Jerry-Lee-Lewis.com

[bailbath]

New Jerry Lee Lewis site That hosts this forum thank you to David Hamer.
Ian

[Richard Harvey]

Thanks David!

What a star! It's thanks to David I got a lot of audio back around 2004. Now he's done us all another favour by helping ressurecting the old forum. Yipee!!

And the site looks great!

[Andrew McRae]

As posted 'elsewhere'....

This new website/forum looks absolutely fantastic! It really does ooze class and professionalism and, at first glance, the instinctive thought is that this might just be the very best JLL site on the world-wide-web....

But why, for heaven's sake,does the first thing I read on the home page have to be...

"A lot has been written about the life of Jerry Lee Lewis. According to what you may read, he is a wife murdering, alcoholic, drug addicted, bigamist who married his cousin who was 13… so some would even add pedophile to that list"

Does anyone else think it might be more appropriate to kick things off with a mention of the fact that Jerry Lee Lewis sings and plays piano etc.?

Andrew.

[wolfgangguhl]

This is pathetic crap! I wonder whether Ian has lost his brain. He has destroyed his own body of work by using three different servers in only two months. What is the point of all these changes? The Topfreeforum was running well (at least technically). Never change a winning team!

And now we get this. www.jerry-lee-lewis.com looks like a cheap tabloid. The first thing one gets to read is about JLL marrying his 13-year-old cousin. On a fan site? The pathetic Tour Dates section draws its information from out-of-date services such as Pollstar and 5GIG.COM instead of using the service of chuckberry.de. The News section offers stories that are not even related to JLL in the first place.

What can I say? This is another useless change and most of all the content is lacking quality. Not to add that all contributions made to the Forumotion forum have been useless exercise.

Ian, the best thing you can do is to open the Topfreeforum up again and remove all these silly clones. If you got ideas in your head about improving things, fine, but I suspect they will eventually destroy what you were good at: to let a forum run all by itself and interfere with it as little as possble. In my opinion this was the secret behind the successful Topfreeforum.

[hamd01]

Andrew,
Thank you for your comments, I really apprecaite it.

With regards the article on the homepage.... I'll be totally honest.... this is launch week and I really want to get people talking. However, if you the general opinion is that I should ditch the article I'll take it off? People?

If anyone does have any articles they would like to contribute I'd love to add them to the homepage.

David.

[hamd01]

This is pathetic crap! I wonder whether Ian has lost his brain. He has destroyed his own body of work by using three different servers in only two months. What is the point of all these changes? The Topfreeforum was running well (at least technically). Never change a winning team!

And now we get this. http://www.jerry-lee-lewis.com looks like a cheap tabloid. The first thing one gets to read is about JLL marrying his 13-year-old cousin. On a fan site? The pathetic Tour Dates section draws its information from out-of-date services such as Pollstar and 5GIG.COM instead of using the service of chuckberry.de. The News section offers stories that are not even related to JLL in the first place.

What can I say? This is another useless change and most of all the content is lacking quality. Not to add that all contributions made to the Forumotion forum have been useless exercise.

Ian, the best thing you can do is to open the Topfreeforum up again and remove all these silly clones. If you got ideas in your head about improving things, fine, but I suspect they will eventually destroy what you were good at: to let a forum run all by itself and interfere with it as little as possble. In my opinion this was the secret behind the successful Topfreeforum.

So you don't like the design, and the content....apart from that?

I have spent a lot of time on the design, with the idea that synicated content can be used for a lot of the sections. I'll have to disagree that it looks like a cheap tabloid, and I've never had anyone say such a thing about one of my websites. But as you say, it is only as good as the source info.

The NEWS section is a syndication of Google News using "Jerry Lee Lewis" as the search phrase. I believe he should actually appear in all the articles, even if they are not totally "about" him.

Regarding chuckberry.de I would LOVE to use the tour dates from there if that is acceptable to you? Do you have an RSS feed?

Regards
David.

