Warden's Story:
This site was started by me, Warden or Elendilmir server. It all began as a hobby; I love programming and SQL (language for Data Bases). I also love Lord of the Rings Online and I just wanted to make a fan site of some sort to combine the two loves. I thought of a community hub of some sort, like forums with more, but these types of sites require a LOT of coding to make them even close to useful. Then I though of how long that ABC Songbook thread was getting and how positive of a response Giddily's website Lotro-Music.com got. Thats a easy enough site to code and so it began.
Originally it was called MyLotroBand.JoshKraker.com. I was just playing around; not really trying to take it anywhere other than a place for my Kin and friends to share songs. No reason to try to compete with Lotro-Music.com. The interface was 100% text based; not a single image. What turned it around was a short British Hobbit by the name of Figgy on Elendilmir. A regular old whiz on the lute that one is. Anyways, seemed she had more interest in the site than I did. Regularly posting songs, uploading videos on YouTube with a link to MyLotroBand included and then changing her Lotro forum signature to include a link.
I woke up and checked my email where I read something like “Lotro-Music.com is closing, nows our chance to take over the world!”. Lol, Ok Figgy, I'll hear ya out. “Ok, well we have to make it prettier”. Pfft, women! Fine, do you know any graphics designers? “So happens I do, this short British Hobbit by the name of Figgy can do them”. So there it goes, in one day she managed to take it from a text based P.O.S. website to a community-worthy ABC repository.
Figgy's Story:
I’ve always loved to mess around with the music system, even before ABCs were introduced to the game. One day I was told “Hey, Warden made a new ABC site. Go check it out!” So I did and I loved it. Recently, when I started making ABCs myself there was only one place I wanted to upload them.
For *some* reason not many others shared my enthusiasm about the site: I mean it was white with a picture of a bug on it. Pfft, men! I knew it had such great potential, but because there were only a few people visiting there wasn’t much point in making it better. So when I heard that lotro-music was closing down (after the tears had dried and the razorblades had been put away) I decided it was now or never and I had to try. So after harassing poor Warden for a while we decided to embark upon a joint venture to make this site awesome. Throwing around all the ideas of what’s possible and how we get this site involved in the community got us firmly wound up to spring into action and that we did! This site was rebuilt and renamed within about 24 hours and we’ve still got a whole list of things that need to be done. Basically it’s all Warden’s hard work and expertise, I’m just his excitable pet hobbit. So everyone on Elendilmir, buy the dwarf a pint!
Recommended Browsers
Not all browsers are created equal. Browsers are a weird thing to have to deal
with when designing a web application as they all have thier own little quirks.
Even though most of the web markup is standardized, if once browser developer
doesnt like the standard, they will sometimes say screw it and do things their
own way. Microsoft and their Internet Explorer browsers are notorious for this.
As a result, us web developers will often sort of design two pages. One that
displays well on Internet Explorer and one that work well on the standards
adhearing browsers. The times are changing though. Microsft is starting to play
ball, and with their upcoming IE8 (currently in alpha) they are complying with
web standards. Lol, and its big selling point for them as their biggest headline feature is that it is able to pass the
ACID 2 test.
Anyways, now that I'm done with my venting there, the real reason I am bringing up browsers. Aside from how they visually render a page, a browser is separated from others on their rendering speed. As a FireFox 2 user myself, I've become frustrated with how long it takes firefox to load the main song listing page and started trying it out on other browsers. So here it is, the listing of suggested browsers from best to worst:
FireFox 3.0 Beta 5
They have added a new redering and javascript engine which makes it MUCH FASTER than 2.0 was. Other than that, there is nothing much else different about it. I've been using it for a week now and have not found one bug, so if you like FireFox, I highly suggest you go ahead and get the beta now. all your settings and passwords will be imported automatically.
Download FireFox 3.0 Beta 5
Internet Explorer 7
As about 35% of you know, This is a decent browser. Easy to use and has a decent redering speed (FireFox 3 is just a smidge faster). If you are on IE7 now, cudos to you for at least using a modern browser.
Download Internet Explorer 7
Opera 9.5 Beta 1
Opera has made great browsers for years and 9.5 continues the legacy with the fastest redering engine I have ever tested. Did you know, Opera was the first browser to incorporate tabbed browsing (2001)? Even now, they still have all the best features of a browser like speed dialing, more configuration option, better form auto-filling than others, and even voice control! On bad side, they have always strictly adheared to standards and some sites that are coded to benifit IE's quirks do not work properly on Opera. Dont let that scare you though, for 95% of site Opera 9.5 is the best there is.. I would have put it at the top of the list but I didnt want you coming to me saying "I uninstalled IE, lost all my passwords, and I hate Opera cause it doesnt work with site.com".
