Feedback on new website - transition from Old to New

Feel free to get outside the box here.
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TGNeil
Posts: 963
Joined: Thu Feb 18, 2010 1:09 pm
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Thu May 21, 2020 5:26 pm

Hey Kevin,

Once again, I really appreciate your new job as mega beta tester! You may know that I have always had a problem setting a difficulty level for a song. I think the levels have to be different depending on genre or style. Fire And Rain is advanced compared to most accompaniment songs (meaning backing vocals), and Why Georgia would be another in that category. Both are very difficult for students who can handle Dust In The Wind or even Diamonds And Rust.

Instrumentals are a whole different matter. I would offer that we need a sub-difficulty breakdown based on style/genre/technique, but that probably confounds the issue even more. Mood For A Day is in the 8-9 range on the old scale, making it advanced now. More on instrumentals, I was always comfortable giving something an 8 or 9, with the caveat that we need decimal breakdowns for the 9s (9.1-9.9). I was reserving 10 for something I couldn't play, which probably meant I wasn't doing a lesson on it. There are some high 9s here - Cavatina, Sleight Of Hand, Blues Land, Pipeline, Heliotrope Bouquet, and what might be the first 10, if I can ever finish it... Bethena. Ah, but that just challenged my definition of a 10. It will have to be the first 9.9.

Coming soon - a couple level 2 tunes, then back to the killers!

Neil


kchesney
Posts: 10
Joined: Mon Aug 25, 2014 12:01 pm
Status: Offline

Thu May 21, 2020 5:58 pm

Hey Neil,

While I'm enjoying being a mega tester, I really do have a full-time job already! Thank you for your thoughtful response to setting the level of difficulty for a song. I now understand the challenges, and it does depend upon the player's prior training and preferences.

I'm still surprised after all these years that you haven't provided lessons for some of your earlier pieces, specifically Sweet Child. There are so many other good pieces that you've written and taught over the years that are still yet to be on the site, e.g. Papa's Guitar, Cobble Creek, S.O.S. I also noticed that you have very few lessons that are fingerstyle arrangements of the Beetles off of your first album. Just saying!

In any event, I look forward to checking out Bethena!

Again, the new site is much improved, and I'm very impressed. Look forward to catching up in person soon.

Kevin


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TGNeil
Posts: 963
Joined: Thu Feb 18, 2010 1:09 pm
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Thu May 21, 2020 11:22 pm

Kevin,

I really love your enthusiasm and appreciation for my early pieces, which I am still very proud of. Many of our TG members have also been interested in learning some of them too. I probably should do a promo sometime for my earlier albums, those before El Dorado and Cobble Creek. Let me wake up the marketing staff!

Neil


kchesney
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Joined: Mon Aug 25, 2014 12:01 pm
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Thu May 21, 2020 11:48 pm

Thanks, Neil. I suspect that many of your early fingerstyle arrangements of the Beetles would be of most interest to the broader market, but many of your pieces off of Yesterday's News are quite outstanding as well and I would definitely purchase lessons of them! Sweet Child is one of my favorite pieces from your early days, and although I don't need it be a lesson as you've taught it to me already, I think it's worthy of being included. In fact, I would purchase it in an instance, given the beauty of the piece. Again, congratulations on your new website as it's much improved. I will let you know if I find other areas for improvement.

Best,
Kevin


unclewalt
Posts: 58
Joined: Sun May 31, 2009 11:14 am
Status: Offline

Tue May 26, 2020 10:00 am

Yes, the search thing is a problem. The site mostly works very nicely, and looks good, but I can't find anything.

Also, the opening of new pages when going between the main site and the forum is a little annoying. As is the need to sign in separately to each, with (at least in my case) two different logins.

Finally, the link in the top nav to the old site (where last night I tried to find an old lesson on my phone that I couldn't find here) just calls up the welcome page for the new site. The link is https://totallyguitars.com/tgold, but should be old.totallyguitars.com.

