delleur, MusBook.com Customer Support