MOG Launched a Host of New Features and Site Enchancements
I wanted to give you a heads up about a slew of new features and enhancements to MOG. It's a big list! Here goes:
1. LYRICS!
MOG now has the official lyrics to millions of songs.
To accomplish this legally was quite a feat, thanks to our partnership with our friends at Gracenote. Unlike 99% of lyrics sites out there, our collection is completely accurate and far more comprehensive. We don't have the annoying pop-up ads and spy/malware often found on lyrics sites, either. (Unfortunately, due to requirements from the songwriters, copy/pasting functionality is disabled.)
Type in any artist, album, or song into the search window found on all MOG pages. The pages in the search results now have links to the lyrics.
2. New Artist Video Interview Section at MOGtv
Go to the home page and check out our full collection of exclusive artist interviews and private performances in one super-groovy new area. We saved a bunch of new great interviews for this launch!
3. Great New Tools for Posting and Commenting!
- Finally, a WYSIWYG editor for posts and comments.
- Wider compose window. More room for writing!
- Advanced mode for HTML users.
- Enhanced media-embedding features.
- New Rating System for Posts:
- We have moved to a more intuitive star-based ratings system. This will also be the basis for new features we're going to roll out down the road.
- New Permalink Page Design (permalink pages are the dedicated individual post pages):
- Now wider to support larger-sized uploaded photos.
- Cleaner interface
- Faster loading.
- Areas displaying related content.
- Greatly improved comments display.
And more:
- New Artist, Album Track Pages: better access to content, faster loading.
- Faster Loading MOG Pages: many scalability and performance fixes to greatly improve page speed. We removed all ad banners for speed improvement, too!
- New Quick Access Login for Commenters: you don't have to go through registration pages anymore. Now you can sign in instantly at commenting area.
- New "related content" display on many pages, surfacing user's posts from the archives that are relevant.
Along with these enhancements come some more standard-sized (that is, larger) ad units here and there. Hope y'all understand.
There've been numerous bug fixes pushed as well: lots of login fixes, double-post fixes, and much much more (we'd bore you if we listed the techie 100+ bugs). Nonetheless, if you find any problems, issues, (they're are always issues when we push big updates like this at the get-go), or just have flattery/complaints, please email support@mog.com so we can process them in an organized fashion. We really want your feedback on this.
These exciting changes are just a small sampling of some much, much bigger features coming down the road later this year. Enjoy!
Comments (77)
But what about view source functionality and then copy/paste from there? ;)
as always David I am impressed. Things are looking pretty nifty around here
Noice. Well, i didn't like the 'star system' at all, along with some other stuff - i just like simple things-.. but there have been added some nice features.
mog on
Looks better, works better. So far I love it!
The new "comment on this post" box, the wider interface, the lyrics & the related posts column on pages are all hot. Hotter than a Franz Ferdinand member, to be exact ;)
Many grats and happy new MOG!
Just curious - will there be any back porting between the stars rating system and the "like post" rating system?
Also - does this mean the tech folks can now get to restoring missing data from the-event-we-shall-not-speak-of?
david - Makes me wanna post and comment even more, and that's the point right? Kudos to you and your staff for making this update, imo, the best one yet!
Wow -- can't wait to try out all of the new toys.
WOW...impressed so far...can't wait to take a test drive later.
This is great. I am not an HTML guy, but I can bold and underline.
Now -- when will Mike Myers make "The Dennis Wilson Story?"
torch, there is a backporting of old rating to new. someone complex formula but we've tested extensively and are happy with hit.
thanks for all this, BUT go to the top of this page and type a search in for The Black Kids, howcome I still don't get any info on them. I know at least a dozen tagged posts were written about them.
dachmo, clearly, that has always been the case. i've got the team looking into it. mog even did video inteviews with them
http://mog.com/mogtv/blackkids1
my gut is that it's not in the muze database, who provides us with our backend database. why they don't have it is a mystery.
dachmo, turns out it was just added to muze yesterday. which means it will be in search tomorrow. we are switching off of muze to AMG (www.allmusic.com) - way way better.
hooray, anzi, call me
Me Likey. Still no save for later feature, and my spelling check in Firefox seems disabled, but much smoother. Good Job Mog Team! I'm testing the waters with what is becoming a lengthy post. Cross fingers for no truncation!
All these are real improvements. Still not sure if I want to rate posts, but hey....Thank you.
save for later coming contra
there are some formatting issues we're finding in post window around spacing. we're fixing and pushing fix today. (we're finding lots of new little things that need fixing and working in real time to correct)
ivy, rating posts was always there! case in point why we changed rating system. too many people never got the old one.
Cool, I'm an Allmusic junkie!
