My site and trying new stuff

[Octocrook]

Sometimes I try new things...well, very rarely. I used to have a background midi, which then progressed into a menu that the visitor could select from that would play a background midi. Now in this age of DSL and cable modems, I've decided to step it up to bad WAV samples! I don't have the menu yet, but I have a WAV that loads up now on my site upon arrival. It's just under 1 MB (pretty crappy 0:45 long sample from a new song), so doesn't take that long to load, and unless you don't have cache, you only gotta load it once. So I'm wondering if this will even work that well. I'm trying it mainly to get my feet wet in streaming...this obviously isn't technically streaming, but close enough.

Essentially, I'm gonna be starting up an online radio site for independent artists. It's gonna be at www.cyber.fm whenever I can get around to making it. I'm sure at first it'll have to be simply 1 or 2 genres of music, maybe even just a bunch of my music at first, but then hopefully it can grow into something cool. It's coming at kind of a dumb time, considering CNet will be starting their own music site for independent artists, but I think I have much better ideas than they could ever put forth, and the domain name for it is unbeatable (though music.download.com will be hard to top :/ ).

<P ID="signature"><center><img src=http://www.crooky.us/ad5.jpg>

New songs and updates at Soundclick (http://www.crooky.us>Crooky.us</a>)</center></P>

[shawn]

Don't let a wav load upon arrival, that's nuts. You know how many people even with broadband will just turn and walk on a site that just keeps loading. Lets say the wav is 1 MB and I have a 512K broadband connection. That means it's going to take just over 16 seconds for your song to load not including the page itself. Also consider a lot of broadband is 256K DSL which would take around 33 seconds for the music, and still 40%+ of the web is 56K or less which means 2 minutes 6 seconds but more likely 3 minutes for just the music to load.

Now lets talk statistics. If you want a successful site it is recommended by study that your index page loads completely in 5 - 10 seconds with a 56K modem. This is the standard for most sites on the net. I have a 56K modem but even if I was using 1.5MB broadband I wouldn't visit a site with a 1MB sound file loading everytime I visited. People like control and if you had a prepage with the choice of listening to the sound or a quick loading page would be better. Better yet have a link/button on the main page to listen to the music if they choose to but you will probably drive potential return visitors away by making them wait for a song to load every time they visit. This is also good because it'll keep your bandwidth down since just having 100 visitors a day is 100MB of bandwidth just for the main page not including any downloads they may want and that's 3GB a month just for the indexpage and that sound file.
Here's another pet peeve I have with music sites and I don't know if yours is like it but I'll throw it out there anyways. Indicate the filesize next to any download links. I hate clicking a link thinking this file is 2MB and finding out it's 8MB which would take me around 30 - 40 minutes to download with my crappy ISP.

Hope these tips help your site become successful Crooky. <img src=smilies/magbiggrin.gif>

<P ID="signature">Well there's one thing that makes the world at least tolerable.
Well maybe toterable as Bozo the fucken clown nailed to a white wall is tolerable.
-Quote from The Ranting Gryphon-
</P>

[Octocrook]

> Don't let a wav load upon arrival, that's nuts. You know how
> many people even with broadband will just turn and walk on a
> site that just keeps loading. Lets say the wav is 1 MB and I
> have a 512K broadband connection. That means it's going to
> take just over 16 seconds for your song to load not
> including the page itself.

The page loads before the sound clip, and I put it on the menu frame so that it doesn't keep loading every time someone goes back to the main page. The only oddity is that when the window gets minimized, it stops playing, and starts over when it's brought up again. Check out for yourself though...see if the song loading gets in the way of the page loading, and try to navigate through the site n stuff if the song is taking half a minute to load and see if the site is flowing ok with the song loading.

> Also consider a lot of broadband
> is 256K DSL which would take around 33 seconds for the
> music, and still 40%+ of the web is 56K or less which means
> 2 minutes 6 seconds but more likely 3 minutes for just the
> music to load.

I do realize it will take a while to load for some people, but as far as I know, it isn't getting in the way of loading the page.

> Now lets talk statistics. If you want a successful site it
> is recommended by study that your index page loads
> completely in 5 - 10 seconds with a 56K modem. This is the
> standard for most sites on the net. I have a 56K modem but
> even if I was using 1.5MB broadband I wouldn't visit a site
with a 1MB sound file loading everytime I visited.

