I am looking for new ideas of things to add to the website. I really want to increase the number of vistors we get and I hope some new features will help with this. One idea I had was to do a monthly contest where we would give away harmonica merchandise. The only thing is I need contest ideas. I would prefer something that didn't require me to do a lot of coding since I am so busy right now I don't have too much free time to do the work, but if I have to I will.

maybe a trivia question about a harp great that CAN't be answered by looking on Ask.com?

that could be hard to do lol

How about a contest where every month you select a couple bands with not a lot of tabs on this site (Goo Goo Dolls, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Dave Matthews Band, AC/DC to name a few from the requested tab list), and anyone who tabs a song for one of those bands within that month is entered in a random draw for something. Just make sure that the list is very diverse in the band selection so everybody's tastes can be meet. All you would need to do view who posted tabs for the selected bands at the end of the month and randomly pick one of the people.

I personally think this will help bring even more diversity to the already diverse selection of tabs on this site and probably draw in more people to view the even greater selction of tabs.

I like that idea, maybe the winner each month gets to pick what band is picked the following month. What does everyone else think?

I've looked at some of the music from new bands. Some of the singing uses a lot of complicated notes which makes it really hard to tab.

I was going to do a couple of Evanescence songs but Amy's got such a range in her voice and she sings in weird keys that tabbing the complete song is almost impossible. I could easily do the intro to "Bring me to Life" but the rest of the song is too complicated. Even "Call me when you're sober" is difficult to tab.

I was going to do Green Day's "I want to be an American Idiot" but most of that song is sung in monotone with very little scaling to the lyrics. That's just boring to play. Songs like that would be better to just tab the music riffs.

I guess I'm just old. Most of the music I tab is 1974 and older Of course, most of that music is also easier to play.



Post Edited (10-11-06 00:24)

Your only as old as you feel, besides I like the older easier to play stuff.

I like B_Zilla's idea a lot. I think I've seen a couple harp competitions where they challenge members to post the best version of a song (e.g., everyone is invited to do Beethoven's 9th or Amazing Grace and the best one wins), but I like the idea of the contest resulting in more (and more diverse) tabs. At first, I was thinking of something very simple on the webmaster--say, the person posting the most tabs for the month wins (or the most forum posts), or person whose songs get the most views for the month wins (that one would probably result in the same winners too much, though; the popular songs would always win out). If you don't mind me asking, what kind of site traffic does harptabs.com get and what do you realistically think you can boost it to?

Well, I must thank all of those that like my idea. Since I posted the idea, I've been thinking about ways to make it even better, and I feel like I've got some more ideas to add to it.

First off, every month there are 5 feature bands that people can tab and be entered into the drawing. This will hopefully give everybody a fair chance to be entered since the featured bands will be diverse enough to meet multiple people's tastes. For example, one month could be Joan Baez, Goo Goo Dolls, Deep Purple, AC/DC, and Franz Ferdinand. This should appeal to those that like the older bands as well the newer stuff.

My other idea is that if a single person tabs songs for a few of the featured bands, they will be entered into the draw a few times. For example, someone that posts 5 Joan Baez is only entered once into the drawing, but another person that posts a tab for AC/DC, Deep Purple, and Joan Baez each is entered 3 times into the drawing. This will hopefully encourage most of the featured bands to be tabbed, instead of just one or two.

I hope that these ideas help.

B_Zilla wrote:

> Well, I must thank all of those that like my idea. Since I
> posted the idea, I've been thinking about ways to make it even
> better, and I feel like I've got some more ideas to add to it.
>
> First off, every month there are 5 feature bands that people
> can tab and be entered into the drawing. This will hopefully
> give everybody a fair chance to be entered since the featured
> bands will be diverse enough to meet multiple people's tastes.
> For example, one month could be Joan Baez, Goo Goo Dolls, Deep
> Purple, AC/DC, and Franz Ferdinand. This should appeal to those
> that like the older bands as well the newer stuff.
>
> My other idea is that if a single person tabs songs for a few
> of the featured bands, they will be entered into the draw a few
> times. For example, someone that posts 5 Joan Baez is only
> entered once into the drawing, but another person that posts a
> tab for AC/DC, Deep Purple, and Joan Baez each is entered 3
> times into the drawing. This will hopefully encourage most of
> the featured bands to be tabbed, instead of just one or two.
>
> I hope that these ideas help.


I think that is a nice addition the only thing I am thinking is that it is going to be tough to come up with the five bands every month. I don't know if I could do it, but if other people think they can I have no problem letting other people come up with bands.

mmolino54 wrote:

> I like B_Zilla's idea a lot. I think I've seen a couple harp
> competitions where they challenge members to post the best
> version of a song (e.g., everyone is invited to do Beethoven's
> 9th or Amazing Grace and the best one wins), but I like the
> idea of the contest resulting in more (and more diverse) tabs.
> At first, I was thinking of something very simple on the
> webmaster--say, the person posting the most tabs for the month
> wins (or the most forum posts), or person whose songs get the
> most views for the month wins (that one would probably result
> in the same winners too much, though; the popular songs would
> always win out). If you don't mind me asking, what kind of site
> traffic does harptabs.com get and what do you realistically
> think you can boost it to?