That was just one of the bands I couldn't retrieve info on, I'm not obsessing over the Black Kids just used them as an example.
Thanks Dave, I'm sure there will be more questions.
and thanks for keeping the American Apparel ads ;)
They now have swimsuits on....
but still nothing for MOGgettes...we want our topless models or we will strike!
I give ivylander's comment about the new "star" system 5 stars.
i agree anna. they push those ads into our system. there ARE guys ads floating about but hey're wearing t-shirts.
wow is it just me or is cruising through the new mog like cruising in a new car. like I think my head is bopping.... It's sleek man, sleek :) hehe. I dig it. dig the lyrics, the new posting system, the front page, the color scheme. You've made it much more user friendly for non-techies like me.
Um and I love the new videos too. I may be slightly biased on that one, but I saw the Black Kids one of the first time about 2 mins ago and, it's grand spanking funny. Great editing folks. Speilberg watch out :)
back to cruising :) keep it up David. Mog looks and feels like a bentley baby. A Bentley baby
oh. and............................
DUDE THANK YOU THAT KNOW WE DON'T NEED TO KNOW GOD DAMN HTML!!! Let me bold and Italicize my sincere thank you! WOOOOGa.
spacing between paragraphs is clearly wack!!! was not like this in our testing environment. we're fixing.....
I'll give all this cool stuff a woo and a hoo. It was a bit startling to see the new look first thing in the morning. But it looks good. Waiting with some anticipation to test it out now.
Some one call Lizzie to properly test the Bold, underline and itallics!
Fine, no strike, they'll have to put on swimsuits as well eventually, it's summer time, woo hoo! ;)
i don't think the spacing is wack. pressing [enter] once creates a new paragraph but pressing [shift] + [enter] twice creates two line breaks (same difference). (it's the html way, common in text fields all over the www.)
anyhoo, the new things are rocking my browser. thankies. (;
jeez.......this is quite a bit more than i expected when MOG was down last night. i've gotta grab a coffee because this site is moving a bit faster than i'm used to and all of a sudden there's this new stuff. time well spent, man.
wish the lyric feature had been up and running when i did my album full of cover songs--i love it. don't know what your affiliation is with AMG, but although they're an awesome source of info, getting them to update is virtually impossible. my info is old and they won't publish the bio i've sent them many times. can you fix THEIR site?? you're doing a kick-ass job on yours!
nice work!
looks great, looking forward to playing around a bit
Sheeyt man, this looks awesome. I can't wait to fully test it out.
Hokey Smokes. Can't wait to try this baby out later tonite.
Wow, MOG all new and shiny again...
MOG Brain sez: IT'S SEXY TIME!!
It's gettin better all the time............
So far so good, but . . . why does every comment say it was posted less than a minute ago? :-)
I know, someone always has to poop in the pool!
What version of MOG are we again? MOG 3.0?
It doesn't really because I for one am a happy bumble bee as paragraphs have been restored.
I must say the coolest novelty for me is the WYSIWYG editor. -- I've yet to try out most of the new features offered now.
If I may, I'll make 1 suggestion: Could we have more space between the "body" of a post and the ancillary column ("More Reviews," "Latest News" etc). I think it could parasite the Moggers' love labour ;)
That said, like Ivy I'm not sure I want to rate a post either...
This rawks!
Can I play the village idiot and ask what the hell a WYSIWYG editor is?
wow, this is absolutely crazy. i don't like the idea of rating people's posts either. (i like saying that i like it, but) the thought of actual rating... i don't even rate albums on any type of established scale. it's all subjective. my opinion.
peace
this new baby's got some swank....
There may be an issue with the time tracking in the comments. Currently (in my browser) the bottom three comments are as follows:
Joxley - "less than a minute ago"
brittanybf - "Posted 2 minutes ago"
Neill - "Posted 1 minute ago"
It all looks and sounds great.
but......................where's the COOKING WITH HENRY section????
I thought we agreed on that! You even approved my "the art of potato-cooking" episode.
horse, that got pushed out to next release. sorry.
That's okay David. I'm a patient man.
Groon
WYSIWYG = What You See iS What You Get
David and MOG Team- KUDOS ALL AROUND!
Veeery nice...
MAKE MINE MOG!
Cool! Looks like that money from Sony is being well spent David. Thanks to you & the Mog staff for all these great changes!
Good job!
Hey, I've been having trouble accessing the lyric feature. I couldn't find it on an obscure song at first, but then when I looked at "Blitzkrieg Bop" I couldn't find it either...where exactly do you access it?
it's available from lots of places
click on ramones lyrics link from here
http://mog.com/music/The_Ramones
for example.
i think when you searched for the song, you click on band called blitzgrieg bop, instead of the song.
