Twenty (!) years after launch, Mixtape Collective finally gave up the ghost.

A few weeks ago, I got an automated alert from a friendly server robot telling me that the site was unable to boot and that the robot would be turning it off. The code, which hadn't been touched since 2013, could no longer run. Too old. Too out of date.

Even though the community is gone and the internet has moved on, simply deleting everything would feel bad. Fixing it properly would require unreasonable amounts of time. Thusly, I opted to extract every morsel of data from the database, builing a long-term archive that isn't dependent on 20-year-old tech.

I built a program to take the code + database and build a static, read-only version of the site. Crawling every user, mixtape, forum post, etc we're able to build a complete archive of the site (over 123k pages!), using original assets, styles, designs, etc.

My initial goal was to keep things one-to-one, but as I was working through things, I realized that while I'm in the guts, I might as well make it a bit easier to navigate, easier to explore, easier to surface interesting data, etc.

Consider this my love letter to the community. I'm sorry I squandered what we built together. If I could do it over again, I would make different choices, keep the good times going. I miss you guys.

I doubt anyone will ever see this, but in the off chance one of you stumble across this, drop me a note!

Thanks. I love you all.

<3 EFF

Holla Y'allz,

Just wanted to let everyone know there are 2 mix contests up right now. Go wild.

Also, here are our options for our 4th Contest Contest:

1. Whackedtollie: Things you always sing when you're drunk

2. derhay: What if tombstones were jukeboxes?

3. Calaveth: Muzak if I ruled the world - if you got to decide, what people would be forced to listen to in elevators and shopping malls.

4. Rachael: a. Songs you are embarrassed to admit you love b. YES WE CAN mix

5. johnny_luddite: a: Shit you love that you think no one else will have heard of. b: Exception proves the rule. Pick a genre you profess to hate and then populate a mixtape with songs from that genre you kinda like. c: If you were a mixtape, what kind of mixtape would you be?

Please vote for one. Thanks lovers!
SLEDG

Dear Friends,

Just wanted to remind every one that there is a Valentines contest up, and thus far we only have one awesome entry, so get your love juice flowin' through your body tubes and crank out something sexy.

Also, I don't think anyone noticed, but there is a second Mix posted for presidents day. YAY!

Keep the contest suggestions comin' and those top 5 lists.

Love,
SLEDGBARNYARD

Dear the wonderful folk of the MTC,

New badges have finally been given out. I hope you like them ;)

First order of business is for me to tell you to check the contest page.

#2 - Post the 5 albums you listened to most in 2008 and get a badge. Simple. They don't have to be albums that came out in 2008.

#3 - Post a contest idea you have. Consider this the beginning of Contest Contest #4.

#4 - I have recently moved my sweet ass back to the land of Portland, Oregon. I will soon be moving into a house in South East Portland (probably). I was thinking that once I get settled there, I would like to have an MTC get-together. Everyone is invited. I thought I would mention it now so as to have enough time to plan and whatnot. Does this sound like something anyone wants to do? Or is it lame? Let me know. I was thinking we could have a little contest leading up to the thing for a party mixtape or something for us to listen to. I dont know. If you have any ideas or things you would like to see happen at something like this let me know. Im down for whatever.

#5 - That is all for now. I love y'allz.

Hey everyone,
I know I am once again behind on things. I'm working to catch up, but im in the middle of hectic times so I'm asking you all lovely MTC-ers to have some patience with me and things will be ironed out soon.

Also, There has been a new contest up that no one has noticed i think. Contest 27. Do It.

Love sledg

Happy holidays everyone, A few quick things:

1 -- Check the contest page.

and

2 -- I love you all.

Sincerely,
sledg

Dear loyal MTC-ers,

First, let me apologize for the delay in getting your Halloween badges and your Halloween party badges out to you. Life has been crazy in the last month. I have actually made them but somewhere along when I was consolidating different hard drives I lost them. I will try to get them to you guys ASAP. This might be further delayed as I am going to be out on vacation starting November 21st and until Dec. 10th. If I can I will try to get them done while Im on holiday but I have no idea what internet connectivity is going to be like. Once I again, I apologize, and I will fix it as soon as possible.

Second, We have a new contest up. Its live for a whole month so make sure and take your time with it and craft a real winner!

Third, Its time once again for another "Contest Contest". Please brainstorm up some awesome ideas for contests (or anything else for that matter) and when I get back into my home country we will decide the winner(s).

Also, its going to be 2009 in no time! Get those Top-5-Albums-of-the-year lists ready because when I return there might be something special for those that like to list things.

And expect some changes around here in 2009!

Happy Thanksgiving.

I love you all.

-sledg

Pssssst. Word on the street is that there is a new contest posted. Get your fright on.

On a side note, anyone got any good ideas for costumes?

Surprise! A new Contest is up already and it's a Team Battle! Thanks to Johnny_Luddite for his help on this one. Lets keep this place movin' and a shakin'!

YEEEEHAWWWWWWW!

PS. The Potpourri 3 contest goes until this weekend so if you havent submitted for that yet, get on it! Yesssssss!

Just a heads-up, Sledg has posted Contest XXIII. Bust our your potpourri pants and get to mixin'!

Ok MTC folks, here are our options for the next contest. Please vote for one. ONLY ONE. If you mention two of them i will count the first mentioned one as your vote. Voting will be underway until next Saturday.

1. Beddy byes mix - Mix to listen to as you go to sleep.

2. Calendar mix - A song to represent each month of the year.

3. Potpourri III (@eric sez: this gets my vote)

4. The songs you should have listened to growing up, but didn't.

5. reSoundtrack a day of your life to improve/alter/direct it in some way. (In honor of some great/pretty good movies, I'm giving a 24 hour time limit. So, this could be graduation day in Texas, 1976, or friggin' Rex Manning day. It's up to you.)

6. A "Choose Your Own Adventure" style of mix. If you're not familiar with this childhood icon, brush up here: http://en.wikipedia.or g/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure

Sledg or Eric starts off the beginning of the adventure, and then through artist names, song names, and lyrics we continue the story through 'til the end.

7. Negativity Mix. A mixtape for someone who would be a foe of yours if they were on MTC. Could be a minor or major celeb (Sal could have Mark E Smith for instance) someone you know personally, a hated historical figure, a hated fictional character, anyone, just as long as you rip them to shreds with your mixtaping prowess and let everyone know why he/she does NOT float your boat.

8. A Wedarriffic Mix. Take two people (see categories in last idea), marry them off to each other and create a mixtape to be played at the wedding.

9. Music your Grandkids will need to know about.

10. Forget Henry, Will You Accept My Mix, Lucy Whitmore*
[a mix to woo and seek the affections of a film character] Choose your own film and character. [[*50 First Dates]]

The winning idea's owner gets a badge. YAY!

Congratulations to Calaveth, Rachael, and Johnny_Luddite, who came in First, Second, and Third Place in this very difficult contest. Thank you to everyone that participated.

Next up, another "Contest Contest", where everyone posts their contest ideas on this page, we then vote, and the winner gets a badge. If you have an idea, post it here. After a week, we will vote and after another week of voting we will have a brand new contest.

Also, I would like to see what kind of MTC wallpapers you creative folks out there can come up with. For a little side contest, you all have a whole month to submit to me your creations (in the dimensions the currently available wallpapers are in please), to:

sledgbrainerd@gmail.com

At the end of the month we will have a vote on the winner. I encourage everyone to give it a shot!

And last, if any of you out there have any suggestions for the site, please feel free to message me about them. Daedalus suggested maybe coming up with an MTC facebook application. What do you guys think about that?

Special Badges are headed to the anyone who posts what their favorite album from the year they were born is, and why. Post it here as well.

Contest XXII has been posted, y'all. Get on it.

Many thanks to Sledg for spearheading the awesome contest committee (c)!

Hey MTC-ers,
Here are the narrowed down selections for the mix contest. Please pick the one that interests you and leave comment. If there was another one that was suggested in the forum thread that you prefer over these, feel free to write them in. Please keep selections to the ones that were in the thread however. I left the descriptions in the words of the people who suggested them.

1. From Johnny Luddite
"FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE" A broad one this. Songs about Russia, songs with a Russian theme, Russian songs, songs that sound like they might have come from Russia, interpret it as you will.

2. From Johnny Luddite
"THE YEAR OF BUBBLING UNDER" Select the year of your choice, and fill the mix up with album tracks from that year that never went top 40.

