Korgscrew
Group: Super Admins
Posts: 3511
Joined: Dec. 1999 |
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Posted: Sep. 10 2003, 19:42 |
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As far as I know, mikeoldfield.org is still an official website...just Mike's chosen to have two...
I think, like I said, that it would make a lot of sense if all of his little pieces of news were consolidated into one news page which then contained links to the relevant sections of the site.
It would also make a lot of sense to coordinate mikeoldfield.com and mikeoldfield.org properly, so they're not treading on each other's toes too much. I think either everything ought to be consolidated into one site, or they should be given very separate identities, making one a more personal site of Mike's, managed by him and really for him (more about his interests - like the telepathy stuff, though fans didn't think too much of that...and like Music VR, and similar personal projects of his, a weblog maybe), which is sort of almost what mikeoldfield.com already is, and a site for the fans (with the expected news, biography, discography, etc). It's almost like that now, just they cross over, and mikeoldfield.com doesn't really acknowledge the existence of mikeoldfield.org...
The forums there are rather odd - the spirituality subjects they're about relate to nothing else on the site now, with the forum being linked to via the main page (so people would no doubt expect it to be a forum about Mike rather than about spirituality...). Having more categories there would be helpful - there's no reason why there shouldn't be forums about spirituality and other things which interest Mike (being his personal website, why shouldn't it contain things which are going to be interesting for Mike to read?), but people use it to talk about Mike's music anyway, so really either they ought to be directing people to somewhere else to hold those discussions (we don't have any problem with them directing people here, though if he's going for a coordinated web presence, they should really be directing people to forums on the 'official fan website', whatever that may end up being) or there ought to be categories there where those discussions will be on-topic. It would make the place seem a whole lot more cared about - at the moment, the forum topics are a bit of a mess, with it being rather hard to find which ones the latest posts have been made in (the fact that the year isn't included as part of the date doesn't help - it's not possible to tell whether topics are from this year or last year without opening them). So, a bit of attention given to those wouldn't go amiss (a start would be getting rid of that broken link at the bottom of the main forums page! That's also a very old version of the discus software they're using - unless there's a particular technical reason for using that, the newer versions are much nicer, and free as far as I remember)...and it really needs to be constant attention, as I don't think there's anyone moderating them currently...
I'd think it would also make sense to pull together the Music VR stuff a little bit more - at the moment there's a little introduction to Music VR in the main section, but it's not linked to the Tres Lunas and Tube World sections at all. It would seem to be a good idea to have a Music VR section, containing that introduction, then leading to areas dedicated to Tres Lunas and The Tube World (but ideally with easy access to those areas via the main page as well, which shouldn't be too difficult...). It would be attractive to the fans if it also contained articles which reveal more about the project - like interviews, not just with Mike, but with everyone involved. The same would be good for sections like that dedicated to Tubular Bells, the re-recording. Articles like that would perhaps be better placed on the 'fan' website, though, and that's where the close interlinking would have to come in (i.e. 'read more about Music VR on mikeoldfield.org' type links).
It could really be fantastic with a little effort, and would improve Mike's image immensely...
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