Just a quick note about some work we are doing on our the integration of our broadcast and website.
We just revamped our banner and song information on our main and sub-webpages. In addition to showing the current playing song, we have added the song duration and also the next artist coming up in the broadcast. There is still some work to do on the sub-pages, but we should have these features working in a few days for all pages.
For those that recall in the fall of 2001, our old broadcast software had the ability to show the current broadcast queue of songs waiting to be played. We will be adding this feature too in the next few days.
We are about to install a new request script that will bring requests totally within the Highlander Radio server. Right now we are using Audiorealm.com for the referral, but we have the programming done and it just needs to be installed. We are also thinking that when a person requests a song, they will be brought to a page that states it was successful and also gives them the current line up of songs, so they know how long it will be before their song is played.
Just a quick update on some of the items we have been working on this past few days. But first, let me excuse my delayed response to emails and also visiting this forum!
Really, if you will notice our front page, we have done alot of work "off-loading" a number of "high bandwidth" items that was causing our front page to take as much as a minute to load! In addition to optimizing the java code for the menu (50% performance boost), we optimized all graphics and moved the featured artists to its own page with a link and "thumbnail" picture on the front. Some of our side bar items have been moved to sub-pages, with the most important ones left on the front page.
And a big drag on our front page was our moreover news service which displays the latest breaking news. We really wanted to keep this featured, so we installed a special script so that the newsfeeds automatically download to our server every 30 mins, then our front page reads the feeds from the server - kinda like what we did for the request feature.
We should have the "preview" tool that will display the current queue completed and installed within a week. if not sooner.
"They That Wait Upon The LORD, Shall Renew Their Strength, They Shall Mount Up With Wings As Eagels, They Shall Run, And Not Be Werry; They Shall Walk, And Not Faint." ISAIAH 40:31
Well, I am happy to report that we have the new "preview" tool available, so that you can see the list of songs in our queue! This will also help determine how long your requested song will take to play.
We have also done some work on our Highland Dispatch archive with the individual month listing. Pretty much this just involved wrapping our colors and theme around the news archive.