3. From Johnny Luddite
"NOAH'S ARK OF NOISE" A mix featuring animal tracks two by two. e.g. 2 songs about dogs followed by two songs about chickens, etc etc. Maybe we could have a horrible rule for this one that once someone has posted songs with a particular animal, that animal couldn't be used again. One way to get quick spur of the moment entries.

4. From Calaveth
In the vein of Robot vs Monster, "PIRATE vs NINJA". Two teams duke it out, only the most awesome survive.

5. From Calaveth
The music you should have listened to growing up, but didn't.

6. From Cassee
You could steal a theme from the FTOTZ club and do "Sin." There are infinite possibilities for songs about bad behavior, but also sin and redemption.

7. From Bea
"The Alternate Soundtrack"
...specific scenes where music was used would be re-tracked, and in the description field for every song picked would be the name of the scene in the movie and the song originally used in it, and it would be in chronological order. The Alternate Soundtrack, you know. A real challenge could be to do this with musicals (only) and find songs that could replace the original songs exclusively written for the musical.

8. From Rachael
A mix for a celebrity/politician/public figure.

9. From Rachael
A food mix.

10. From Derhay
Forget Henry, Will You Accept My Mix, Lucy Whitmore*
[a mix to woo and seek the affections of a film character] Choose your own film and character. [[*50 First Dates]]

11. From Galaxiepi
Mixes about BALLS.

Im gonna leave the voting open until this Saturday when the winning contest goes up and the winning ideas creator gets a sweet-ass badge to show off.

So please vote and formulate some ideas for next time because these Contest idea contests are gonna become a regular occurrence. Thank you.

-sledg

We officially have our first moderator. Everyone, put your grimy hands together for sledg. He's going to be helping my out with badges and contests and all that jazz.

Word on the street is that sledg is going to take a vote for contest ideas in the forum. Go check it out. While y'all are voting, I'm continuing to work on the site in my offtime.

So, to celebrate, anyone who posts 'YAY!' (within the next two weeks) gets a fancy new badge from our moderator.

KICK OUT THE JAMZ!

Okay, everyone take a knee. ...

So, since MTC cannot die, I'm trying to formulate a gameplan to buy me time to work on the next version. As of now, the plan is to fix some of the issues with the current site (mix creation, badges, profiles) and streamline some backend processes (contests, badges, points) so that I don't have to spend so much time administering things.

Once the backend tools are in place, I might pick a few people to help me moderate and run contests.

This is all very up in the air, but I'd like to know -- what would y'all like to see fixed from your perspective. Mix creation is #1 on my list, followed by a few other annoying bugs.

Sound good? Break!

As I contemplated how best to phrase the verbiage explaining why I was closing the site, I became inspired. I realized what needed to happen if I were to keep the site afloat.

Details are sparse at the moment, but I will be posting again shortly to gather feedback. This obviously isn't going to be a speedy turnaround, but I think we can make it happen.

MTC4LIFE.

Heya! Contest XXI ended over the weekend, but I was visiting my most wonderful mother. I will do the prize issuing tomorrow, as I just got home from a 5 hour drive. eek.

Hey all. In betwixt moving in with the girlfriend and some heavy-duty freelance work, my spare time is almost nil. I'm ashamed at how I've neglected this site. My bad.

Expect a contest to be posted by the end of the week.

I love you all.

What a rad contest. Some seriously superb mixes. Congrats to everyone who played along.

A new contest is in the works, but I'll be moving this next week, so it may be a bit slow to come up. I'll keep y'all posted.

Have a good week, crew. MTC4LIFE.

First off, contest 20 just dropped today. 20 contests. Amazing. Go play along. Awards to players.

Beyond that, I wanted to apologize for my frequent absence from the community. Both Corey and I are finding it hard to balance MTC time with that of our personal lives. Just so you all know, I'm working to find that balance.

Contest 19 is OVER. I even made it in the top 3 -- impressive.

Congrats to everyone who played along -- badges have been awarded and points as well.

Keep an eye out for an epic contest starting next week -- MIX CONTEST 20! YOW!

Czech it out! A massive 500 points to the winner! Yay!

Contest 18 is FINISHED. The top 3 were in tight competition.

Congrats to T-bag, camilasalles and Cassee for first, second and third place. Actually, congrats to everyone who played along. I've given you 200 points for doing so.

Finally, a badge to everyone who yells YAY! before 10am PST on 01/11/2008.

I'm connected to internet via a bitchin' 33.6 faxmodem and holy hell is it slow. I just wanted to wish everyone around these parts a happy holidays -- I'm keeping a list and checking it twice -- expect some badges when I'm back in the land of highspeed.

Much love.

Thanks for playing along, there were some really amazing entries. Badges and points have been awarded.

I'm going to be out of town for work for the next week, so expect a contest upon my return.

Rockout.

Contest 17 is live. Thanks to sledg for the suggestion. Now go play!

A really cool idea struck me the other day, so I thought I'd run it up the flagpole and see what everyone thinks:

1 -- People create a 'share' address on their profile with their mailing address (not viewable by anyone except the user)

2 -- People flag mixes that they've made as being 'up for trade'

3 -- Two people agree to exchange mixes

4 -- Each person send *us* their mix, in an unaddressed, postmarked envelope with an exchange ID written on it,

5 -- We generate labels and resend to each person, thus keeping the end-user's contact information private.

6 -- Sending is broken into two or three 'batches' throughout the month.

Any thoughts? Suggestions? Insults? Hurl them my way.

Congrats to our winners. This has been one of my favourite contests to date. Thanks for playing, y'all.

Another contest / activity to come soon. Pay attention, yo.

Contest XVI has been posted. How appropriate, as the weather here is complete crap.

On a side note, I've added a few more 'accomplishment' badges around the site. Expect to see more of them. I'm finally starting to feel better. Sickness sucks. Also, roman numerals suck. Or I suck at using roman numerals. Either way.

Much love, y'all.

All --

I fully meant to post a contest this weekend, but I caught some infernal bug. I'm sick as hell. When I recover, you shall have a contest.

Rock on. I'm going back to my NyQuil-induced visions.

Holler. Mixtape Contest 15 is officially over. It's been a great ride -- I enjoyed it. I know there are lots of ideas in the forums, but anyone have a good idea for contest 16?

Much love to all.

Whoa. Long time no post. I've been up to my eyeballs in work, but I finally crawled out enough to post a new contest. I think this one will be tons-o-fun.

And, while I'm at it -- the first 15 people to drop the "YAY!" bomb get badges.

Aside from that, how have you all been?

Just a quick note -- I awarded the badges a few days ago, but just got around to issuing points to the winners. Thanks to everyone that played.

There should be a new contest / activity in less than a week's time.

Party on, bitches.

Some of you might have felt a disturbance in the force today. Derhay hath been reset by his own request. Welcome back to level 1, sucker!

Also, Corey is getting married tomorrow. Congrats, brother!

I just happen to be going on Vacation at the end of the week, which requires a fairly length drive. Divinely inspired, the new contest has been posted.

See you on the road, suckers.

I know I'm a little late, but according to my calendar, the third week in July is Corey Appreciation Week. It is a week in which we are to celebrate the main brain of the operation, Corey.

The programming god he is, he's been working like a coal miner in the background. Help me is saying thanks to Corey and his hard work since the start.

MTC4LIFE.

Contest XIII is OVER. Thanks for playing, y'all. There were a lot of really superb mixes.

I've issued out badges and points -- forgive me if they are random. You try coming up with badges based on Potpourri.

Another contest will be coming within the week -- keep you eyes out.

On a side note, Corey and I have been working really hard on 2.0 -- it's going to kick so much ass. More news as it comes.

Rock out, y'all.

Go mix your hearts out! Yay!

Keep your eye out over the weekend. My ladyfriend is out of town, so I'll be nerding it up all weekend long. YAY!

I forgot to give out points for the last contest. My bad. I'll be doing so shortly. Watch the inflation go.

Anyone down for another potpourri contest?

Contest XII is over. Team 97 destroyed Team 07. Thanks to everyone who turned out to play. Let me know if you didn't get your badges -- I had to make a ton of them for this contest.

But yeah, turnout was a bit low. We'll be discussing a fun, easy contest shortly.

Also, I'll be out of town for the next week. All issues, talk to coreysprague. I love you all.