Download Opera 9.5 Beta 1 *The current version, 9.0x has an old engine that is as slow as FF2. So, if you're thinking about switching to Opera, get the beta for sure.
FireFox 2.0
No point in defending this one. FF3B5 seems pretty polished and should be upgraded to ASAP. There is nothing you have to do or get used to with the new version. It will almost seem as though nothing has changed, aside from MUCH faster page loads that is.
Internet Explorer 6
C'mon people! IE6 is over 7 years old! In terms of web standards its ancient. I dont even know how you can wake up in the morning knowing you have to use a browser without tabbed browsing. And to think 10% of thefatlute user are on IE6; the images would look horrible as IE6 does not support transparent PNG images. Please, do me and every other web developer in the world a favor and get off IE6. Even if you used Safari which only <1% of the internet population does, you would still be better off.
How The Site Works:
You'll find that to do almost anything on the site, you need to be Sign-In. Yea, yea, I know its annoying to have just another site to make an account at, but it really is necessary for 99% of the features I have planed. However, I tried to make sign up as unobtrusive as possible; only 5 fields required to register.
Email:
I choose email for the login because for one, its easy to remember (I hope) and give me a place to send a random password if you ever forget yours. Two, it allows for email notification of song changes, private messaging, comments ect. All notification emails can be turned on or off in your
profile.
Character Name:
Simply your displayed name on the site.. I dont care if it really is your main or just some random combination of letter created while your cat walked across the keyboard. Although, I'm gonna be upset with you if your cat can spell obscenities.
Server:
Umm, why not? Gotta have server pride ya know.. Also, if you're a musician, it will go into stats for your server.
Kinship:
Same reason as server.
After you sign-up, check out
Your Profile for more settings such as email notifications and your TimeZone.
At time of writing the songbook contains eight columns. You can sort by each column by clicking the column header.
1- The download cart (cannot be sorted). This column contains a shopping cart like image with a plus sign next to every song. Click this icon will add that song and all its parts to the download cart. More on that in the
MyLibrary section.
2- The video column. Designated by 'V' as the column header. Click this header to put songs that have Videos on top of songs that do not. More information about videos can be found in the
Viewing a Song section.
3- The MyLibrary column. This column is abbreviated 'ML' as the column header. Sorting by ML places the songs in order by their status in your library. If you have all parts of a song then the icon will be a round green circle. If you have some parts but not all then it will be yellow, and a red circle will appear if you have no parts. When sorted, that is the order in which they will appear; Green->Yellow->Red. You must be logged in for these to take effect. More information about your library can be found in the
MyLibrary section.
4- The Artist column. Pretty self explanatory. In some cases, if the artist name is too long, the overflow will be replaced with '...'. You can hover your mouse over the artist to view the full name in the tool tip.
5- The Song Column. Also should be self-explanatory. This column can also be truncated if too long. Clicking this column will take you to the View Song page where you can see the actual ABC text of each part and an videos that have been added for it.
6- The Added By column. This is the display name, or character name, of the person that added the song. End of story.
7- The Date Column. The date the song was added.. No seriously, thats what it is. The format is Year-Month-Day
General Info:
The SongView page allows you to view the actual ABC text, download a MIDI preview, see which instrument(s) it can be played on, and view any videos that have been submitted. This page is accessed by clicking on the Song Name from the SongBook or by clicking View Song from the MyLibrary page.
Adding a Video:
First of all you must be logged in to add a video. After that, its as simple of copying the 'Embed' code from the host site into the text box and clicking submit. As of writing, YouTube and Vimeo videos are the only hosts The Fat Lute supports.
*Here is an example of what the embed code looks like for a YouTube video:
<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie"
value="http://www.youtube.com/v/60og9gwKh1o&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode"
value="transparent"></param><embed
src="http://www.youtube.com/v/60og9gwKh1o&hl=en"
type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425"
height="355"></embed></object>
General Info:
The MyLibrary section is accessed by clicking MyLute in the same box as where you sign in. It will appear after you have signed in. After clicking MyLute click the link for MyLibrary. MyLibrary is where The Fat Lute keeps track of all the songs you have downloaded. From there you are able to rate the song, remove it from your library or view the song.
Rating a Song:
The right-most column in MyLibrary will display a five-star type rating system. However, the range of values is actually 0-100. Just mouse over the start to a level you think the song deserves then click. The submission takes place in the background. You can only rate a song once, but you are able to change your vote for the song; just mouse to the new value then click again to save.
Adding a Song:
This is all pretty much self explanatory as well but I'll go over a few simple things. Mostly, just try to be careful how you name things. As a fact, do not include any accented characters or punctuation that would not be allowed by windows if you included it in a file name.
