Details About The Heartland Karaoke Site

About The Site Design:

The overall design of the website's user interface (The part you see and click on to get around) is intentionally simplistic with very few graphics to download. This was done to ensure that the users who are on Dial-up internet aren't waiting an inordinate amount of time to get the information they have come for.

Our color choice, drawn from the color of our logo, was made to accent the blank-white page which serves as our main information panel.We feel that this combination makes the pages easy to read so that the user can make use of the site as long as they want without getting fatigued.

Our main concern was in speed. Some of the 'My Karaoke' pages will contain significant amounts of data coming from our database and we wanted the display of that data to occur as quickly as possible.

About The Site Development:

This site was specifically developed with open-source technology. The platform is known as "LAMP" (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP).

These packages are the heart of the great majority of Internet Web Servers in existence today. This particular matching of technologies has given us a robust, reliable platform on which to build this site for you. This combination also provides great interaction between the PHP web scripts and the MySQL database. The speed is best measured when you use the "Download Entire List To MS Excel". This is done by reading the entire database contents, converting it to an EXCEL compatible format and then sending it to your computer as an .XLS file. It's not just downloading a file. It's dynamically creating the file from the existing database so that you get the most recent update without my having to maintain an extra file on the website.

There are several portions of the site which are using these technologies. They are:

Heartland News - On the left side of every page. The list is completely generated using the contents of the database. When you click on a link, the resulting page with the news article is also generated using the contents of the database.

Locations - Generated from the contents of the database. As a new venue signs on, They also get added to the database and their entry will automatically be displayed. If they have an email address and website for their facility, it automatically displays on their section in the 'locations' page.

Articles - Uses much the same programming as I used for Heartland News. As I add an article to the database, the site automatically registers the new article and displays it for you.

My Karaoke - Grew from my development work on a similar type of site. I wasn't satisfied with just being able to let you peruse the entire library and scan for songs you like. I wanted you to be able to customize a list of your own favorite songs complete with the ability to add some short notes about that song such as whether or not you prefer to sing it in a different key, or a note to say you prefer another version. This application will grow as time goes on. The potential for it is already quite amazing to think about. Do you want to know a little secret? This is the first Karaoke Website to ever offer this level of service. This is our dedication to our clientele at work.

Library Statistics - On the main page (The one with that great Penguin!) there are two statistics which are generated from the database. One is a count of every song currently existing in the songlist. The other is a count of all songs not including duplicate entries. This is, again, a live count so that as we make changes and correct entries (Yes, We do make some mistakes when entering the songs) it reflects those changes immediately.

The creation of the initial site was the labor of love of one person (With a couple of exceptions which will be noted later under "Credits"). The time it took was approximately one full month from inception to going live on the Internet. All program code was written in PHP, all data is served from a MySQL Database Server.

Credits:

Site Design, Development and Maintenance by ProtoWeb Consulting's David J. Patrie (Also your Heartland Karaoke Host)

Logo Design, Business Cards and Mascot Design (The Penguin) by Halo Digital Design's Chad Weitzel

Web Site Beta Testers: Sharon, Sandy, Shelley, South Side Red, Candle80, Darkestone, RMTaylor, TTownTenor Josh and Ember - A great thank-you to you all for your excellent comments which have resulted in some significant changes.

TTownTenor inspired the Live Song Counts on the main page and showed care and attention to pointing out some of the errors which existed in the Database.

South Side Red provided the inspiration for the article navigation (Numbers and Previous/Next) at the bottom of the articles so you can move through them at will.

Ember provided inspiration which led to the Browse the Songlist feature now available from the main page and here.

Original Inspiration and Website which eventually led to this development: Musical Provisions' Norm Symington