Site traffic is doing great, I am very happy with it. For the month of September we had 3,901,677 hits (Which was the best month yet August had 700,000 less then that). I don't really have a goal but they way I see it is the more people who visit this site the more tabs we have. We have a good flow of new tabs right now but I would like to see new people doing some postings (I am worried about the regulars burnning out after a while).

I just wonder how many of those hits are really harp related. How many downloads of Stairway to Heaven are there every day that someone wants to play on a harp? I'm thinking many are coming in from search engines expecting to find guitar tabs as well.

that is a good point.

I think that people should tab because they like a song, not to win a contest.

Could you imagine what the forums would look like if people posted to win a contest? I don't think anyone would want to read it.

Another idea I had was to give everyone an entry for every tab they posted during the month. Then I would randomly select a winner. This would encourage people to post and would encourage multiple postings. I do like the band idea though, my only concern is how many people are going to participate unless they are interested in the band.

You could give extra points to those who posted already-requested tabs and less points for new tabs--that might draw more folks if they saw it as a true place to request tabs (I'm not sure how many requested tabs actually get posted). A prize for most tabs for the month or most diverse tabs (meaning different bands/artists) would probably be a simple way to get more tabs--a lot would depend on the prizes. Unless the prize is pretty desirable, I wouldn't think you'd get too many people trying to tab songs from bands they don't know or don't like (but I could easily be wrong; I've looked through the requested tabs and have really only considered tackling the ones I know or am also interested in). By the way, how does the current point system work and is this explained anywhere on the site? I couldn't find it and was curious.

If the goal is to get more visitors, I'm not so sure anything extra needs to be added to the site--maybe some minor redesign to ease navigation (I'm thinking some drop down menus to condense the number of navigational options on the left-side menu column), which would also give the forum more prominence (I wasn't even aware there was a forum until I had been looking at this site for about 2 weeks; specifically, it seems like there could be one button for "Tabs" and then all the suboptions, like "Add a Tab", "Request a Tab", etc.). And then getting the word out and getting others to link to you (e.g., I know Harp-L has a lot of pros on it, but I've never seen any mention of harptabs.com there for the beginners you know are lurking on the list). I'd be willing to try and get the word out, but one of the reasons I like this site so much is because it's simple, it works, and it's got a lot of great tabs

The point system is listed in a forum post dating back to when I originally set it up you can find it at this link:

[www.harptabs.com]

To summarize how the system works every time you post a tab you get 20 points, every time you make a forum post you get 8 points. Then I have a complicated math formula which I wrote that gives people bonus points for posting a large number of songs and those songs being popular. The bonus is meant as an incentive to post good content.

The request page really just doesn’t work. No one really fulfills the requests (there have been a few people who have but it is a tough unforgiving job). I was thinking about providing some sort of prize for fulfilling requests but I thought that would be unfair since people in the past who have done it would not be rewarded (I don’t keep records of requests that have been fulfilled).

I have a redesign I have been working out in my head which I think will make the site much easier to navigate. The reason the forum doesn't stand out is because originally this site was setup just so that people could post tabs and find tabs, that was my only goal originally. Then after having several people bringing up how they would find a benefit from being able to contact people who posted tabs and to chat I setup the forum (It is unbelievable that I started this site so long ago I could swear it was only like a year LOL). I have contacted every website I have come across to ask them to post us on their links but many are unwilling or recommend other sites over this one. I always encourage people who don't see this site listed somewhere where they think it should be to ask if it can be added. I will link back or do anything the other site asks just let me know. There are really only two reasons why I want to increase the number of visitors the main reason is that as our visitors go up so do the number of tabs. The other reason is that this site pays for itself just by having the ads on the side and the more people who visit the less I have to pay to keep this site going.

8 points... 8 points?

That's it, I'm done posting to the forum!!!!!!!

Just kidding. I don't care too much about the points, but I did notice I was moving up the rankings of contributors even when I wasn't doing anything.

I do like seeing how many times each song has been viewed.

Those 8 points add up lol look at all my posts. Plus I think it is a good way of allowing people who can't tabs songs the ability to still have their site contributions noticed. You will be surprised how easy it is to move up the ranks in this site (there then the top positions). Most people in the ranking system have only tab a song or two or just made some forum posts.

Trust me, tabbing songs, good songs, isn't as easy as it sounds. In the last couple of days I was looking at some of the newer more modern songs to see what notes the melody plays. They're not very easy to tab.

I've been tabbing songs for about a year now, and not just simple kids type songs or simple melodies (well a few anyway). 106 tabs which probably have about 80-90 real complete songs done in one year. That's about 9 tabs a month average or closer to 2 per week. Doesn't sound like much but trying to find 2 songs every week that are easy to tab and play is difficult work. Now the new members won't even be that lucky depending on their playing ability.

Many times I hear a song that sounds like it would be a good tab. I check the archive to see it's been done already so my tab list would be even higher if we didn't already have a huge list of songs. Sometimes it amazes me to find an easy to play, familiar song that's easy to tab and it hasn't been submitted yet. Other times I have songs I'm working on or thinking about and someone uploads the tab before I do.