[hamd01]

Wolfgang,
Just looking at the two sites....jerry-lee-lewis.com top chuckberry.de bottom...... I really think calling Jerry lee lewis.com pathetic is a bit harsh when you look at the two.

cobmo.jpg

Anyway....regarding tour dates....

whilst Jerry-Lee-Lewis.com is dragging it from the likes of pollstar, chuckberry.de appears to be manually added. Which has it's advantages, but also has it's drawbacks. Mainly you end up telling people about dates which dont actually happen in the end. Not only that, but it can be tricky to keep things upto date (see attached image).

dates.png

i.e no JLL dates for 2011 at all.

[Dave McKee]

Great job, Ian - good to be back and with my original password, too. Well done.

[wolfgangguhl]

David,

I was not criticizing the design or your technical knowledge. The CONTENT makes it look like a cheap tabloid.

Sure chuckberry.de was designed around 10 years ago and its design is very basic by nowadays standards.
It would be too much work to transform it into one of these new-fashioned designs and I do not consider
it necessary as the content in my opinion comes first.

If you had looked closely at my website you would have seen that there is a schedule for 2011 as well.
I cannot see where a manual editing is a drawback. This makes it possible to keep things up-to-date
and I update the tour schedules frequently. I am not going to tell people about dates that are not
going to happen, I am telling them about the current state in tour schedule plannings. Dates
get moved and cancelled. That's concert business. Since you are putting my accuracy into question,
you should better have checked with your sources first. Pollstar's schedule is constantly out-of-date
and incomplete. For example they are still listing the Elizabeth date in January, which has been taken
off the schedule already.

So thank you for creating a nice design, but knowing that your contributions in recent years have
been very few and far between I suspect we will be left with an automatically operating website that
adds articles without any quality-check whatsover. And as I said the constant server changes are not
going to help to build up a community or going to satisfy the already existing community, which
is apparantly losing track of the all changes (no surprise). All this will result in decline in quantity
and quality of posts. The Forumotion forum showed first indications of that and I doubt it is
getting better.

Wolfgang

[hamd01]

Wolfgang,
You are right that over the past few years I have not contributed much. This coincided with my little boy being born, which does change your priorities.

However, the site took a lot of work, and this is only week 1. I would like to ensure it is a valuable resource for years to come, which is why I have not set every single section up as something which requires manual editing. Both myself and Ian feel that it should be by the fans for the fans, so my intention is to find suitable people to take ownership of various sections in the long run, and expand.... for example a news editor, tour schedule editor for example. This way it truely is a site by fans for fans. That said, there simple is no online resource at the moment which brings together data from news, video and audio streams in the way jerry-lee-lewis.com does. I've also tried to aim the site at people who are not die hard fans, and just happen to google "Jerry Lee Lewis".

As I said, it's week 1, and if there are any suggestions or even areas which you would like to take ownership of I'd be more than happy to discuss it with Ian and I'm sure put the changes in place. Sorry to keep banging on about it....but by fans for fans.

I do hope within the next few years the site can build up to have the level of information contained on your site, which without a doubt is huge.

David

[wolfgangguhl]

Ok, I would like to make an constructive offer then: Leave the editing of the tour schedule up to me rather than a machine which draws information from Pollstar and other sites.

I understand your idea and do not want to put your technical abilties (which are superb) into question, but I still prefer a site which is edited by fans for fans rather than an automated engine doing the job. I hope more people are going to offer their help and bringing life into this well designed environment.

I am still sceptical as per the constant changes in the last couple of weeks, but maybe I am proved wrong and it will work out great.

[hamd01]

Wolfgang, thats great news thanks. Could you drop me a pm with the best email address to contact you at?

David.

[bailbath]

In the rush to get this up and running again I should have praised Chris De Bruin for or the hard work he put into the former arena of the Unofficial Fan Forum. He had a difficult job and put up with a lot of arguments and silliness at that place. So thanks Chris your contribution it was appreciated muchly
Ian

[wolfgangguhl]

I am now all for the new place since David has instruced me how to run the Tour Dates section and since everyone is open for ideas on here. I am looking forward to discuss Jerry Lee Lewis here for many more years.

[hamd01]

Thanks Wolfgang thats great, and will be a valuable resource.