Hi all

We've just been made aware of a bug that's stopping anyone for signing up as a non-individual user (eg orchestra, choir, business, festival)... We're getting this fixed right now and it will be fixed within 24 hours.

Justin @ MusBook Support

 It's 'all go' here at MusBook!

Our TV people start work on Monday, our Ad Sales people start in less than 3 weeks (are you interested in advertising on MusBook? Click here!), and in the meantime our team in India is working flat out to get the main sections Music, TV, Buzz and Consanfron finished in time for the end of September.

The best thing about working on MusBook during this 'startup' phase is that we get to see rapid changes every day. But the frustrating thing is that because everything is done 'iteratively', meaning through a process of small changes, it's always a step or two behind where we'd really like it to be!

Our new Music Center has just arrived hot from our developers' computers, but it'll be a couple of days for sure until it's even ready to be shown on the site! Our conception of what it will be in a month or two is way ahead of what's been completed so far! You'll find that each major section will start off very simply, and then gradually become more fully featured week by week, right they way through until the end of the year.

So if you promise not to expect much, we might show you the new music center next week :)

- Justin @ MusBook Support

Hello Everyone,

Well, work is continuing apace with our new Music Center, TV platform and Education Center (ConSanFron). What we're going to do is roll out very basic versions of each first, and then constantly refine them over the next few months until we've got something exception. So don't be too underwhelmed at first - don't expect something worldshatteringly great! But they will be useful tools, and they'll get better and better with time.

In the meantime, whilst some of our developers are working on the exciting glamorous new things, the others are slavishly coding away over hot computers to bring you a more reliable, better functioning site. We've a list of over a hundred little things which are being fixed right now, most way too boring to explain here, but a handful of the recent changes include:

• Latest Videos box on the front page
• Latest Blogposts box on the front page - later this week, this will show the 'most read' blogposts of the week
• and some other things including a lot of bug- and error-troubleshooting that would send you to sleep if I explained them here - they're that tedious!

Coming up, as well as the great new music/tv/buzz/consanfron sections:

• major overhaul of the directory (it'll be much easier to find people you know, and will behave more like a social network people search should)
• total redesign and relaunch of the long-awaited Music Teacher Map
• tweaking and redesign of the jobs page so that you can more easily find a  vacancy in the country that you live in

We've managed to accidently delete the link for posting a job! It'll be back later in the week but in the meantime here's where you need to go to add a job listing to the site: http://www.musbook.com/user_jobpost_add.php

More news from MusBook.com coming soon!

Yours,

Justin @ MusBook.com Support

Hi Everyone,

I'm pleased to let you know that you can now edit your profile information as if you're editing a blog! Just go into 'my profile', then 'edit profile information'. When you click on the 'about' tab, you'll find a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor. So instead of just copying in your biography, you can tell other MusBook users all about yourself by adding pictures and other images too!

But that's not all...

If you're a musician, you might like to sell your CDs or MP3s? Well, although we plan to offer that kind of functionality on MusBook in the future, there's a quick and simple way to do it right now... just use the 'source' button to paste in a Paypal sales button, or in fact any other kind of html code that you'd like to use, in order to have things appear on your profile page!

As ever, if you need any help or want to send us any feedback, just email support [at] musbook [dot] com

Best Regards

Justin @ MusBook Support

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

Guidelines for Beta Testers

Hello, and welcome to the beta test for MusBook.com! We're so grateful for you taking the time to check out the site before it goes public.

The whole purpose of running the beta test is to make sure that everything is running smoothly by the time MusBook goes live to the general public. So, please be prepared for loads of unfinished things - you'll run into the odd broken link, placeholder text, or error message. That's fine. Just let us know, and we'll fix it.

If you come across anything that looks like it's in the wrong place, please tell us straight away by leaving a comment on this blog. Each day, we'll gather up your comments, add them to the list below, and send them on to the IT department for fixing by the following day.

Please check the list below first, in case someone else has already pointed out what's wrong!

We're already aware of these issues:

[updated 15th July] [*starred issues have gone into development]

• The TEACHER section is not yet working - anything under the 'teacher' tab is just a demo right now
• TWITTER currently updates MusBook status, but MusBook status doesn't currently update Twitter. ALSO 15 JULY - FAULT with twitter connection
  
• Twitter - examine shutout bypass and consider user expectations
• *issue reported: "Trying to click on 'my profile' - sometimes the drop-down menu gets in the way so you end up on Edit Profile info instead" -- this issue occurred in Internet Explorer -- UPDATE -- more space is needed between the two menus
• *Directory problem: "default for a city goes to one place. so if you only put 'london', the last person to have put 'london' is the only person visible because all the other users in that location appear underneath them. so this needs for people with no street addresses to be randomly scattered around a certain radius."
• 1st Dropdown - consider moving 'Twitter'
• *'Forums' dropdown - does 'About MusBook' need to be there?
• Create Forum moderation policy
• Reassess CSS - is font hierarchy consistent throughout site?
• Time Zones - should Perth (Western Australia) and Hobart be added to the time zone list?
• Should user profiles receive an automatic 'Welcome' comment ?
• Twitter. Do those members on Twitter expect/want other users to be able to see their timelines?
• MusBook member with deleted Twitter account still appears on list of users with Twitter accounts, despite no longer having one
• Submenu bar and other bits and pieces are not visible when viewing in Safari.
• there's a problem with the 'what's new' recent activity feed on the front page of the site. i don't know what it is. it's not showing up to date - like bang up to date last few minutes - updates.
• two users have reported to me of outgoing friend requests to other users that they don't remember adding. keep eye out for this in case any other users report same

• composers forums - reset as per agreed
• comments on a comment... this shows up in activity feed (at least on the user_home.php even if not currently on the front page!) but there is no email notificaiotn to the person who originally made the comment. does this matter?
• we need a twitter handle box for the individual user type to go in the bit where you have the 'about me' and the 'website' boxes. can this be linked so that you can click on it to follow someone?

• when using share buttons at the bottom of blog posts to share to facebook (not tested on others) the title and content syndicated across to FB in the thumbnail is standard musbook title page text, not title of blogpost/article - makes it irrelevant for readers on external site. needs investigation [response: this will be resolved when title tags are fixed] - 15 JULY CHECK TO SEE if this has now been resolved
  
• Is there a possibility of notification via email when a new discussion or reply is added?
• contact form is not working
• country choice in signup/profile info should be DROPDOWN not free entry, because it creates search inconsistencies. eg i have put my country as 'england' in my profile, but other people have put 'uk'. so if i want to find all violinists in england, it shows me in the search results but not violinists living in the uk who are in england. similarly, if you search for violinists in the 'uk' it won't show anyone listed as being in 'england' or 'wales' or 'scotland'. Therefore we need a drop down - and perhaps one that eliminates UK and lists only england, wales, scotland, n.ireland etc. There are likely other countries with similar problems.
• 'My Videos' needs to be next to 'Video Feed' on the 'My Apps' tab, or indeed have a tab of its own, and--there needs to be intuitive links to 'Add Video', 'Add Blog' etc etc, on the relevant landing pages.
• Clarification needed to prevent users posting on their own walls rather than other peoples'?
• check  title pages and meta descriptions across whole site now working correctly