It’s taken far longer than I’d hoped and been through more design revisions than I like to admit but today I’m finally happy to welcome you to a brand new FooFightersLive.com. A 2.0 if you will. Allow me to walk you through the new site and it’s many features.
A brand new, responsive design
Obviously the first thing you’ll have noticed is the brand new design to the site. The drab browns and overall outdated design has been replaced by a clean, modern design that will hopefully make browsing the site a much more pleasurable experience. The design itself is not only the big change however. The website has also been created following something callled ‘Responsive Web Design’.
So what does that mean? In simple terms it means the site is fully optimised to display on virtually any device of any size, illustrated above. All aspects of the website will scale from a full desktop layout down to a more simplified layout for tablets and phones with smaller displays. Give it a try now! Grab the edges of your browser and resize the window or visit the site on a mobile device, see what happens!
It should be noted that whilst every effort has been taken to make sure this works well on as many devices as possible it simply isn’t physically possible to test every page on every device, so please let us know if you find any bugs or run into any problems.
Database driven Live Guide
The next big change to the site is in the heart of it’s operation, the Live Guide. Previously generated with hundreds of separate, static pages the guide is now powered by a database, filled with all the juicy data. So what does this mean for you, the reader? Well the data displayed hasn’t changed but the way it’s generated has, meaning all pages will be consistent in their content and layout and of course everything can be updated in one quick move.
The layout of the live guide pages have been designed with feedback on the previous design in mind. Most of you said you found it easier to read setlist data in a vertical format rather than horizontally, so that’s what we’ve done. The setlists are displayed on the left of the page, in a clear vertical format. Here is another point where the database driven guide comes in, clicking on any song title in the setlist will now take you to a stats page for that song, telling you how many times it has been played, the first and last time played and more! From there you can look at stats for whole albums, stats for songs, or overall stats. The stats currently implemented are just the start, we have a lot more planned.
Information on the show is displayed on the right including any photos, as part of yet another new feature. You can now tag photos of your own on the popular Flickr.com and they will be automatically be displayed on the show page for others to see. Just add the correct tag displayed on the show page, it’s that simple!
Finally at the bottom of the show pages if appropriate, recordings are displayed in a new, responsive manner. Depending on the size of your browser various details on the recordings will be shown initially and a simple click or tap of the row will display all of the further details, just like that!
Now is a good time to introduce our first new member of staff. The new Live Guide would simply not be possible without our new database manager, Sam Smith, who kindly offered to help us out in our vision. Sam has a keen eye for stats himself and as a fellow Foo fan, the partnership has worked perfectly.
Foo Fighters News
A brand new section on the site is the part you’re reading right now, the news section. This feed will be updated with the latest news on the band including live tour dates, upcoming broadcasts on TV, Radio & Online, new and upgraded recording and more. We’ll also keep you up to date on the site itself, when sections are updated or new sections added. Keep up to date with it all by visiting regularly or connecting with our RSS feed.
The comments section of the news is directly linked to our forum software with a one-account system. This means if you’re signed up and logged into the forum, you’re ready to post on the news articles! One account, two uses.
Video Guide
Another section of the website massively overhauled, formerly known as the DVD Guide this section now includes detailed information on all videos known to circulate of the band including DVDs as before and also AVCHD and Blu-Ray discs. All discs are fully detailed with information, screenshots and a short review. Also added soon will be artwork, if any is available for a particular video.
The guide is fully updated to include all known videos up to the present day including fan videos, professional broadcasts and official releases.
Recording History
Another section, another huge overhaul over the original website. First of all the section has been updated to include all of the latest sessions with the exception of the LP8 sessions. We know where and roughly when these sessions took place but we’re going to have to wait to find out more details and conduct our own research before these are added as full articles. Of the sessions we have added though there are many new pre-Foo Fighters sessions, documenting Grohl’s early work with other bands such as Dain Bramage and Scream. For the sessions already known and previously detailed each has received a complete overhaul with concise details on the session, new recordings and re-organisation of those already listed as well as a completely re-written account of the session. The new section will continue to be updated regularly when new details come to light or new recordings are released. That leads nicely into an announcement of another new staff member on the site, Hugo Berthier.
Hugo is a huge recording buff like me and helped greatly when researching and putting together the recent e-book, ‘7 Corners: The Recording History of Dave Grohl & Foo Fighters‘. Hugo knows just about as much as me when it comes to Dave Grohl and Foo Fighters recording sessions and also packing good knowledge of the web he was the obvious choice to take charge of this rejuvenated section. So please join me in welcoming him to the team!
So, that is just about all there is to say about the new website. I hope you enjoy the new site and appreciate the hard work that has gone into it. Feel free to add your thoughts using the comments section below, on the freshly skinned forums here (FFL Account required for both) and please use the contact page here to report and bugs, issues or any other comments.