Redundancies between Showcase and Competitions

[tresf]

Currently, showcase and competitions both list the BoL albums. They have some redundancies.

• Both have embedded players listing the tracks
• Both list the albums in descending order
• Both need to be updated at the end of a competition

There are some differences

• One uses a soundcloud player; the other uses a bandcamp player
• Rules are only hosted on Competitions
• Competition entries are only found on Competition page (the link to ALL of tracks certainly has it's place in showcase too, subjectively speaking).

There are some pro's and cons to each page's format, but I'd like to discuss the possibility of consolidating these... from both a code and UI perspective. Ideas, mockups, etc welcome.

[RebeccaDeField]

If we merge these pages, we will have three demographics to cater to:

• People that are listening to music made with LMMS to determine the quality of the program.
• People that want to support LMMS by listening and/or purchasing the bol albums.
• People interested in participating in the contests.

I have had some ideas for the layout of this page floating around in my head, so I created a quick mockup which hope illustrates the concept well enough.

Clicking on any of the album covers would bring users to a page with the embedded player (which should be listed first for those that only want to listen) and all of the information that can be found on the Competitions page for those interested in the details of the competition.

By using the album art with a square ratio the process of updating the website with new contests will be more streamlined. Once the album art is finished, there would be no need to splice a part of the background or to make adjustments for contrast against the titles.

Both have embedded players listing the tracks

While I think that we should add a link to the soundcloud playlist in the respective bol. page, I suggest using the Bandcamp embedded playlist instead of Soundcloud. The Bandcamp playlist also includes a download button that directs people to bandcamp with a popup to purchase the album. This process is a lot easier for people interested in purchasing the album.

[tresf]

@RebeccaLaVie I like your design and agree with every point (avoid splicing art, thumbnailed design, bandcamp for playback). When you say "bring to a page with", I assume you're ok with the page itself dynamically changes, but uses a hashtag like we use on downloads (e.g. /competitions switches to /competitions#bolv4)

One question I have in general is the name of the consolidated page... Should it be called "Showcase" and then switch to "🏆 Competitions" only when an active competition is happening or would a new title be better?

[Spekular]

Currently we only showcase competition winners, right? So "competitions" would work for now. It might not be future proof if we decide to show off other stuff later, but then we might want to split the pages again.

The downside is that if we go with "competitions" we might not attract those looking to see what lmms can do. On the other hand, if we go with "showcase" we wouldn't draw in people looking for competitions. They'd be more likely hear about that on facebook than by checking lmms.io at just the right time though, so that might not be a big deal.

Another alternative would be to only have old competitions under showcases, and have a header show up when we have active competitions linking to the rules for just that one? That'd be cleanest imo, but requires more work down the line.

On Jun 3, 2017 09:34, "Tres Finocchiaro" [email protected] wrote:

@RebeccaLaVie https://github.com/rebeccalavie I like your design and agree with every point (avoid splicing art, thumbnailed design, bandcamp for playback). When you say "bring to a page with", I assume you're ok with the page itself dynamically changes, but uses a hashtag like we use on downloads (e.g. /competitions switches to /competitions#bolv4)

One question I have in general is the name of the consolidated page... Should it be called "Showcase" and then switch to "🏆 Competitions" only when an active competition is happening or would a new title be better?

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[tresf]

I like the idea of a header showing up on top of our page when an active competition is happening. We should be able to schedule it with some trivial logic. Perhaps a non-TLDR implementation of this:

[RebeccaDeField]

I wonder if we could just use Best of LMMS for the title of the page?

When you say "bring to a page with", I assume you're ok with the page itself dynamically changes.

Yep :+1:

I also like Spekular's header announcement idea, as long is it is implemented in a way that is not too busy. Or perhaps it can be placed under the entire header section, but still above the fold?

Just a quick concept, not a final mockup

[Spekular]

Below header but above the fold looks really nice. Could maybe do with being a little more obnoxious (read: taller) if the color is going to be that muted?

On Jun 4, 2017 22:47, "Rebecca LaVie" [email protected] wrote:

I wonder if we could use Best of LMMS for the title of the page?

When you say "bring to a page with", I assume you're ok with the page itself dynamically changes.

Yep 👍

I also like Spekular's header announcement idea, as long is it is implemented in a way that is not too busy. Or perhaps it can be placed under the entire header section, but still above the fold?

[image: shot-2017-06-04_13-34-48] https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/7960169/26765149/f0968d66-492a-11e7-8629-ef0bbd6bdffa.png

Just a quick concept, not a final mockup

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[tresf]

Sure, but we must be careful not to be overly cosmetic. This is an intentional eye-sore. If it blends in too well, it'll lose its purpose.

Also, the jumbotron is only on the home page. We'd want it on all possible landing pages and dismiss-able, stashed in a cookie.

[RebeccaDeField]

if the color is going to be that muted?

Could be any color. The gray was just as an example.

Also, the jumbotron is only on the home page.

If we want the announcement on every page of the website, you're right, that idea will not work. I have no problems with placing it above the header and I agree that we want to make it stand out. My concern was based more in clear hierarchy than aesthetic, but there are other ways to accomplish that without placing it further down on the page. :+1:

[RebeccaDeField]

@Umcaruje I believe this is related to your efforts here #192

[Umcaruje]

Ah, thanks, I'll look into combining these two pages in the following days. The only concern I have is that 'Showcase' would attract more people than 'Competitions' but 'Competitions' is more accurate for the name of the page.

[tresf]

@umcaruje what if we call it "competitions" during promotion and "showcase" in the off-season?

[tresf]

This didn't make the rewrite, so I'm closing it. We'll keep the redundancies for now.

[Umcaruje]

I still plan on tackling this when i have time so I’ll reopen.