Corey and I have spent a fair amount of time digging through the logs and the database. We realize that there has been a small bit of strange activity revolving scores, but it's nothing to be worried about.

It has, however, caused us to investigate some of the core functionality of the site. We have strapped down a couple areas that needed some attention as well as added more verbose logging and tracking in order to sniff out users who are abusing the system.

So, I'll be clear -- we'll let it slide this time, but anyone found trying to game the system, using multiple accounts or automated scripts will be shut down. And publicly humiliated.

With that, I'm going to bed. I love you all. Keep it peaceful, suckers.

There's been some strangeness regarding scores that we've all noticed. The staff (uh, I mean Corey and I) are looking into it. More news as it comes.

TEAM BATTLE! THE SEVEN YEAR MIX!

Links on the side and front page. Get on it.

If any of you aspiring artists out there would like to submit your own mixtapecollective wallpapers, please, send them to feigner@gmail.com.

The only thing that I ask is that you please create them in the four required sizes, specified in WxH measurements on the front-page wallpaper call out. And keep it classy :D

ROCK.

While I wasn't looking, we broke 500 users. Hell yes.

A badge to everyone who yells YAY!

Well, that was a whole lot of fun. Probably my most favourite contest to date, actually. Thanks to everyone who submitted their awesome mixes and a grand, cordial, royal congrats to our top 3 winners. Y'all truly know how to cut a damn fine rug.

Beyond that, if the top 5 winners would like to send me their personal mailing addresses, I'll mail off some of these super-elite, neato buttons (made by riotsheelds).

Again, thanks to everyone. Anyone got any good ideas for the next contest? Another egg hunt, perchance?

ps -- WHY IS EVERYONE TYPING IN CAPS ALL OF A SUDDEN?

Here's the lowdown: we have a new contest. Alongside the standard 400 points and badges for the winners, we also have handfuls of *real-life* badges to award. Many thanks to our very own (awesome) riotsheelds for the buttons. MAD PROPS.

Visit the contest page for pictures and more info.

ROCK.

The first non-denominational egg hung has arrived. I hope you like converting binary to ascii...

0110111001100101011100100110 0100011100110110110101100001011 100110110100001100101011100100 0101110011000110110111101101101

Happy egg hunting.

[1pm EDIT] hint: since the MTC code likes to add spaces to long text, remove all the spaces from the binary number -- there aren't supposed to be any.

The egg hunt will start at Noon tomorrow. Be there or you shall be square.

Congrats to Bootylicious for making the 1000th mixtape.

Think about it -- that's insane. You guys rock. I think I can speak for Corey when I say that it's an absolute pleasure to not only work on the site but be a member of this duderad community.

Keep up the good work, y'alls.

ps -- keep your eyes peeled on sunday, I have a feeling there might be an easter egg hunt in order.

Thank you all for being very patient. The site is now running under the 2.0 framework. It might not look like it, but a lot has changed! Let us know what you think.

Y'all do. I'm pretty sure it's well understood, but I just wanted to take time out of my (lamely) busy schedule to let you all know.

Keep up the good work.

ps -- 2.0 is slowly taking shape. I'm exited.

So, as everyone knows... Eric and I are working on 2.0. Also, as everyone knows, it is taking us WAY longer than we want.

Things are coming along nicely, but we still have significant work ahead of us. We are very confident that you guys will enjoy what we have done.

However, we have reached somewhat of a dilemma.

Because it is a redesign from the ground-up, we have to first redo everything that currently exists in 1.0, and then additionally add all of the new features.

As originally posted (long, long ago)... things like gangs, showdowns, etc are some of these features that have been slated for 2.0.

Our dilemma is this: A) we can continue working, create all of the new features and release 2.0 as an entire package somewhere down the road (at this rate, probably close to the end of the year). Or, option B, is to get all of the 1.0 functionality converted and in place in the new framework and release 2.0 sooner (say, maybe summer?), and then incrementally release the other features as updates.

Keep in mind, many of our UI enhancements/features as well as the season structure are fundamentally a part of the framework, so they would be included in this "initial release". What would be lacking would probably be: gangs, showdowns, the 'objectives system', a flushed-out keyword system, and a flushed out search system (we will put a rudimentary one in place for the initial launch), as well as some other additions we don't want to reveal at this time.

What do you guys think?

We personally are leaning towards option B because the scope of the new features is quite immense and we don't want to end up rushing them in order to get 2.0 out the door. We want to do them right.

Additionally, we also want to get 2.0 out there as soon as possible, because we think its really rad and that you all will enjoy it!

What are your thoughts?

Contest X has been posted. This one is a massive three weeks long with a massive reward. Get to mixin'!

Another guerrilla YAY! badge attack!

Everyone who posts the phrase 'YAY!' before 11:59 (PST) gets a badge.

YAY!

Your dedications were wonderful. What a fun time we had. Now, since you sounded your heartfelt dedications, three people are walking away with some dedication inspiration badges and everyone else gets 100 points (plus first, second and third bonuses for the top thrizzle).

Congrats to chimp_and_zee, claireillinoise and sledgy!

WAX OFF!

Who is your favourite president and why?

Mine is the Georgey Washington, just because he looks kind of like a turtle and he invented freedom.

Yee-haw, ladies. A new contest is here. I'll assume that you know how to get to the contest page by now...

Anyway, 300 big ones for first place, plus bragging rights and a sure-to-be-sexy badge.

Get to mixin'!

Eric and I have been busting our asses on the 2.0 redesign. Sadly though, it's still a long ways out. Who knew programming could be so much work?

We are both really excited about our progress though. We've got a lot of neat ideas that should make the site far more addictive and fun. Additionally, we will be improving the overall experience that exists now, fixing bugs, and much more.

However, since we have already overshot our original estimate by a month, and foresee many more months before it is released... we want to know what you guys might like added to the site in the interim.

We don't want to add anything substantial to the 1.0 code because it will have to rewritten almost immediately in the 2.0 framework; but everyone has been very patient with us and we want to offer some sort of reward for that.

Any ideas anyone? Anything glaring that needs fixing, or maybe some bitching feature we haven't even thought of?

Sadly, all things must come to and end, thusly, we're putting contest 8 in the 'GTFO' folder.

Congrats to our three winners:
1 - sledgbrainerd
2 - eric (hey, that's me!)
3 - youandme

youandme should have probably overtaken my spot, but the masses have spoken.

A new contest will probably be posted by the end of the week -- anyone have any ideas?

Rock on y'all.

It looks as if our host's database servers are having some issues. Hopefully they'll get resolved soon. But, I suppose, if you are seeing this, then things are probably getting better.

Cross your fingers.

A new contest emerges! Click the 'contests' link on the left to play along.

Sorry, not MC related directly, but check out http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/arts/music/18dram.html

I have no idea who the guy is, but that is ridiculous.

Alright, kiddies, take off your headphones and listen. Or maybe just read. Either way...

The next mission, should you decide to play along is to find an artist/ album/ track in the database (probably by using the 'music' option on the left) and write a short personal story of a time in your life and how that song reminds you of it, relates to it, influenced it, etc. Next, copy what you wrote and leave it in a tag below, telling us the track, album and artist as well.

My example:

Love & Communication / The Greatest by Cat Power
Cat Power, probably my fourth favourite woman in the world (my mom, my girlfriend, joni precede her) took a stage at Coachella 2006 just after sunset and put on a simply stunning show. Dry and parched from the heat, the girlfriend and I leaning on each other from support, it was just shy of perfection.

So, delve deep into your brain-RAM, make a post on that song page and leave a comment here. We have badges to issue and will pick three random entries for a neat-o point bonus.

ROCK!

So eric and I pried ourselves from our Wii's and finally ended the contest!

Actually, to be honest, it wasn't all Nintendo's fault; we've been pretty busy too!

We've been pouring a lot of time into 2.0 as well. It's still a ways off but we have made some pretty monumental progress so far. A good portion of the new database schema is complete and we began writing scripts to convert the 1.0 data over. We're going to remain pretty tight lipped other that though. We might decide to leak a little bit later though.

Congrats to our winners d-loot, rover and sledge! The usual rewards were given out, 200, 150 and 100 points given out and custom badges.

Also, we issued out the christmas badges for everyone who logged in on the 25th (*hint* check in on new years!)

In the holiday spirit, the contest has been extended! (actually, I think eric left town, and I don't have photoshop to make badges anymore). We're going to give it another week.

To make up for that, I'll have a surprise for you guys this afternoon...