Artist Name: Do not abbreviate, include the full artist name as you would see it on a their biography.
Song Name: Pretty much the same as rules as for the artist. The song name is included in the .abc file name when people use the download cart.
Parts: Just select then number of parts that the song has to generate a sufficient number of text boxes to input the abc text into.
Upload From Computer: This will allow you to upload a .abc or .txt file directly from your music folder without having to copy and paste. Selecting the number of parts from the drop down will give you an equal amount of file upload utilities. You only have to use as many as you need; if you select 8 parts, and you have a single ABC with 8 parts in it, just select it once then click the Upload button.
Part Name: Some kind of unique identifier for how the part is supposed to be played. For instance, if you are adding a one part song, you may just name the part 'Solo'. If it is a multi-part song, put something like the main instrument of the part or a class of instruments such as 'Wind'.
Instruments: You must select at least one.
Comment: Here you can let the end user know anything special about the part. For instance, if its a mutipart song but has one part that cound be played solo, say so in the comment section.
Get Test Midi: This just makes the system go through the same verification steps that it would if adding the song to the DB for real. The things it verifies are that Artist, Song, Part Name all has something there, at least one instrument has been added, that the X and K identifiers in the ABC text are present (it will automatically add X:1 if not there, but will error if K is missing), it will then send it through the ABC->MIDI program to make sure that completes.
Add to MyLibrary: If checked will add to your library. See the
MyLibrary section for more information.
After all that is done, just click Submit to have the song added and immediately displayed in the SongBook. Please use some common sense when adding as I do not have a LOT of robustness in this section yet.. For instance, it cannot verify that the exact song has not already been added, ect.
Editing a Song:
To edit a song that you have added, first click on the song from within the SongBook. In the ViewSong page you will notice a link called "Edit Song" underneath the song header. Clicking that will take you to the AddSong page with all the current details filled in as though you were adding the song the first time.
*If you are not logged in to the account from which the song was added, you will not see the "Edit Song" link
You can edit any details of the song except the number of parts. Please consider the importance of the changes you make as changing the song will remove it from the library's of people who have downloaded it as well as any ratings that have already been made against the song. *Editing the song for the purpose of removing bad ratings WILL result in a ban from the site.
Reporting a song
Reporting a song can only be done from the View Song page (the page that shows the actual ABC text). On that page, you will see a 'Report as Broken' image button in the top right of the page. Clicking that will take you to the report form where you will be asked what is wrong with it. Usually, just the error the game gives is all that is needed here.
DO NOT REPORT A SONG BROKEN JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT HAPPY WITH THE QUALITY. For that, rate the song justwise in
your library.
Right now, I have it set to require 3 reports from unique people before the song will be removed from the SongBook. I will adjust this as necessary but it will never be just 1.
After the minimum number of reports have been made, the song will be removed from the main SongBook and placed into the
Broken Songs page.
Fixing a broken song
Once a song is 'Moved' to broken, the person that added the song will be emailed (dependant on
profile setting; ON by default). The ability to edit the song is locked to
the AddedBy member for the first 7 days. If 7 days pass and the song is still broke it will open to the public to attempt to fix it.
To fix a song, you need to click it from within the
Broken Songs page. It is basically the same as the ViewSong page but will append the comments made by the people who reported it to the top. It will also state if it is open for public editing or not. If editing is enabled you will get the "Edit Song" image button at the top right of the page. After that, the procedure is basically the same as if your were adding a song for the first time.
BE SURE YOU ARE FIXING THE SONG WHEN YOU SUBMIT THE FIX. When you submit the fix, it puts the song into the main listing and voids all reports against it as well as emails anyone that has "Email me when: A song in my library is edited" checked in their profile.
I repeat...
BE SURE YOU ARE FIXING THE SONG WHEN YOU SUBMIT THE FIX. This is especially important if you are not the original author of the ABC, because once it is returned to the main listing you will not be able to further edit it.
Subscriptions as just like thread subscriptions in the forums. If you are subscribed to a song, you will receive an automated email when a new comment or song is added.
Manually Subscribing
To manually subscribe to a song, click the
at the top of a ViewSong page (pages that show the ABC text). *Note, if you are already subscribed to the song this button will not be shown.
Additionally, the
is shown in
Your Library that can be used to subscribe to all songs in your library.
Automatic Subscribing
If you view
Your Profile you will see two checkboxes under the sub-section: Automatically add subscriptions when:.
I add a song to MyLibrary will add a subscription to the song when you use the download cart to download the song.
I post a comment or movie to a song will add the subscription when you post a comment or add a movie to a song.
Deleting a Subscription
To view and or delete subscriptions, view the "Subscriptions" section within
MyLute.