Anyway, looking forward to these things being fixed.

EDIT: Well, I just saw a search box, and searched on a lesson. It brought me to the lesson, but it showed I wasn't signed in, even though I was. So I hit the sign-in button, got a *new page*, and that page showed I was signed in, but no change on the lesson page. Then I came back here a minute later to add this bit of info, less than five minutes after I posted the above, and I wasn't signed in. So I hit "sign in," was brought to a *new page* to do so, and it worked. It's easy to end up with a whole lot of open tabs trying to make your way through the site.

But I'm still unable to access the lesson I called up. Maybe a bit to early to launch, even in beta form?

ANOTHER EDIT: Apparently, the search box I saw was for the old site, totallyguitars.com. But it was on a page that looked like the new site, and the lesson came up looking like it was on the new site. As far as I can tell, I was signed into both, but still couldn't access the lesson. This is totally bewildering. I'll just wait til these issues are solved, I guess.


kchesney
Posts: 10
Joined: Mon Aug 25, 2014 12:01 pm
Status: Offline

Tue May 26, 2020 6:21 pm

Hi Walt,

The best way to search until they get the site updated is to logout, then search what you're looking to find, copy the link to the page you're looking for, then login once you've copied it. Logging in will pop a new window, so you will then need to paste the link to the lesson in the new window. It's a bit kludgy, but it works.

The search outside of being logged in is much superior to being logged in, and it's one of the items to which I provided feedback. I'm sure they'll have this fixed soon, but until then, you can use the technique I mentioned above.

Best,
Kevin


unclewalt
Posts: 58
Joined: Sun May 31, 2009 11:14 am
Status: Offline

Tue May 26, 2020 9:26 pm

thanks, but yeah, i'm not gonna do all that


kchesney
Posts: 10
Joined: Mon Aug 25, 2014 12:01 pm
Status: Offline

Tue May 26, 2020 9:43 pm

Understood, but to streamline it, you can just have two windows open, one logged in, one not. Probably faster to find what you're looking for than the current search mechanism when logged in. Just saying! It's what I do as it's much faster and easier. Hopefully it will be updated soon.


tgjameela
Posts: 174
Joined: Wed Feb 29, 2012 5:02 am
Status: Offline

Tue May 26, 2020 10:06 pm

Hi unclewalt,

Thanks for your comments, check out this video I did which explains how to use the search from one site on the other



I want to point out that Totally Guitars, the site that has the search and Totally Lessons, the membership site are completely separate from one another, that's why you appear to be logged in on one and not the other.

The forum is separate as well for now, but we have on our list an auto-log in feature to be added so you don't have to log into both, you are correct that they accept different logs ins and this is because we did transfer all the content from the old forum and wanted to ensure that it was associated with those that posted it.

The url you referenced for the old site - https://totallyguitars.com/tgold first explains the new site and reasons to transition, you can access the old site by clicking the button "No Thanks" at the bottom or simply type in https://old.totallyguitars.com/ to continue using the old site.

Hope these details help a bit, as mentioned we still have updates to do, we appreciate you sharing your thoughts with us so we understand what direction to go next.

Thanks!
Jameela


familyman4
Posts: 55
Joined: Wed Apr 25, 2012 9:29 pm
Location: Arizona
Status: Offline

Wed May 27, 2020 10:16 am

So I tried this process last night as an experiment. It had been a long time since I had played Mr Bojangles so I wanted to print off the lyrics. However, I could not remember which artist the lesson was under. So I went through the process that Jameela explains in the video to search. That part worked just fine but the incorrect song lesson was attached to that number. Probably just another minor "glitch".

Bart


EDIT: So I went back through the process again this morning just to make sure that the incorrect song would pop up again and it did. However, the issue isn't the fault of the "search process", it is that the incorrect video is attached to that number. The PDF files are for the correct song, just not the video. Probably an easy fix for sure.
Last edited by familyman4 on Wed May 27, 2020 10:32 am, edited 1 time in total.


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