Discussions » Creation Requests

De-bloating for Allmusic.com (and its sister sites)

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Posted: 13.04.2021

Allmusic.com used to be a model website. Everything was neatly organized, all space was used effectively, there was no extraneous BS of any kind. Then they redesigned the website in 2002 and screwed it all up. And while they've fixed a lot of the stuff they messed up, like giving us actual clickable links instead of some BS script we couldn't open in a new window, a lot of the problems with the layout they never fixed. I'd like to get this thing to be manageable again. I understand that may take some time. Please do your best.

Here's an example page: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/harry-nilsson-mn0000560208/discography
Now, it used to be that everything was on one page. You started with the Overview, the Biography could be expanded in-line, the discography extended below. I don't know if we can bring that back. I understand if we can't. But for Heaven's sake, let's get rid of the bloat!

Let's look at the Discography page and go box-by-box. The top banner stuff is fine. Then the Artist name: too much vertical padding. The shortened biography: not as bad, but still a bit too much vertical padding. The tabs: Overview, Biography, Discography, Songs, etc.: too much vertical padding. This is a running theme: too much vertical padding. Discography box: starts with too much padding at the very top, then Filter Discography section had a bit too much vertical padding, and each Album entry has way too much vertical padding. The right-side box with Biographical Details has way too much padding as well, both horizontal and vertical. Really, this stuff ought to be relegated to a different section. If it's going to be there, it shouldn't be squeezing so much space out of the Discography section. Related Blog Posts: who honestly cares? Move that to the bottom of the page. Or maybe take the Biographical Details and the Related Blogs and place them above the Tabs section, in boxes that expand and contract again with the click of a button. Heck, ideally, with the short biography box above the tabs, clicking the Read Full Biography link should expand that box and fill it with the full biography, rather than taking me to another page. I understand if that's hard to do, so it's less of a priority, but it's still on my wish list. And a big problem overall: the elements are FIXED WIDTH. Why? What's the point? Why shouldn't I get the content to spread out if I open my window wider? That's bull!

Now, here's the problem in terms of simple design, which these monkeys do not comprehend. I came to the Discography page. I want to read about the Discography. THAT should be the focus of the page. Instead, they have all this BS crowding it into a tiny space. The bar at right takes up a bunch of space. The excessive vertical padding makes it impossible to much of the actual content at a time in the browser window. And actually, if you block all CSS on the page, you see roughly how the actual Discography section, just that section, ought to look. Some of the images are missing, and the bits of colorful design are gone, but you get the layout right, you have an actual appropriate amount of padding, the album entries are the right height, and it's much more attractive when you just want to browse the info. You can actually fix a lot of the crap just by undoing what the CSS did.

Ideally, I'd like to see a master script that gave Allmusic.com a big overhaul. There should be less loading of fresh pages, more loading of content in-line. We should be able to get the basic stuff onto one single page, which was the way the website used to be. For now, though, the padding and the fixed-width issues are a good place to start. Ideally for each of the pages related to an artist, but especially for the Discography page. And really, if you can create a blanket script entry to make all the pages automatically-sized instead of fixed-width, that would solve half the problems with the rest of the website.

If you can write the scripts to really improve this website, I guarantee people will want to have babies with you.

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Posted: 14.04.2021

The sister sites I failed to mention are Allmovie.com and Allgame.com. They could use a bit of work, but they don't need it as badly as Allmusic.

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