October 2010 site update

[albummaster]

This month, we've added lots more new features!

Charts by country
First, for each individual chart (and on the list of charts) page, we now show a country composition which shows the percentage of albums from each country that make up each chart.

To support this new functionality, on the band rankings, we've added the ability to filter this chart by country so that you can see the top-ranked bands for any country. This also applies to the custom chart, which you can also filter by country to see the top-ranked albums.

In addition to this, you can also drill through from any band page by clicking on a band's national flag to see where the band is ranked within their particular country. We hope that this will become a great way of finding the best music from each country.

Ratings
On the top member-rated pages, we've now added the ability to filter the charts to show (or hide) items that you've already rated. You can now filter these charts by country as well!

Whilst on the subject of ratings, we now show the average member rating and number of votes for each track in the album track-listings (following a request that came from the forums.)

Bigger charts
As part of this release, we've doubled the size of the overall chart, custom chart and top-rated chart to 1,000 entries! (based on an idea from ffudnebbuh - thank you).

Tools and community features
To help new users find their way around the site a bit easier, we've added a site map which lists the most important pages on the site.

We've also added a RSS feeds page which lists all of our RSS feeds (there are lots of feeds and they are feeling a bit lonely!) You will find *lots* of RSS goodness contained in these feeds!

On the forums, we've fixed a couple of rendering issues and we now show you a list of 'related topics' at the bottom of each thread (another great idea from badfaith in the forums).

We now provide members the option of marking your 'collection', 'listened' or 'wish list' as public OR private (private is the default setting). To access another user's list, click through from their profile page. To alter this privacy setting, visit your collection, listened or wish list page and click the padlock icon at the top of the relevant list (suggestion from RFNAPLES in the forums).

We've now also added the ability to select a favourite store so that if you are interested in buying any of the albums, you will be shown available products from a store that you would normally use (this functionality is available for new visitors as well as registered members and is currently found on each album page).

(N.B. this functionality will be hidden if you have chosen not to see buy buttons, but if you do, it is a great way of showing your support for the site.)

In addition to all of the above, we've optimised performance and fixed many other minor bugs and niggles.

More soon

albummaster