Mixtape contest 7 is here. We decided to change things up with this contest. Check out the rules on the contests page; we're looking forward to seeing your submissions!

After nearly a year of working on this site, I've finally decided to turn my hat in. I want to thank all of you for playing along, but come Sunday, the site will be no more. It's been real.*



* kidding -- I just moved and won't have internet access for ~1-2 weeks. SUCK!

Congrats to Galaxiepi, Eric, and Johnny_Luddite for their winning mixes.

Thanks to everyone who entered. We'll bring out a new contest in a week or so.

Mixtape contest VI is underway. Galaxiepi gave us the idea. I want to see you all come up with some sultry stuff...

On a side note... I was sad that I didn't get more of a response from people on my bug hunt request. Some people managed to find what I was looking for... others came up a little short... but the turnout was so low that I've decided to give anyone who helped out at all a badge to hopefully encourage a better turnout next time. The badges will be going out in a little bit, but eligibility for them is over.

I didn't get around to finishing the contest yesterday, so there was a little bit of an extra extension. Anyway, congratulations to our winners: d-loot, johnny_luddite and sledgbrainerd. Enjoy the badges.

Thanks to everyone who participated. We'll be starting up a new contest soon. Keep your eyes peeled.

Also, while I have your attention. I have a favor to ask of anyone who is willing (there might be a badge in it for you). I'm going to start working on fixing/redesigning the way our form inputs work for 2.0. There will be some notable improvements (URLs won't get destroyed anymore for starters!).

Anyway, I've noticed quite a few places across the site, tags/forum posts/liner notes/favorites lists/mix descriptions/etc, text has sometimes broken the page. Sometimes it is too long for the container it is in and it screws up the layout, other times it might cause graphical glitches (borders sometimes disappear from mixtape tracklists if there is a hyperlink in the description), etc etc. I am going to fix these problems, but I want to have some test cases to use and am far too lazy to dig through the site to find cases where this sort of thing happens.

If anyone knows of any off the top of their head, or if they feel like searching... I will greatly appreciate and appropriately reward you!

Corey and I are both going to be away from computers tonight, so we won't be able to finalize the contest until Saturday (the 11th).

So, take this extra time to go out and vote, suckers.

Much love, y'all.

Like Johnny 5, I need input:

In the next version of MTC, how would you like to be able to rate mixtapes? Corey and I are fairly cemented on having ~3 separate metrics for rating a mixtape in order to provide better filtering, ranking, etc.

I enjoy the simplicity of things now, but I think it would be cool to be able to rank on originality, flow, concept, execution, etc.

What do you think? What would you like to see?


ps -- happy halloween!

Contest V is now live. Mix your face off.

Corey and I have just recently emerged from a continuous, month-long think-tank session in regards to what we’re going to do regarding the rating system on the site.

As our quaint little website site continues to grow, we’ve identified a number of issues, two of which revolve around ratings. Firstly, without adding tons and tons and tons of tracks to the database or making tons and tons and tons of mixtapes, it’s quite hard for a newbie to get to any respectable level. Secondly, as we grow, our rating algorithm (and our server) just can’t stand the heat. Now, pertaining to that last issue, we have some time before our server bursts into flames, but you know us – we’re proactive as shit.

Our concept for a fix can be summed up in one word: Seasons.

Essentially, if breaks down like this: every few months, a new season will start. Your profiles and mixtapes will have a ‘lifetime’ point tally on them, but will also have a season tally that gets reset at the start of every season. Any points gained during season play pipe directly into your overall score. The top 10 overall will still be the most coveted positions on the site, but now we have a way to let everyone play on a balanced field.

Plus, dividing it up into seasons will allow for more detailed statistics and easier browsing, allowing some mixtapes that ‘fall through the cracks’ to be found more easily.

At the end of a season, the users with the most season points (or highest mixtapes, etc) will get all sorts of badges and huge point rewards.

This is all still very hypothetical and we’re looking for input. Any suggestions, comments or concerns?

You guys rock.

Well, the contest is over and although it was a close battle, the monsters slaughtered their mechanical foes.

Well, the contest turned out pretty well, although the ratings ended up being a little skewed. In light of that, we have decided to award all participants with a team badge rather than just the victors (although the winning team is all getting a 50 point bonus).

Congratulations to Eraserhead, d-loot and Qualca for their top finishing Monster mixes.

Congrats to cst003, riotshields and sledgebrainerd for their top ranked robot mixes.

Points and badges have been awarded. Thanks to everyone who participated.

No new contest yet... if you have suggestions for a contest, now is your chance to voice them. We'll give you all a week off and will start next week with a brand new one!

(p.s. 2.0 kicks ass!)

Just a heads up for you all... monsters are sitting ~1709, robots ~1609. Pretty close matchup so far. 9 days left!

Okay, actually 13 days / baker's dozen left in this weeks' current contest. there are a boatload of mixes already entered and still a ton of time to get a new one in there.

Remember, at the end of the four-weeks, the person holding the number one spot for EACH team will take home 200 points and a badge, with smaller bonuses and badges for silver and bronze. Every participant for the team with the highest average mixtape score will earn 50 points and a badge in honor of their efforts.

So, get out there and make a mix or at the very least, rate the existing mixes.

ROCK OUT!

So, as you all know, Eric and I have been slowly working on the 2.0 redesign. Yada-yada-yada, we've talked about it a bunch...

Anyway, I wanted to get some feedback from you guys about fundamental aspects of the site that need to be changed/fixed/updated.

I would post this on the forums, but I want everyone to see and read it, so we can get a better idea of what you all think.

Let's try to keep this on the topic of serious things that need to be changed. If you have ideas for new features or if you notice small bugs (typos, etc) on the site, please bring them up elsewhere.

Here are the major ones are already going to get taken care of in the redesign. We recognize these as problems and are planning on fixing them:

- Music Database rework: although the current form works fine, it needs some adjusting to be a more accurate database. Currently a track can only belong to one album, and an album can only belong to one artist. This becomes a problem for soundtracks, compilations, etc... and also for songs that might appear on an album, plus a greatest hits, etc etc.

- Moderations: the entire system is crap. In theory it is good, but I poorly executed it because we were rushing the last week before we had to get the site up and running for our class.

- General efficiency: some of this we can't help because our provider sucks, but this is getting addressed.

- My account section: the layout of this is annoying. This was the first thing we wrote for the site and it shows. Having multiple save buttons was a dumb idea. Anyway, this will be fixed in 2.0.

- A way to search for users and mixtapes, as well as flag them as 'favorites' so you can quickly navigate to them.


Other than those, what other major things do you guys want to see fixed or updated?

The one thing that personally bothers me is how stagnant the top user list is. I feel that we probably offered far too many points for adding to the database. Unfortunately, I don't know how to address this really, other than to retroactively reduce the value of database additions. Obviously, this would be a point of contention for those that spent hours slaving away on the music/mix creation pages graciously populating our db (thanks a ton!).

What would the reaction be if we retroactively decreased the value of points earned in this fashion (say to 75% or maybe 60%). I have a feeling the order of the top users would remain close to the same if we did this, but the point differences would be less so newer users could maybe have a shot to be in the spotlight for a bit.

Or what if we had a system of diminishing returns... so the first 1000 tracks you add give you 1 point, the next 1000 give you .5 points, the next 1000 give .35, etc etc etc.

Ultimately, I think we would like to see the top user list be more dynamic, but is it worth the cost of possibly alienating some of our high-ranked users?

What do you guys think? I especially want to hear from the people in the top 10 (you guys are some of most loyal users and we strongly value your opinion!)

Contest III is over. Congratulations to d-loot, eric (cheater), and ParYen. A round of applause for all those who participated.

We noticed that not as many people made mixes for contest III, so we decided to amp it up a bit for Mix Contest IV. I won't spoil any of it here; head to the contests page to find out more. It's going to be epic.

It's been extended until this evening...
I was working on it last night, but couldn't finish...

real life is too damn busy!

Contest III has just about a week left until the winners are decided. Get out there and vote.

Also, if anyone has any good ideas for future mix-contests, let me know. I can't promise badges, but I will promise smiles and brownie points.

First off, congrats to Alice (who had her mix shoot to the top of the OVERALL MIXTAPE CHART), sledgbrainerd and galaxiepi for tearing up mixtape contest II. Points and badges have been awarded. Go congratulate our winners.

Great work to all of you. I think as a whole, we're all becoming better mixtapers.

