I've been working hard during the winter to bring you an updated site of Radio Rivendell (3.0 or something) that will launch with our 10 year anniversary sometime during this year. It's really getting somewhere really, it's been a very long ride and there are still things that need to come in place, but I'm finally nearing the end! This is what will be new: - New design! I've gotten complaints that RR doesn't lost that fantasy feeling when we updated last time. So I've redesigned everything! More wood, more gold, more vines and leaves etc. - Webchats! Chat with your fellow members directly in you browser, no more clunky IRC-chats. - New webplayer! This time I'm focusing 100% on the webplayer as the primary player for Rivendell. Of course you can still tune in with Shoutcast, Winamp, iTunes, iPhones, Nokia Radio etc. We lost voting in the webplayer during the last update but it will be back again. You can now login to your account directly in the webplayer too! And join the chat and see last played tracks. Also it's built on HTML5 and stuff, so it can stream the radio without flash! (Requires Chrome or Safari though). Firefox and other browsers will use a flash player. - New forum! I've integrated the forums directly into the system now. Perhaps less functionality, but much easier for me to administrate. - Get XP for your deeds! Everything you do will generate experience points (XP) just like in D&D and WoW! Now you can level up by rating and writing comments and not just by writing in the forums - Last Played page will now recalculate the time stamps to YOUR timezone. No more figuring out when that song played (your timezone minus Rivendell's timezone). - Live Rivendell weather! If it's raining in Rivendell it will rain on the webpage - Bigger webshop! We'll increase the contents of our webshop with over 50 new items! I hope you will like what I have in store for you!

That sounds great! I love the continuance of updates! Oh and i'll be back. As webhost AND as relay, Elrond. --- I've changed my plans. My actual serverprovider is being a huge incompetent dickface at the moment, so that the servers are unreachable. Operation: Bigger, WAY Bigger, 1-20Gbit Capacity as i wish, Traffic as i wish, incredible computing power, q23p revamp, shortly called Operation: BWB120GBSCAIWTAIWICPQ23PRVMP, is starting at... NEXT MONTH! And as always, i'm doing this for the love of Radio Rivendell <3.

Wow! Back already! Hopefully we'll launch RR3.0 before summer, I'm hopeful

Thank you for the great job you're doing here. I look forward to what's coming up!

In the upcoming webplayer you will be able to play and pause the music with the Space button, just like in iTunes or whatever You will also be able to set a rate with the buttons 1 to 5. Quick and simple and without interruption. Cool huh?

There are 2 features I'm really looking forward to: A functionable login, the homepage directs me to a blank site in 70% of my login-tries. But I think, that is the fault of the Wand-utility of my Opera-browser (automized login). And the second one is the correct visualisation of the music played at the moment. Very often no song is shown on the page (doesn't matter if I'm logged in or not) or the wrong title is shown all the time. Perhaps these faults only appear to me. Anyway, I'm really excited about the relaunch

Ouch, is logging in that bad for you? There might be strange redirects in the current one, but the new version will only log you into one place. The current one uses two separate systems and logs you into both, so there are weirdness going on there for sure. It thought it was easier to build a new forum rather than to get the current one to work better Hopefully the current playing track will show too. But the techique is using javascript to load. You will need to have that enabled for it to work. Sometimes my posting script hangs so nothing new is sent to the database and therefore sometimes it looks like the same song is playing all the time. I will try to work on the robustness of these scripts as well. Thanks for your thoughts!

Any peeks on the new design?

There hasn't been very much done to the design lately, but I'm hacking along on the code, building cool new features we'll use But here's a little preview from my development environment. http://www.radiorivendell.com/files/images/preview3.jpg I will work more on the logo and the area there at the top. But it's getting somewhere at least

Cool!

Oh yes, looks very nice

I love how it looks, but all the words look like they are miss-spelled.

looks great!!

I'm a bit slow sometimes, but would you think it'd be a good idea to install it now? It's not finished yet, but it will be easier to work on if it is installed and running at least We might run into things and issues during the way, but at least it's being used and tested What do you say?

Do it now. "The perfect is the enemy of the good enough." Wait for it to be just right and you'll forever be maintaining two code branches.

Yes indeed, that's what's been happening the last few years. This time there should only be one main branch for my whole CMS even including Rivendell. It took me some four years, but now it's possible I'll wait until my vacation in September / October for this launch, it will be nice to sit at the office and just work with Rivendell

Hehe, I suck, but I always get fed up with stuff. So I've started on a new logotype for Rivendell. It's simpler and probably more easy to finish. http://www.radiorivendell.com/files/images/logo-preview.png What do you think? It's not finished at all, just a two hour doodle. I'm not happy at all with the end on the right. Oh, and we need the lantern in there somewhere somehow.

I don't know, it doesn't say "fantasy" to me...maybe when you add the lantern. I did like the one you showed us earlier.

It will change a little of course, the lantern will be in there for sure somewhere. I like it too much myself This is just the "flat white" logo. It will get a rugged stone texture and 3D-bevel effect too. I will keep on working on it. Any more ideas?

Being new here I guess my opinion doesn't hold much weight, but I would like to say that I like the banner in the background of the current design too. It gives the logo depth. I'm not saying to keep it (because then you wouldn't be redesigning the logo, would you? haha) but maybe think of giving the new logo a similar amount of depth by adding other details and images. Just an idea. And yes, the lanterns kick ass. Definitely a keeper!