I'm sure most people wouldn't visit it if a song loaded every time they visited, IF:

- It had to load before the page loaded
- It had to be loaded every time they visit the page (which it doesn't...the first time it loads, it goes into their cache, and then loads instantly)

> People
> like control and if you had a prepage with the choice of
> listening to the sound or a quick loading page would be
> better. Better yet have a link/button on the main page to
> listen to the music if they choose to but you will probably
drive potential return visitors away by making them wait for
a song to load every time they visit.

Well, like I said, eventually, I'll make a little menu frame like what I had with midis before, but it takes time to make those little samples, plus my site has a piddly 25 MB hosting...I let GoDaddy gip me into buying hosting with them rather than much better hosting somewhere else :/.

> This is also good
> because it'll keep your bandwidth down since just having 100
> visitors a day is 100MB of bandwidth just for the main page
> not including any downloads they may want and that's 3GB a
> month just for the indexpage and that sound file.

If I knew I'd have 100 visitors a day, I'd be getting like 50 GB transfer at least, because with the 5-20 I get every day now, I already transfer about 100 MB a week, and I don't have much for people to download. A popular streaming site would require a lot of transfer, which I wouldn't mind as long as the site is genuinely popular.

> Here's another pet peeve I have with music sites and I don't
> know if yours is like it but I'll throw it out there
> anyways. Indicate the filesize next to any download links.
> I hate clicking a link thinking this file is 2MB and finding
> out it's 8MB which would take me around 30 - 40 minutes to
download with my crappy ISP.

That's a good idea...thanks.

> Hope these tips help your site become successful Crooky.

Thanks. As it is, the traffic to my current site (crooky.us) is becoming a bit stagnant again as of this last week. For a while, I was getting about 15 visitors almost every day, mostly because I post on the mp3.com message board. Lately, it's been down to about 5-10 a day.<img src=smilies/magbiggrin.gif>

<P ID="signature"><center><img src=http://www.crooky.us/ad5.jpg>

New songs and updates at Soundclick (http://www.crooky.us>Crooky.us</a>)</center></P>

[MooglyGuy]

Little known fact: Sites with background music can look as pretty as Lady Godiva, but giving a site any kind of background music is like the page author is pressing a button marked, "Make This Site Instantly Suck." When someone is listening to music while browsing the web (which is becoming very popular lately), it pisses said person off to no end to have some shitty site hijack the soundcard and start playing music along with the music that's already playing.

<P ID="signature">http://www.zophar.net/Files/mooglish.png
"Kupo, motherfucker!! DO YOU SPEAK IT!?"</P>

[Octocrook]

Got off my lazy ass and made the little samples menu like what I used to have for midis. This time though, I decided to change the layout of my page with it. It probably looks a bit like ass right now, but it works like I want it to, and that's all I care about. While visitors browse my site, they can click one of the 5 samples, and it loads and plays just once. See if you like it, Shawn, Moogle, and others.

<P ID="signature"><center><img src=http://www.crooky.us/ad5.jpg>

New songs and updates at Soundclick (http://www.crooky.us>Crooky.us</a>)</center></P>

[Octocrook]

I'm starting to consider some ideas for businesses but can't decide on 1 or to do none of them.

I still have the www.cyber.fm online radio thought. Either way, I'll either be using that name or selling it before the registration is up in a year. I keep collecting domain names and might start using 1 or 2 for their own websites. One domain that I got yesterday was a pretty nice catch: www.mysite.cc. I've been considering putting a domain reseller or webhosting reseller site up on that. Some of my other domains could probably be options for that too. The problem with that is that I guess you have to register a company or something and do some tax shit. And the problem with the online radio site is that it would just take wayyyy too much of what little free time I already have. Bleh...oh well.

Crooky.us Alexa rank up to approx. 418,000, and is Google PR 4 now! How, I don't fuckin know, but cool nonetheless.

<P ID="signature"><center><img src=http://www.crooky.us/tomorrow.jpg>

<a href=http://www.crooky.us>Crooky's homepage, Crooky.us</a> - <a href=http://www.soundclick.com/crooky>Crooky's Soundclick Site</a></center></P>