With that, contest III has started. Click the ad on the front page to read the details. Same as usual. Two weeks to play, points and badges to the top 3.

Rock out, y'all.

RIP STEVE.

Contest II is almost completed. One more day left until badges and points and honor and fame and all that other jazz are issued. If you haven't made your mixtape yet, do it. If you haven't voted yet, do it.

Great work, crew. Rock out y'all.

I am shutting down the site for like 10-15 minutes to test something that may greatly improve our site performance.

Contest II is active. Go to the contest section to read about it. 200 points are on the line AND an ultrasavage badge designed by yours truly. Get to mixin'!

In other updates, things have been slow on my end. I'm doing some side-project design that is taking up lots of my time, but in the process, I may have stumbled across a new logo for the MTC. Only time will tell.

Rock out, y'all.

For unknown reasons the message center went nutso.

The last activity for 90% of the messages was set to 3:14 this afternoon. We are investigating.

This seems odd as we have not modified the message center in 5 months and have never ran into a problem like this.

We'll keep you posted.

I just spent way too long trying to come up with some elegant way to implement forum posting, but due to the existing structure of how things get handled, i had to go with a super-basic one.

But still, it's there. Hope that helps.

Rock on.

First of all, our first mixtape contest went off great. Some of the entries were pretty incredible. Congratulations to our winners:

1st - Alice
2nd - claireillinoise
3rd - galaxiepi

We'll finish tidying up after this one and get another contest started shortly.

Also, Eric and I met yesterday to discuss our 2.0 strategy. It's going to be pretty bitching, but it will be slow coming.

Additionally, some of the small downtime and general sluggishness of the site has been bugging me...so I wrote some code to analyze some of our database communication in order to isolate what is slowing us down.

The results were pretty surprising. Nearly all of the slowdown on the site (20ish sec load times, 5 min lockouts, etc) can be directly pinpointed to just a few isolated things.

First, activating a mix was causing some really inefficient code to run which completely locked everyone out of the site for upwards of 200-300 seconds. I changed a "ANY(" to an "IN(" and it seems to have fixed it. 4 mixes were activated afterwards and took no more than 15 seconds each to process!

Some other culprits are random artist/album/track. Based on the analysis, these are taking upwards of 50-60 seconds on average. I won't take their functionality out, but I'd recommend not using them for a day or two until I optimize them.

Finally, narcissism is going to be temporarily removed (don't worry, we'll still be getting data and will bring it back later)...user central takes an average of 15-20 seconds to load and the narcissism calculation takes ~80% of that.

We're going to try to nail these down and fix em so hopefully the experience can improve for all!

So, it took a little longer than expected because my schedule has been pretty hectic, but the forums are here. Eric and I did most of the work in the past two hours. Needless to say, it hasn't been heavily tested, but it also isn't terribly complex, so hopefully bugs are minimal.

We hope you enjoy it. This site has been begging for a forum for quite some time.

With that said, this also is one of the last major features we will be adding for awhile.

Our next task is to redesign the entire site from the ground-up. Yeah, we've been talking about this for awhile, but now we are actually going to do it. The only downside to this is that you guys will have to keep yourselves entertained for awhile, but we'll be sure to toss in new badges, contests and maybe a few surprises here and there.

From our initial discussions, the redesign is going to be pretty incredible. Not only will there be new mixtaping features and a slicker interface, but we are going to really tackle the inefficiencies that are existent now. Gone will be the 10-15 second load times on artist/album/track pages (Sadly, no those load times aren't due to our server...it's due to crappy code :D).

Anyway, enjoy the forum and keep making mixes!

I'd like to give a big round of applause (and badges [and +150 points]) to the three winners of this round of the 'referral riot' contest that we've been running. A lot of you brought in some fresh blood, but three people went above-and-beyond. So, without delay, join me in giving the following folks a gigantic 'Yay!'

First: chimp_and_zee
Second: mila
Third: derhay

+5, y'all, +5.

We have 15 mixes in the contest with just under a week to go. If you're planning on getting your mix in before the deadline, you'd better get your mixtape on.

Also, if you haven't, go vote for all the radass mixes. Follow the 'contests' link on the left.

Penultimately, if you have any good ideas for future mixtaping contests, let coreysprague or I know.

Finally, exclusive badges to the first 4 people who reply with the word 'Yay!'.

Corey and I finally got our act together and created the very first MTC mixtape contest -- browse over to the contest page and check it out.

Winners get a whopping 200 points AND a custom badge. Hot stuff.

Happy mixtaping.

Alright, so I started work on the forum. It will be a little while before it is ready to go, but I wanted to get your opinion on something.

Would you guys rather have a simple straightforward forum (nothing fancy), that could be expanded on over time?

Or do you want a fancy full-featured forum from the get go?

I am leaning towards the former, only because we can get a working forum on the site sooner that you can all use.

Anyway, give me some feedback...also if you have ideas for features you'd love to see, lemme know and I'll maybe put them on my list.

I've spent the last couple hours putting in a neat little feature that's been on my shortlist for some time: crosstalk.

Basically, on all profile tagboards, you will notice a cute little icon under the tag poster's featured badge. Clicking this will fetch a page with all the tags from both users, making cross-tagboard conversations easier to follow.

As always, badges for people who find bugs.

Finally, we broke 200 users a day or so ago -- awesome. This place is not only a fun outlet for me to practice my coding / mixtaping skills, it's also turning into a pretty rad community of people.

So, to close -- keep spreading the word and making mixes and we'll keep working to bring you the best Collective we possibly can.

ps: thanks to all those who wished me a happy birthday!

In lieu of the server outage last night, I was able to get some development work done. I now present to you: User Central, located in the 'main' box in the left column -- It's a fun overview of user profiles.

Things have been slow on the developers' side, but it's starting to ramp up. Keep an eye out for some new goodies.

Also, it's my birthday on monday (7/24). Just so you know.

If you didn't notive, we had a massive service outage today. It wasn't out fault. As I am told, our host had a series of unfortunate events, resulting in the Collective being down for a large part of the day.

Sorry guys. I was just as bummed.

Not a whole lot to report. Life has been busy. I just got engaged on Friday (to my friends, don't feel bad if you don't know, I've been too busy/lazy to tell anyone) and started a new job a few weeks ago, so MC time has been slow.

Anyway, I answered some of your requests made in the last post. There is now a tagboard on the badges pages now so you can engage in discussion about your favorite badges and whatnot.

I also updated the user point breakdown to include the # of artists, albums, and tracks rated and the number of points earned from these ratings.

Finally, I tossed up subpages off of the profile page that show all of the profile and mixtape ratings a particular user has given. Some of you might be excited to see the scores particular people have given your mixes. When I have a chance, I'd like to add a rating breakdown for individual mixes as well.

Anyway, I know it's not much, but it's a start. Some of the other requests are a little more time consuming. Ideas such as the customizable profiles might require a lot more work than it would seem.

Also, bug finders from 2 posts ago, don't worry, you aren't forgotten, we've just been too busy to make a badge yet!

Corey and I met up earlier this week and made a laundry list of bugfixes to jump on and features that we want to implement. If any of you have suggestions, let us know.

Rock on y'all, we're just getting started.

Rating these now gives you a chance to gain points. Those who have already rated might have seen a net increase in points.

In order to put this in motion, we had to change the points in the database to allow for decimals. With that said, there are now numerous places on the site that might be displaying a user's points in decimal form. We don't want that. Each person that finds a place we need to fix this will get a badge. If anyone finds an inordinate amount of these locations, they might get a special badge. Happy hunting!

Remember, we want to find the places that display decimals!

Corey and I decided to give a little thing we call 'daily rewards' a test run. Basically, for signing in, you get 10 points. This only happens once per day, but we think it'll make things a little more interesting around here.

As I said, this is just a test. We are tracking the points, so if this somehow manages to make things worse around here, we'll yank them all away.

Any thoughts?

Just a heads up, but as some of you already know, we had a major database burp happen at some point last night, continuing through the morning. I contacted our wonderful host and had them reboot the database server, so things should be in order. Let us know if you find anything that got borked along the way.

Rock out, y’all.

I finally got some time / motivation to work on the site. I added a 'mixtape central' section with an expanded 'top mixtapes' list, a longer 'recent mixtape tags' box that I'm already having a lot of fun with as well as a random mix art collage thingy.

Just go check it out. On the left, in the 'main' box.

