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SOLID

Welcome to OTAv4!

Welcome to OTAv4!
SOLID December 9, 2016 0 688 Site Updates

What's up family?

 

It's been a while... too long. Back in April of 2013, I moved away from Chicago to start a new life in Dallas, TX where I've been ever since. Almost as soon as I got here I started a job that I've been working at for almost 4 years, and that's where all my time has gone. It was only recently back in mid-October that I found passion to start working on the site again, and now 2 months later, I've fully upgraded the site from the core on up.

 

This will be a pretty lengthy read so grab your coffee. Let me start this out with a quick run down of the new features before I really start digging in:

 

A.) New features:

 

1.) Brand new music section:

  • Scrapped the old music sections (singles and mixtapes) and combined them both into a new music section. This was a B*TCH to do! It took me weeks to migrate all of your mixtapes and singles into the brand new music script. All songs and info have been transferred over as well as album covers and so on. If you've uploaded any music, you MAY see mixtape/songs uploaded by other users on your profile page. This happened during the migration and unfortunately it would be a timely issue to fix, seeing how we have 1000's of mixtapes. So just know that when you look at your activity on your profile page.
  • Upgraded the music player. You can now listen to music throughout the site using the music player bar that pops up at the bottom of the screen when listening to music.
  • Adding music from your Soundcloud account is now possible. Just add your mixtape/song information as normal and instead of uploading the songs from your PC, click "Add Song" under "Upload songs from Soundcloud" and your Soundcloud song will be added as an Off The Ave song. 
  • Music tags now accepted when uploading music
  • NOTE: When uploading mixtapes, the order of your songs aren't matching the way you order it on your computer. I'm still currently looking into why this is doing this so it will be announced when it's fixed.

2.) Mobile integration:

  • The site is now mobile. This means you can access the site from your tablet/smartphone, upload/download music, upload videos, create/edit profiles etc. etc. Try it out, take OTA with you wherever you go. NOTE: Though the mobile side of the site is fully functional, it is still being worked on. You will see modifications throughout the upcoming weeks.

3.) Hashtags:

  • Integrated the ability to use hashtags site wide. You can add them anywhere on the site that you can type. They can also be searched for up top in the search bar by typing "#" then the tag. Add them whenever you upload a new song, mixtape, video, status update etc. Using these tags gets your content more exposure. Example: #OTAworld

4.) Dual commenting system

  • We have a separate commenting system for items like: mixtapes, singles, and videos. I added the popular DISQUS commenting system that you see on other popular sites, mostly to keep our guests engaged in the community as well. When you're logged in, by default, the commenting system switches to the member commenting sytem. You can manually switch it by clicking the commenting tabs "Comment" or "DISQUS". In the future I'll probably add an option for you to choose which commenting system you'd like to use permanently in your user settings. Remember: "Comments" are used by Off The Ave members and "DISQUS" are guest comments unless an Off The Ave member manually switches their comment system choice.

 

 

B.) Upgraded features:

 

1.) Upgraded the videos section

  • I upgraded the old video script that no longer worked. The new video sections basically works the same as the old video section except you can now add videos from more than just Youtube and Vimeo. Also, add-on features like: Playlists, featured videos, "Watch later", favorite videos, watch history, top uploaders, etc.

2.) Upgraded the forums

  • Updated the look. Implemented a few new features, mainly: Brought back signatures and a "Prop"/"Thanks" system like the way we had it on the old forums (2006-2010). At some point, I'll tweak this new add-on to match our old prop system that we used to have way back when. Initially, I was really thinking about just turning off the forums completely since activity is mostly in the music sections now. But I decided to just keep this side of the site since we started as a forum back in 2006. Still debating how I want to "revive" the forums though, due to the decrease in forum activity. I might just create all new sub-forums and put all of our old threads in a *Legacy* sub-forum, for everyone's viewing pleasure. I'll get back to that idea sooner or later.

3.) Upgraded the profiles

  • Increased the page load speed and re-designed the profiles. I'm still going to be adding minor features to the profiles in the near future so bare with me. Any suggestions you have for profiles, I'm all ears.

4.) Upgraded the sites speed

  • I've spent hours upon hours optimizing database connections as well as the server. You may have noticed in OTAv3 that there were some areas of the site that loaded extrememly slow.. like the mixtapes section, profiles, etc. I did away with a lot of the "faulty coding" in this version, which you should be able to tell by the increase in site speed 

 

C.) Future features:

 

1.) Mobile App - iPhone and Android app

2.) Popout music player - Play music from OTA in a popup window so you can navigate to other sites while still listening to music from OTA.

3.) Facebook/Twitter/social media account to login/register - Connect OTA to your social media account to sign in with or register with, instead of using your OTA login credentials

 

 

Known Bugs:

-Music uploads in random order when uploading mixtapes

 

 

That's it for the most. Of course, there were a gang of other minor updates as well but all of the important stuff is listed above. I will continue working on the site while it's live so you may see a few things out of wack. If you do come across any problems with the site, please let me know! Otherwise, I'm interested in hearing any feedback about the new OTA v4.

 

 

Feedback is highly appreciated  Please report any site issues you may have!

 

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For newer members after OTA v4, catch up on the previous versions we've been through by reading the threads below:

 

OTAv3:  http://www.offtheave.com/forums/topic/29094/welcome-to-ota3-be

OTAv2: http://www.offtheave.com/forums/topic/27954/welcome-to-the-new-ota-ota-v2

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