I am sure that those of you who regularly visit this blog have been wondering about the recent lack of updates. As some of you know, I have had a number of personal problems to deal with recently, and I needed to take a break from updating the blog so that I could focus on dealing with these issues and find some peace of mind. I am almost ready to resume regular updates to both the blog and blogroll once again; however, I have decided to "relaunch" all of the projects that fall under the Digital Meltd0wn name before I continue. I do not plan to start over from scratch though. There are a number of changes that I have wanted to make for quite some time now. My main priorities are to improve the design and navigation of each project. I would also like to better link these projects together, as some people have occasionally pointed out to me that they didn't even know that the blogroll, last.fm group, etc. even existed. Finally I would like to recruit a few people who would be willing to contribute content to the blog. Although I don't have time to list all of the changes I would like to make right now, I will attempt to give you an idea of what to expect in the near future.
I plan to implement these changes in three phases. The first phase will be to update the minor projects associated with the blog/blogroll. I have already made a number of changes to the last.fm group, including methods for increasing the level of social interaction within the group, the design of the main page, and listing several resources for finding music within menus on the main page. I plan to update the myspace page next. Hopefully I can find a suitable method for providing updates on the myspace page automatically using RSS feeds and/or other widgets.
The second phase, and the most important one, is to completely redesign both the blog and blogroll. The current design has grown dull to me, and I've never been happy with the current method I have in place for navigation, particularly within the blogroll. I have found a few blogger templates, which not only look great, but would provide a much better system for navigation. I plan to utilize dropdown menus on both blogs, which would not only save a lot of page space, but it would make it much easier for visitors to navigate, especially on the blogroll. I have also discovered a number of hacks/modifications which would make the blog more user friendly, and help set it apart from others.
The last phase will probably be the most difficult, and that would be to recruit people who would be willing to help contribute material to the blog. I've been trying to find a regular contributor now for several months, yet I haven't had much luck. Considering up to 1,000 people visit both blogs daily, I thought that it would be relatively easy to find someone who would be willing to help, but I assumed wrong. It is difficult for one person to manage all of these projects, especially considering the limited amount of personal time I have available. Even if I were able to recruit one individual to help out it would make a dramatic difference.
I hope that you will enjoy the changes to come in the near future. I'll try to post a few albums in the meantime, but don't expect regular updates to resume until these changes have been made. I will keep you all informed of these changes as they are made. If you would like to help me out, you can do so by providing me with some feedback. Let me know what you think of the changes, whether you hate them or love them. Thank you all for your patience and continued support.