A similar page for profiles as well as searching to come soom. Have a happy 4th, or for those not in America, have a great day.

I just wanted to tell you all how stoked I am to have over 150 registered users on the site. Totally awesome.

Corey and Eric have started their post-college jobs and are planning a few new things for the site. You'll all be the first to know.

Finally, keep cool, as it is really, really hot (at least here in the NW US), in case you've missed the weather.

MUCHLOVE. MTC4LIFE.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it is to find an artist/ album/ track in the database (probably by using the 'music' option on the left) and write a short personal story of a time in your life and how that song reminds you of it, relates to it, influenced it, etc.

My example track: Peaches in Regalia by Zappa.

So, delve deep into your brain-RAM and leave a comment on a track/ album / artist. Be sure to tag this post with the artist / album/ track name so that everyone can read 'em as well -- that's how we'll be keeping, as we have badges to award.

Rock out.

So, we decided to wrap-up our referal contest (sort of... I'll get to that).
The winners were Galaxiepi and Daedalus by a long shot. The final tallies will be posted at a later date. Congratulations to our winners who each received a custom badge and +150 points.

We have decided to keep the referal contest going though. Same contest as last time except starting over with today. Depending on the turnout, we will be awarding badges/points to winners every 2-4 weeks. Each round of winners will get a unique badge (ie, a different badge than Daedalus and Galaxiepi won). Keep those referals flowing people.

Thanks for hanging in here and using the site. We've been a little slow at working on anything (ie, no work at all). But hey, we just graduated (pics to come soon), and are both starting real jobs next Monday. Scary stuff, but once we are settled, I'm sure we will be hammering away on some new stuff for all of you.

Keep up the mixes, I'm enjoying reading/listening to what you all have come up with. Especially all of the drama.

School is out for me (Eric shortly). Going to take a week or two to unwind and then am going to get back to working on fixing things and working on the page.

We will begin our much talked about code redesign, but none of that will be made public for quite some time. So in the meantime, we want to keep all of you people happy...what features would you like to see most? and what about the site would you like most to be changed?

I'll start: I'd like to see "Mixtape Themes" -- Having a few common templates to base mixes on. ie: "The Breakup Mix", "The Road Trip", etc... When making a mixtape, if you so choose, you could select one of these themes to submit your mix under. Each theme could have its own competition, so we could keep a list of the top 10 "Breakup" mixtapes, maybe even award badges, and have more mixtaping outlets.

What I want to see fixed: The moderation system. I made it pretty poorly. I'll try and rework it so it is more usable.

So, I'm not sure if this project is a blessing or a curse. I'm trying to finish up my last term here at school, but all I want to do is make mixes and try to climb the oh-so-steep top-10.

But, this log post isn't about me and my procrastination, it's about new users. We're running the referral contest, which has brought in some new blood, but we're running out of ideas on how to spread the word of the Mixtape Collective.

So, does anyone have any good ideas on how to get the word out there? The more users, the more interesting things will be. As always, badges to those who help.

Thanks again, crew. Happy mixtaping.

After spending the better part of 6 months working on this, it is nice to finally sit back, enjoy and watch everyone use it.

In these first few weeks of v1.0 I've come to some conclusions that are far different than what I was expecting with the site.

I - People must not like rating other profiles. Since the ratings were reset a bit ago, I've been noticing most profiles have only been rated a couple times. Definitely thought profile rating would be a bigger hit (especially since you get a point for each profile rated!)

II - Tags are a lot more fun than* I thought they would be. On other 'social networking' sites, tags have never really held my interest. It could be that this is a smaller knit community...but I think it is the ease of reverse tracing conversations back and forth between profiles. I read ALL of your conversations.

III - The moderation system blows. In theory it is great, I just got lazy and poorly implemented it. I'll make it better, I swear (or else I'll make Eric do it).

IV - Database whores are dominating the points. I kind of expected this in the beginning, as this is mostly due to a lack of users. However, with the current trends, even if we had 1000's of users, only like 8 people would be rating profiles (hint hint).

V - Finally, our hokey badge system may have actually worked. You people seem to be enjoying the badges as much as Eric and I do. This calls for only one thing: we need to make more.

Anyway, thanks again for using the site. I'm having a blast watching all of this unfold.

* VI - Addendum. No matter how many times I proofread a dev log entry before posting, I ALWAYS find a typo later and have to log into the database and fix it.

I went away for the (much too short) holiday and just returned a few minutes ago. I'm amazed at how much activity is going on here -- I love it!

Corey and I have been quite busy with other things (plus, we kind of need a break), but are about to jump into 'fix-it' mode. If you have any suggestion on how to make the site better or find something broken or misspelled, leave a tag here, send me a private message, leave me a tag or use the contact form. Badges to good suggestions.

Also, by request, I have increased the length your liner notes can be by 1.5.

So, keep telling your friends, keep making those mixes and drop me a line sometime -- I'm big on procrastination and have been steadily running out of things to distract me.

Happy mixtaping.

So, I'm a moron and broke the referal system!

Anyway, if you have refered someone and the points have not shown up, have that person send me a private message or post in the contact form so that I can get it taken care of.

Our first contest was an absolute hit!

Congratulations to Bootylicious for winning both the overall award, as well as top tracks. He added a whopping 1901 tracks!!

Congratulations to me for winning the artist portion of the contest. Yeah me...like I need another badge! (but hell if I don't deserve it!)

Congrats to Sledgebrainerd for winning the Albums leg of the contest.

Finally, we decided to award 3 honorable mentions. The criteria for honorable mentions was to have added at least 500 pieces of information (sum total of artists/albums/tracks/options). Congratulations to our honorary monkeys: whackedtollie, jaysix, and marzocchi!

Well, with the first contest down, we have a new one for you all to partake in!

As we all know...this site needs more users...more users means more mixes, more ratings, more points for all, and more to do!

With that said, we are introducing our latest contest: "Crowd Control". The contest is to get the most people signed up that you can. Go to the contests page to find out more!

By the way, happy to announce that last night we had 8 concurrent users signed in at once...that is a pretty big deal, that is like 1/7th of our userbase!

I made some changes to the point system.

First of all, there was a problem in the way we were storing the point history for user ratings. When a user was rated, the point change would be stored correctly...however, we keep track of point changes through time so that we can regenerate people's points in case of error. Anyway, long story short, there was a glitch causing your level not to serve as a multiplier when first rating someone.

Also, we have decided to reward users with +1 point for each user/mixtape rated, this should encourage people to partake in the ratings.

Additionally, we have increased the mixtape rewards to net you +50 points for each level your mixtape reaches (this was previously +25)

Finally, you will get +25 points for each badge you unlock on the site.

We're hoping that some of these changes should make it a little easier to go up in the first few levels, and as we all know, things will get a lot more interesting when everyone is at higher levels!

All of your mix and profile ratings have been reset, so go back and rerate! (artist/album/track ratings are fine)

Just to let you all know, we will be ending the database contest on Wednesday.

We have received a pretty good response to it thus far and as a way to reward those who have worked so hard we have some amendments to the original description.

The rewards are as follows:

- 1 unique badge, +100 points for the user who adds the most total correct information (this includes artists, albums, tracks and options).

The following 3 rewards are exclusive of each other (the same person can't earn more than one)
- 1 unique badge, +50 points for the user who adds the most correct artist information
- 1 unique badge, +50 points for the user that adds the most correct album information
- 1 unque badge, +50 points for the user who adds the most correct track information

Finally, we don't want those who worked valiantly but failed to qualify to be left out in the cold, so we will be awarding honorable mention badges for those whom have put in a solid effort. How much information do you have to add to be considered? Why would we tell you that? If you are uncertain, add more data!

We will announce the winners on Wednesday and introduce a new contest.

The Engineering Expo is over. Both Corey and I spent hours explaining the details of this site to those that were curious. While we didn't win any of the awards, I still think that we had one of the best-designed (both front *and* backend) projects around.

So, I don't speak for Corey, but I'm going to take a break from developing and actually make some mixes, add some tracks and try to win some of these badassed badges.

Thanks again, y'all.

Well, the Engineering Expo is upon us in about 12 hours. We have been working frantically this week to fix minor problems to make sure that the site is clean and professional.

With that said, we have added some minor functionality.

The display of related mixtapes based on the keywords specified now works correctly.

We have also introduced 'System Messages'. You will now receive a system message when a user adds you as a friend, or when a tag is made on your profile or on one of your mixes.