New features look great! Good job, looks like a lot of hard work.
Looks great, works great! I'm super excited that the search will be enhanced thanks to AMG. Dachmo and I had a comment thread going about not being able to find the Black Kids despite numerous mog posts about them. So this is very exciting news indeed!
And no one is happier than I to have a WYSIWYG interface. Viva La Revolucion!
GREAT WORK!
I agree Dave, the joint is starting to clean up nice.
I like this a lot! So much cleaner and user-friendly. Kudos MOG team!
I love the lyrics feature.. a lot of lyrics websites have complete Bullcrap, and incorrect info.
Excellent job T.Jay, Adam, David and the whole crew, have several adult beverages on me.
I like the WYSIWYG features a lot and will be exploring the rest; so far this is the best thing you've done so far, to give MOG as much blog functionality as music functionality - good on ya! I am willing to wait patiently now that I know that "save for later" is coming. So far publishing and deleting posts seems to be happening a lot faster.
I love the new lyric feature and the AMG sync sounds great.
Here's some more requests, 'cause I'm greedy like that:
an editing help (tips) box right next to the posting boxes for easy access to remind us how to do things and what the icons are for, etc. Not everybody gets things right away you know. For example, the strikethrough font didn't make sense to me right away, and I have learned about a million CMS'.
when are the add link buttons going live? I haven't been able to use them in either IE (WinXP), Safari (Mac 10) or Firefox (both).
I'd like to be able to search for moggers not just browse them.
oooh . . . searching for moggers--good idea!
Thanks for the info, wanbli!
David and Co.: thank you very much! Already this is making the MOG experience that much cooler!
mtack, thanks. from you, this means alot.
yeah. mogger search we'll get out there sometime. edit tips? you're dead on right. we gotta get that up soon.
add link? looking into it.
Thanks David, it is truly, greatly appreciated! I put my MOG sticker on my macbook today - I'll get a pic of it up soon.
hmmmm
PIMP HAPPY
PIMP WON'T SMASH ANYMORE
*RAWK*
^now that's the MOG seal of approval right there.
Okay. I was unable to upload an MP3 - well, i could upload it, but when i attempted to continue working on the post, the MP3 and everything else in the body of the post disappeared.
Luckily, having learnt my lesson some time ago, i was shadowing the post in EditPad Lite (the greatest free text editor i know of) and was able to restore it, but i wound up adding a link to an upload to my website.
Hmmm - if this is supposed to be whizzy-wig, that last graph is gonna run way off the edge...
And that one has a funky mid-line break.
Also, all text after an embedded video disappeared when i published the post.
Yup, my second graph ran right off the edge - should be several lines there.
And my third did, indeed, insert a bogus linebreak that i could not remove in the HTML Editor window.
All right! I'm tightening up my whizzy-wig and getting ready to MOG fiercely! Forward! Onward! Upward!
Can't C&P with Firefox anymore :-( Sorry, but that's a bit of a bummer..
Scrumtrulescent new features, Mr. Hyman.
Now if I can just finish getting my music collection reorganized digitally, I may just start posting again.
"If I may, I'll make 1 suggestion: Could we have more space between the "body" of a post and the ancillary column ("More Reviews," "Latest News" etc). I think it could parasite the Moggers' love labour ;)"
I agree, more space needed, it's very distracting. Other than that, and the para breaks(!), great stuff, guys.
flux, we'll do some mock ups and see if we can make it work.
Great, David, it'll save me having to come up with something interesting enough to prevent readers getting distracted...
I like it.
thanks lester!
Loving the new features. The little things that are making MOG much easier to use like the login screens in the "Comment on this Post" areas. The move to AMG was a smart, smart move. I'm always on there to get info about bands and artists I've discovered.
I'm wondering though. Any word on updates to the MOG-O-MATIC? I'm one of the few that are sticking out the bug wonderland of Vista and my 64bit version is so far not supported by MOM. I have a ton of new music to let the MOG-verse know about but MOM won't let me log them. I'm bummed.
Re: Lyrics
I understand you had to prevent cut and paste because of legal reasons, but don't you think the horse has already left the barn on that one? What with Lyricwiki.org and any of the zillions of sites publishing COPYABLE lyrics, the folks at Gracenote are way late in closing the stable door, as I see it.
Many of us have music collections so large that retyping lyrics is out of the question. We'll take the questionable but easy-to-get lyrics that we can get automatically (via scripts or plugins) over crippled but accurate lyrics.
konkrypton, go for it.
Awesome! Totally excited about all of these new features.
Off on vacation and I come back to a new MOG, makes the let down much easier to take.