Welcome to GSR4, GensokyoRadio’s long-awaited site upgrade!
First, I must let everyone know that this is, for the time being, a “beta” version of the site. Many of the planned site features such as history tracking and profiles aren’t yet available. These features will be worked on and made available over time.
Live Information Display
For the time being, I really wanted to get live information available to everyone again since that was one of the features of the site that was unique and cool. This version of the live info display has been heavily tested and tweaked under various scenarios, and I guarantee you it is the most robust version of the live display system I’ve created to date. It is able to recover from lack of information, temporary information loss, and switching between full and minimized views, all in a graceful manner. Plus, calls to the server are tightly controlled, meaning it should use only the bandwidth it needs to run.
With that said, the live display system looks similar to the previous version. Avatar and circle art both appear on the left side, with title, artist, album, year, and circle listed adjacent to the art. On the right side of the display, you’ll find the player has been moved to the top-right corner. Song duration counts have been moved next to the player controls. Below the duration counts, you’ll find links to the playlist files you’re able to download to play the stream on a local media player. There’s also a link encased in brackets which allows you to hide or show the live display section, useful for smaller displays or browser windows.
User Accounts
New to GSR4 is the user account system. Currently, there isn’t much the system allows you to do on the site. Account creation will be disabled for the first few days in order to get details like the Privacy Policy finalized and available. This system will be used for history tracking, rating, commenting, and possibly a few other features.
Improved Space Efficiency
Virtually all elements of the site are in a sleek, streamlined format resulting in a cleaner layout. As a result, the content section is able to hold more content as well as allowing larger YouTube videos to be embedded on the site. Article comments are highlighted with borders rather than a separate background color, adding a bit more uniformity to the site while still being distinguishable from articles.
Still in the Works
Since this is a “beta” version of the site, being only a part of the full vision for the future, there’s still some things we’ll be adding in over time.
One thing you might notice is that you’re unable to rate songs in this version. We’ll be addressing that first, as listeners actually rate songs fairly often at GSR. It will actually become part of a new module called “Ratings & Comments”, where listeners will be able to rate and comment on songs. With the new system, you’ll be able to give a song a star rating as well as tell us (and your fellow listeners) why you like or don’t like a song.
History Tracking is another cool feature we hope to add soon. Registered listeners will be able to track how much they’ve listened to the station. There’ll be two different ways the system is able to know it’s you. One is that you’ll be able to add your IP to the system (such as at home), and from there, any media player or device that’s connected to that IP will be logged in your listen time. The other method is a temporary system where you’ll be able to track your listen time from locations where you’re logged into the site. This makes temporary tracking possible for things like listening from a friend’s house.
That’s all I have for now. If you’d like to make a small contribution for the work I’ve been doing for the site and the station, feel free to use the link on the sidebar, it’s a good motivator. I hope everyone enjoys the new site, and I look forward to continuing the work I’ve been doing.
Happy Listening~