Finally, 'My Relationships' is back online. You can now write a description or anecdote about your friends and foes. These descriptions will be viewable to the public when viewing their list of friends. This information might eventually be displayed in profiles as well.

I have to make a post about this. The obnoxious flicker AND disappearing 'stuff' bar in FF 1.07 is officially fixed. Although this is a confirmed error in the Gecko (FF) browser itself, we finally stumbled across a coding fix that seems to correct the problem. This is a monumental day for all mankind.

I spent a chunk of time today visually overhauling the 'My Mixes' section as well as the entire mix creation page. Pretty. There are a few minor glitches in IE that need to be resolved, but I need sleep.

If y'all have any suggestions on how we could improve the interface to make things easier, more intuitive, whatever, please, let us know. Badges for good suggestions.

Finally, thanks for helping us get this off the ground, you guys rock -- we're nothing without our userbase!

With the release of version 1.0 of the site, I thought it might be nice to let everyone know where we stand.

As most of you know, this website is Eric's and my senior project for our Computer Science degrees. We have spent most of the school year working on this. Our initial plan for the site started as a pretty simple idea...however, as we continued to discuss the project, we kept coming up with more and more features to add. We still really haven't even touched the tip of the iceberg as far as what we'd like to do with this.

Most of all, we want this to become a close-knit community of music lovers.

When we first started working with this, we both had some experience making websites using PHP, MySQL, CSS, XHTML and other common web languages. However, neither of us had ever created something this expansive from the ground-up. Because of this, our infrastructure that we are using isn't optimized to be handling as much traffic as we'd like, but hey, this was supposed to be a learning experience, right?

Well, with the school year coming to a close and the deadline for this project arriving next week, we won't be able to devote as much time to this project as we are currently. This will especially be the case when we have jobs (or should I say 'when I have a job'...stupid Eric already has one...). However, we both strongly desire to continue this site and make into something even bigger and better.

We've mentioned some of our plans before including 'gangs', 'showdowns', a custom-built forum, and more. However, we want to wait on these things. We have learned so much during the making of this website. We learned a new technology (AJAX) that allows for things to be done without reloading the page (the new rating bars, tag posting, the music searching/adding interface). Of course, if we had all of this new knowledge before starting, we could have made the site even better.

Our current plan is to continue to fix bugs and optimize things on the live site. After all, ensuring a fun viewing experience is our primary goal. Thankfully, with the onset of the mixtape creation system, we are hoping to have enough to entertain you all for quite awhile. In the meantime, we are going to take all of the knowledge we have learned and use it to rebuild the site from scratch to have it be efficient, more bandwidth-friendly, and more accessible. We feel that before we add new features, we need to get the backbone of the site stable and ready to handle hundreds, if not thousands of concurrent users.

Finally, we will both continue to be very active members of the site, but in order to finish our dream of establishing the Mixtape Collective community, we need your help. We need all of you to tell your friends and to try to recruit people to try out the site. After all, the experience and fun of the site will inceease astronomically with more people.

Thank you all for showing interest and helping us out. This project has turned out to be very rewarding because of all of your activity and positive feedback!

After our downtime, the site is back up and has graduated to version 1.0.

The main feature added is the mixtape creation system, so try it out, and let us know what you think!

We still didn't feel completely confident in releasing the revision today because there are a number of small things that are annoying us right now, that we plan to fix over the next week. However, we believe that functionally, everything should be working. So if anything seems odd or doesn't work, please let us know by filling out the form found in Contact.

We will continue to fix minor bugs and graphical problems this upcoming week!

Alright...so Eric and I have a bit of work left to do, but we are going to be shutting down the site in order to release our revision. We have to shut it down because we have to restructure some of the database (something that cannot be done while the site is live).

We will be resetting all points/ratings, but it will be worth it.

Hopefully this shouldn't take longer than 24 hours. If it does, we'll keep you posted.

So, our target date of a May 5th v1.0 release was a bit ambitious. Corey and I underestimated the number of tasks we have to complete before we can get the ball rolling. Plus, I was at Coachella last weekend, so not much got done on my end of things.

Yesterday, I finally got a chance to sit down and do some work -- and we're almost there. Corey has been working like a champ getting his side of things in order for the big release and there are just a few minor touch-ups before we can release the next version.

And believe me, it's going to be a lot of fun. There are many badges to be had, contests to be won, points to be gained, people to meet and mixes to make. We’re really excited.

Keep an eye on your inboxes, we'll be sending out an e-mail announcement sometime next week. Rock on and thanks again.

Just a heads up, Eric and I are still working away. This next update is pretty large (probably more content than everything else currently on the site)...we're shooting to release on Friday May 5th. This may change as the deadline comes closer.

Anyway, it is turning out pretty cool so far...the site will go from its current state (not much to do other than to look at profiles) to havings tons of things to keep you entertained and busy.

Anyway, we apologize for everything going haywire right now. I fixed the current tag posting for now (it is being replaced with a better system in the update). Points continue to be screwy but have some fun with it!

Thanks again for helping us out.

As some of you may be aware...the points are being screwy. They will be until we make our revision. Basically, in our development environment we have made the transition to the new level system, but it uses the same data that is available to you...To make a long story short...when I go to a profile in our development area, it is level 0, which means all of your ratings are changed to reflect that...however, when someone views a profile in the live version it thinks it is a different level and the points get adjusted again to something completely different.

Hey, just checking in to let you know we're still working. Our next update is going to be quite massive, hence why it is taking so long, but it should be worth the wait. We've been working a ton on this (due date for the project is in 4 weeks...don't worry though, we will be continuing with the site for a long time after that). There are a lot of really neat changes I think, but we'll let you discover them we unveil the next revision.

Just to let you know we're back from Spring Break and are working away on the site.

It will still be a week or two before our next revision, but we plan on adding a lot of functionality.

We have been working on the mixtape creation interface and it is coming along really well. We are both pretty pleased with our results as they are highly interactive.

Anyway, just a few tidbits:

People using Firefox. If you are using an outdated version (anything prior to 1.5...check your Help/About to find your current version), we suggest you upgrade to 1.5. You can download it here http://www.getfirefox.com. Problems with crazy flickering when hovering over the [?]'s and various other things are problems with the browser itself.

Opera/Konqueror users: Unfortunately, we have to let you know that in our next update, when we add the mixtape creation functionality, we will be utilizing some javascript that uses AJAX (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AJAX) and sadly, your browser doesn't support the XMLHttpRequest object, and that is crucial to provide our interface.

Some people might be frustrated by this, as one of the common guidelines for building a website is accessibility. However, this is a service that you can choose to use. With that said, we feel we can make the site much better if we utilize these technologies. (I have a feeling AJAX support will be added in those browsers subsequent releases).

Oh, we have had a number of comments regarding the sharing/distribution of copyrighted material (music, mixes) on the site. We have looked into this, but as it currently stands, for legal and financial reasons we can't conceivably do this.

On that note, we will be drafting up guidelines that must be followed if you wish to be a member of the Collective. In these guidelines, it will be stated that you will not post links to any copyrighted material. We don't want to be hardasses, but we would be held accountable for any legal ramifications.

Anyway, progress is going well. We will send out an official email upon our next revision to inform you all of the additional features.

Just a heads up -- both Corey and Eric are on Spring Break, so things might be a little slow around here. Much to do when we get back; keep an eye out.

Rock on.

We were pretty disappointed by the tag turnout on that last development post.

Shame on you.

Anyway, just checking in to let you guys know that we aren't dead. We've made a bunch of changes/fixes but we are going to wait a week or two to release them all in one big chunk. Here are some things to expect.

We'll be unveiling a new interface for rating, we think it is pretty cool, much easier, and far more intuitive.

We will also be introducing the stepping-stone to our mixtaping feature. We will be adding in an interface for you guys to help populate our artist/album/track database. There will be point rewards for participating. There will also be a contest.

Other than that, we have already made quite a few minor cosmetic changes and fixed lots of bugs. It should prove to be a pretty awesome update.

We'll keep you posted.

So, eric and I have about 2-3 months left to finish this project for school. The major task we have to accomplish by then is the mixtape creation/rating functionality. We plan to keep working on this site long after the project is due (as long as there is a demand for it).

Anyway, we're curious. What features would you like to see? This could be things we've already mentioned, or some crazy idea you have. Let's hear it.

