October 2009 Site Redesign

Maybe you love our new logo and our banner with rotating photos. Perhaps you're able to find items like our Web stream a little more easily, and finding us on Facebook and Twitter takes just a single click. Those are just some of the steps we've been taking — thanks to the generous contributions of our members — to make wwoz.org even better for our listeners. We hope you like our site's new look as much as we do, and we encourage you to let us know what you think of it in our discussion forums.  

July 2008 Site Redesign

Welcome to our brand new website. Don’t worry — we kept all of your favorites features from the old site, like the Livewire Music Calendar, our listing of New Orleans music venues, the playlists, the Program Schedule and Street Talk.

We do have some new features like the Community Discussion Forums, where you can talk about New Orleans musicians, venues, festivals and anything else to do with New Orleans music or WWOZ. Take a tour of the new site and learn more about the changes we’ve made and why we’ve made them.

NEW FEATURES

Discussion Forums
Let’s just jump in and explain the new features that we’ve added to the site. The big new change is the introduction of the Discussion Forums, where you can talk about anything to do with New Orleans music and WWOZ. The Forums are a more up-to-date version of our old message board that we used to have a few years ago.

User Comments
Once you’re a site user, you can also leave comments on different pages throughout the site, including articles, playlists, etc. There are rules for participating in the Forums and leaving comments.

Login
You will need to register as a site user in order to participate in the Forums and to leave comments on the site. You can register by clicking on the LOGIN button at the top of this page and then clicking the CREATE NEW ACCOUNT tab. In the future, your user login will also give you access to other features and content on the website.

SearchOne of the new features that we’re most excited about is the SEARCH function on the new site. You’ll see the search box in the upper right hand corner of the site. Immediately to the left of the search box, there is a drop down menu that allows you to limit your search to certain types of content including Forums, Music Events, Program Playlists and Venues.

So you can search for a topic directly in the Forums, look up a specific gig in our Livewire Music Calendar, search for a song in a Playlist or look up a specific Venue. We also have an ADVANCED SEARCH page that you can access from the search results page, in case you want to further narrow your search.

New Content
We also have some new content areas on the site, including the New Orleans Food section, the News and Articles Archives, the Community Events page and the WWOZ Awards page. Coming very soon will be the WWOZ in the News section, with news articles that mention WWOZ along with WWOZ press releases.

OLD FAVORITES

Site Enhancements
Never fear — we haven’t eliminated any of your favorite WWOZ features, but we have enhanced them. On the show host pages, you will find more content specific to each show host. You can now go to the Program Schedule and find a page for each program.

Playlist Improvements
Playlists are now associated with programs and not just with show hosts. You can find playlists on show host pages as well as program pages. You can also search through the playlists using the sitewide search in the upper right corner.

New Livewire Music Calendar
You will notice some differences when you go to the Livewire Music Calendar. When you go to the calendar, you will first see today’s events. You can click “next day” or “prev day” to see the events for other days. You can also scroll through the calendar with the “next week” and “prev week” links, which will move you forward or back by 7 days. If a venue has more than one concert in an evening, then each event will be listed under that venue.

Expanded Music Venue Listings
In our listings of New Orleans Area Music Venues, you’ll find more information for each club, including upcoming events for that venue, as well as maps and directions for each venue.

BOOKMARKS

Why don’t my bookmarks work?
There are many new pages in the new website, and some of the previous pages were organized differently within the navigation. If you have the site or its pages bookmarked, you’ll need to reset your bookmarks. The few moments to reset your bookmarks will be well worth the effort!

NEW LAYOUT

The site is using a new color scheme and layout that is designed to help you find all the features that you already use and to help you discover other cool things on the site.

We have common things that you’ll be looking for in the big buttons at the top including:
TUNE IN — to stream WWOZ live
SWAMP SHOP — to buy WWOZ merchandise
PLEDGE / RENEW NOW — to start or renew your WWOZ membership
'OZONE SIGNUP — to sign up for the WWOZ monthly newsletter with highlights, previews, contests and more

The main site navigation is in the left hand column in purple with four main sections — Our Community, WWOZ Programs, Support WWOZ and About WWOZ. The QUICK LINKS, which used to be in the upper right hand of the old site, are now sprinkled throughout their respective sections on the main navigation menu. So there are some links to popular pages under each section title. This should also help give you an idea of what’s in that section. Click on each section to see the full list of pages in that section.

When you see the ". . >" symbol at the end of a menu item, then you can click on that item to see a submenu with more items. For example, if you click on “Membership Matters . .>” under the Support WWOZ section, then you’ll see that there are several menu items underneath it.

There are two pale yellow columns on the left and right sides of the page. The left hand column shows you who is ON THE AIR NOW, with the name of the program and show host currently on the air, a direct link to this week’s Street Talk episode and a list of recent playlists.

The right hand column displays a few events from the Livewire Music Calendar, and a link to our Community Events page. There are also graphics for WWOZ sponsors in both columns with links to the sponsors, as well as links to find out about sponsorship opportunities.

The center area (with the white background) on the homepage is set up to highlight our latest news and announcements. This content is constantly rotating.

CREDITS

We want to thank the all of the people who worked on creating this new website, including C4Tech and Design, especially Ian Johnson, Will Kirchheimer, Becky Cierpich, Djoma Agoro-Ombaka, and the WWOZ web team, Celia Sinclair, Tom Morgan, and Ariana Hall.

We also want to thank the WWOZ staff and volunteers who helped test different areas of the website, including Dennis Schaibly, Judy Wood, A.J. Rodrigue, Suzanne Corley, Jamie Dell’Apa, Eve Abrams, Fred Goodrich, Dwayne Breashears, Carmen Conner Post, Maryse DeJean, John Pope, Diana Pinckley and Betsy Harman.  A special thank you to photographer Libby Nevinger for helping with some of the imaging for this new site. 

Everything that we have been able to create for the new website rests on the years and years of work that was already in place, so we also want to thank the past WWOZ.org developers and designers including John Cooper, Christian Kuffner, Trent Oubre and Troy Thibodeaux. 

Please also refer to our last website redesign documentation from April 2007 to better understand the evolution of the website.

FEEDBACK

We want to make your quest for New Orleans music simple and enjoyable. So please email us and let us know what you think of the new site. We look forward to hearing from you. Please help us keep finding new ways to bring New Orleans music to the Universe.