We Have a New Website
The new website has been in the works for a some time. Were very happy to finally stick it out there for everyone to see. The redesign was primarily to update the vibe to something more consistent with our mojo, but we naturally took the opportunity to refine the content and layout based on what you use the site for most, and what we might like you to use the site for more (like maybe buy some music).
To help you get the most out of the new site, we thought it might be a good idea to call attention to some of the changes and fancy new tricks we learned to make it do.
New RSS Feeds
The URLs to the gig calendar and news feeds have changed. You’ll need to update your RSS reader accordingly. The new URLs are:
- Calendar: http://bottomdwellersmusic.com/feeds/calendar
- News: http://bottomdwellersmusic.com/feeds/news
Links to the feeds are in the menu in the page footer, and will show up in the address bar in Safari
For those of you not hip to that jive, RSS feeds provide a way to let you know when a website has been updated. If you regularly visit lots of sites to see what’s new, you probably know how time consuming it can be to visit them all and try to pick out what you’ve already read and what you haven’t. By subscribing (which is just a fancy way of saying making a bookmark) to a site’s RSS feed, your reader or web browser (probably the one youre using now) can tell you when a website has something new, so you only have to go there when it’s been updated. Learn more about RSS feeds at www.WhatIsRSS.com.
New Calendar Features
The number 1 purpose of our site is to let you know when we’re playing. We’ve always sort of thought our gig calendar was a little better than the other guys’, but now we’ve made it even better.
The mini calendar on the home page that displays the next 3 or 4 gigs now calls a little extra attention to itself if the next gig is actually that day. It’s even smart enough to know if the gig is not in the day, but actually that night. Who else is putting that kind of attention to detail in their tour calendar? Dale Watson? NO! Wayne Hancock? NO! The Hot Club Of Cowtown? I don’t think so.
But we’re only getting started, ladies and gentlemen. We want to make coming to see the Bottom Dwellers as easy to do as it is fun. Where most bands are content with a bare bones MySpace listing (and we have one of those, too) of dates, venue names, and cities, our gig calendar now provides you with the following critical information for every single show we play:
- the day of the week the gig is on, so you know at a glance if it’s on a school night or not
- a link to the venue’s website for official venue relate information
- the actual street address of the venue on a single line so you can easily copy and paste it into your preferred map service
- a link to the venue on Google Maps because that probably is your preferred map service
- the phone number of the venue, so you can inquire about any last minute info like drink specials, bathroom cleanliness, or the color of the stamp you’ll be washing off your hand the next day
- some general information about what to expect, like who we are playing with, a link to the other band’s websites, special guests, drink specials, bathroom cleanliness, etc.
- flyers for the show – one big enough to print and hang on your work fridge or kegerator, and one small enough to hotlink on your blog or MySpace page.
- how much it costs to get in
- how old you have to be to get in
- a permalink to the event on our site so you can send it to your friends
- and just because we can, the number of times we have played the venue in the past
How many other bands respect you enough to give you that level of detail for every show so you can take your mind off logistics and start picking out something to wear? No bands that we go to see.
Press
Finally, for those of you planning on booking us, or promoting our shows, we’ve thrown together a page with high resolution photos, a press kit, and previous press coverage, with some more stuff coming soon.
And I guess that’s really it. There are some new photos in the gallery. Oh, and be sure to sign up for our Flickr group and submit your Bottom Dwellers photos to it. They might start showing up here at some point in the future.
P.S.
We have intentionally not taken the extra steps optimize the site for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6. If you notice any weirdness with that browser, we would advise you to upgrade to a modern browser like Internet Explorer 7, Firefox, Safari or Opera. IE 6 was released in 2001. Its 2008.