We had some issues from the changes we made yesterday, we have resolved some of them, but others are still floating around.

Also, get your friends to sign up, we need more people!
There's even a little incentive if you do.

We are pleased to let you know that the beginnings of the ratings system are now in place. To give you all a better idea of how the rating system works, I will try to post a clear description.

Points are an important aspect of your profile. To a certain extent, they represent your credibility and influence on the site. Points can be a status symbol, they can be competitive, or they can be used to unlock new badges and features on the site.

The basic idea of our rating system is that the number of points you have is directly proportional to your power on the site. Basically what this means is that the more points you have, the more your say is worth.

To help visualize this, we have created a series of ranks...each one corresponding to a particular range of points. The first few ranks are below:

1. 0 - 74
2. 75 - 149
3. 150 - 299
4. 300 - 599
5. 600 - 1199
6. 1200 - 2399

etc, etc...

As your points increase (or decrease) you will change ranks. Many features on the site, such as 'Initiating in mixtape showdowns' and 'creating your own gang' will require you to have reached a certain required rank.

How do you earn points? Well, right now it is pretty limited, the only way to earn points is to receive positive ratings from other users. However, in the very near future we will be adding many ways to gain points.

The Power of Ranks:
Probably the most important aspect of gaining ranks is that as your rank increases, your rating power increases. When you rate someone's profile, you are given a range of scores from -5 to 5. These translate directly into points. So a score of 3 will add +3 points to that person's score. This scale of -5 to 5 will remain constant and you only ever have to rate the user one time (although you are always encouraged to re-evaluate your decision, and you can change your rating at any time).

So, if the scale is always -5 to 5, then how do ranks fit in? Well, the score you give the person will be multiplied by your rank. If you are rank 6 and give a score of -5, that user loses 30 points.

The beauty of the system is that every time your rank changes, every rating you have ever performed is automatically recalculated.

The ultimate goal is that the top ranked users (those who are rated most favorably by the community) are entrusted with the power to have a greater impact on the definition of 'quality' for the community.

Anyway, there will be many changes to this system as we go. So, please use it, experiment with it, help us find problems.

So...we made a pretty big breakthrough yesterday in discussing the implementation of the rating system...and we're pleased to let you know that it should be active today or tomorrow.

Unfortunately, in order to make it work to the best possible level, we have to rework the way we've been handling database queries, which means changing and updating a lot of code.

However, we think the results will be worth it. Stay tuned!

So...I don't think anyone reads these development posts...

I am going to put this idea to the test. The first three people to post tags on here get a badge.

Have at it.

After months of feverishly not caring that the 'close button' on the message box was out of whack, I finally fixed it.

A monumental occasion worthy of it's veyr own entry in the devLog.

Rock on!

So, we added a few badges here and there to spice things up a little bit. Also, we unveiled the badge award notifications...you should see a popup upon signing in, as we awarded everyone with a 'beta badge' as a sign of thanks for helping us out. Let us know if it seems to work correctly.

Like Corey said, thanks for the feedback. Opening this up to a limited beta has forced us into overtime, trying to fix things that we didn't even know were broken. Such is life, right?

Anyway, today I implemented a nice little error reporting system to handle both internal site errors as well as 404s, 403s, etc. It probably won't matter much to the end users, but it'll help us track down errors, as well as attempts to haxor our site.

I also hacked up the message center formatting, making it a little more clean looking, which allows for longer titles. I don't know anyone who types really long sentances, but it's always a nice option to have, you know?

I've also designed a few new badges. Keep an eye out. Many, many more to come.

Keep the great feedback coming -- Mixtape Collective for life.

Thanks for all of the feedback guys. Here are a few things that have been fixed and added:

- Random profile will no longer take you to your own profile
- Profile views counter on profile will ignore your own profile views
- fixed some date problems on the profile page
- added two lists to front page: 'recent signups' and 'recently updated' which show you the last five people to join the site, and the last 5 updated profiles.
- added # of users online to upper right corner. Clicking on the list will show you who is currently online
- capped the length of friends/foes/visitors lists in the right column of the profile page

We are aware there are some problems with the 'my account' page. We are going to try to make its operation more user-friendly.

There are also some CSS issues with older version of Firefox that need to be addressed (hovering over badges screwing up other columns).

Thanks for the feedback. Those who offer constructive comments and feedback will be rewarded.

I am posting this here in case any of you missed the mailing list email or signed up too late to receive it.

Hey Beta Testers,


Thank you again for participating in the beta test. Debugging this phase is very crucial to the success of our website (and class project).

Since you are all taking the time to help us out, here is a bit of what we have in store in the upcoming months:

- Mixtape Creation: Create and share your uniquely created mixtapes with the rest of the community. For clarification purposes, we won't be able to allow for streaming/downloading due to legal implications. However, we think you'll find that with the rest of the site's functionality, creating mixes will still be an engaging experience.

- Rating system: Rate other profiles and mixes. Top ranked users and mixes will receive special rewards, be featured on the top 50 ladder and much more. The rating system will be concerned with quality, not quantity. Your point score will affect the weight of your vote when rating others. What this means is that those who participate constructively and are respected by the community will have more control over the definition of 'quality' on the Mixtape Collective.

- Gangs: Join up with friends and others with similar tastes. Each gang will have its own private discussion area, gang insignia and more. This will be similar to groups on other community sites, except we want to avoid the 'group-whoring' that exists everywhere else. On the Mixtape Collective, you can only be a member of one gang at a time, so pick your gang wisely.

- Showdowns: A "mixtaping duel" if you will. Challenge others to a mixtaping showdown on any theme; be it "The Ultimate Glam-Rock Mix" or "So Metal It Makes Your Eyes Bleed"...the possibilities are endless. Showdown matches will then have a period of days in which they are voted on by the community and a victor is decided. There will also be gang vs. gang showdowns. To top it off, your records will be displayed on your profile and users/gangs can compete on a global ladder.

- More features: What you see now is just the tip of the iceberg. We will continue to expand on the user interaction layer providing a useful interface with the least amount of clicks possible. Expect to see contests, polls, lists, statistics, a forum and more. Oh, and there will definitely be a whole lot more badges to unlock.

Anyway, thanks again for helping us out. We hope you enjoy the site.

Again, a big thanks to everyone who is helping us by testing the first phase of our site.

We've already stumbled across a bunch of bugs and minor cosmetic problems.

Let us know if anything doesn't work, or if parts of the interface aren't as intuitive as they could be.

Just thought I'd touch in real quick and let you guys know about the 'known issues' that we are planning to fix:

• When you edit a caption for a photo, the current caption is not being displayed. Don't sweat it, it is correctly stored in the database, but currently it is not showing up in the form due to some implementation issues we are having. We are looking into this.
• Newbie badge not auto-equipping upon sign-up.
• After editing an image caption, the gray transparency only covers one screen length.
• mis-alignment of close button for message window
• various IE styling errors

Thanks for all the help thus far, things are going pretty smooth thanks to you guys.

So, in preparation of our presentation tomorrow, I updated the frontpage with a note to the beta testers as well as the latest headlines from the devlog.

Tweaked a bunch of styles all over the place. The CSS is getting a bit out of control. As soon as I find a good chunk of time (ie: more than 15 minutes), I'm going to go through and start pruning things.

Keep your eye out, shit is happening, fast.

So, in preparation of opening the site in the upcoming days, I've stumbled across a bunch of bugs that have been squashed...unfortunately there are many more. Oh well though, that is what beta is for.

The profiles underwent a major revamp today, they still need some work but its a start.

We've started having some friends sign up to do a preliminary debug on the signup/setup process so that it will hopefully be smooth for the open beta signups.

More news to come!

Fixed a gripload of tiny issues that have been bugging me for awhile.

included:
'show all' icon added / styled
badge / avatar hover background fixed
styled error messages
message center styles touched up
misc styles here and there.
-and-
created nifty 400, 404, 408 and 500 error pages.

it's 3:07am. I have to get up in 5 hours. I'm out.

Tweaked the 'message center' to chopchopchop long (>35 char) subject lines. Need to get full subject line to display SOMEWHERE on messages...

Spent way too much time cleaning up the little things. Lots of stuff looks (slightly) better. New 'remove tag' icons. New styles for 'contact,' 'development' and 'feedback' forms.

Still to do: determine better 'hover boxes' for all the places we use them and fix the effing 'closeButton' alignment on the ever-frustrating floatBoxes...