Forum

Hi, I've been working with the new website since it's most recent launch, and have noticed some items for improvement.

1) When logged in, you can no longer search for a lesson by name, which is quite problematic. The site rather displays the use of three tier filtering mechanism only. When not logged into the site, you can search by name or you can only filter by one category rather than combining the filters. It would be nice if the site was consistent, and more importantly allowed for advanced filtering and/or searching by name. The search by name is quite nice, as you can search by title, band, etc. and it returns a nice list of results. Given the choice I would prefer the mechanism when not logged in over the mechanism enabled when logged in.

2) The menu items at the top level are different between being logged in and not, more specifically "artists" is there when not logged which is replaced by "student reviews". It would be nice if the "artists" set of screens were available when logged in as this gives you the ability to expand by artist in a similar way to the prior website.

3) I have purchased lifetime access to songs that I'm interested in, including lesson packs from the previous version of the website. When moving to the new website, the song packs were inconsistent, more specifically, songs were removed from the new version of the lesson pack. While this approach may be fine going forward, those students that purchased lifetime packs should continue to have access to the lessons as before. For example, I the purchased Advanced Fingerpickering 10 pack, but when it was moved to new site, it dropped 3 songs, Windy & Warm, Linus & Lucy, and Doc's Guitar. I specifically purchased this old 10 pack since it included these songs which are quite relevant for an Advanced Fingerpicking lesson pack. There were also missing songs from Neil Hogan's instrumental pack when it was moved from the old to the new website, albeit in this lesson pack some Beetles songs were added. In QA'ing the new website, I suspect other members that purchased lesson packs on the old website will encounter similar issues.

Overall, I like the new website, but there are clearly some areas for improvement, which I hope will be addressed over the next few months.

Hello kchesney

A search by song title would be nice, I thought that too.

If you have issues with your purchases from the older site, (or for any help) rather than post in the forum
you'd probably get a better response by posting a ticket to:

support@totallyguitars.com

We were told that it was earlly days and this is really only a beta stage.

Good Luck

TheresHopeYet

Hey There kchesney,

Thanks for the feedback and I just noticed some problems with many of the packs yesterday as well. Last night I went through every one of them (about 130 or so) and I think I fixed them all. I especially noticed the problems with the two you mentioned. My pack was missing the two Hawaiian pieces and the Advanced one was short on three. Please check today and let us know how they look. I also invite everybody to proof read the packs for us.

And as mentioned, the search function is still under construction. Our plan is a 30-day rollout to get everything up to speed and running smoothly and we are 15 days into it now. The vaccine is just around the corner.

Great to hear from you and I think of you regularly,

Neil

Hi Neil,

Thanks for your reply! Yes, the two lesson packs now look good, and I'm able to access all the songs per the prior website. I like the new website, and I look forward to the updates as you roll them out. Let's connect in person soon, once it's safe to do so!

Kevin

I like the new site a lot. Classy design, totally intuitive. Kudos!

K and Walt,

Thanks for getting back and glad things are looking better. Obviously the point of a beta launch is to fine tune things. The feedback is huge and thanks for contributing to our rebuild.

Neil

Hi Neil,

I thought I would provide a bit more feedback as I'm still uncovering some issues.

1) Since I have only a free membership and purchase lessons or lesson packs, I see some aspects about the site that other members do not. For example, there are several lessons that when you click on them say that there is no free preview, although, you can see the free preview link in the list. Since this is how you market to free members and folks that haven't signed up, I would expect you want to know of these. Examples are Linger by The Cranberries, The Low Spark of High Heeled by Traffic, Raspberry Beret by Prince, and Sailing by Christopher Cross. The only way you would see these, is by not being logged into the site, unless you log in with a free test account.

2) The Fisherman Guitar Lesson seems to be broken. When I click on any link other than free preview, I get "Oops! Video is unavailable, Please try again later. Also, on the Free Preview, I'm only able to get 240 speed. I noticed that on Little Martha as well, that the quality of the Free Preview is limited to 240, but the actual lessons can be played at much higher quality. Since again, this is marketing to non-members, I believe you would want the quality to be as high as possible on Free Previews.

3)The Forum and the Website have two different login mechanisms. The site uses email while the forum uses username. Also, if I'm logged into the site, why do I also have to login to the forum? It wouldn't be so annoying if the two matched up, as it prepopulates with email, but doesn't accept that as valid.

I understand that you're working through issues, but I thought this additional feedback might be useful to you.

Kevin

Hi Neil,

One other item, I know you went through all the lesson packs, but at some point, you'll want to review the categories that various lessons are being placed. For example, Jesu, Joy Of Man's Desiring - J.S. Bach - Classical Guitar Lesson, is categorized as Pop instead of Classic.

Kevin

Hey Kevin,

Thanks so much for this feedback!

It means a lot to us and gives us direction for where we can start making improvements.

I fixed the Free Previews on the lessons you called out, that was user error on my part as I forgot to mark them as free when putting them together, still learning the new system myself

Regarding the search, that is definitely something that is coming soon, in the meantime I put together a short tutorial on how you can leverage the search on the Totally Guitars side to pull up lessons on the new Totally Lessons Membership side, hope it makes things a bit easier for everyone ahead of the search feature being rolled out.



Thanks again for sharing!
Jameela

Thanks, Jameela.

I also noticed that there are several lessons that don't have the level set for them. Two examples are:

Mood for A Day by Yes and Fire and Rain by James Taylor. Both of these lessons should be Intermediate, but currently they have No Level set.

Also, with the old site, you not only had a level, but also a score which was helpful in gauging how difficult a song was, especially in the Advanced arena. I'm not sure why you moved away from this approach, but I do feel as if I've lost some information as I evaluate new songs to purchase.

The preview though does help as I can get a good sense of the level of difficulty. Overall, I really do like the new site better, and I look forward to you working out the various issues as you roll it out.

Best,
Kevin