Introducing NHAM 1.0!

[Read in full on NHAM]

Introducing NHAM 1.0!

By @sknob

We are glad and even proud to announce the launch of the new and improved NHAM website, which we’ve unilaterally decided to label version one point zero.

While it features a fresh coat of paint, it also includes many features that all converge towards our main objective: to make it as easy and convenient as possible to discover new music and artists on the Fediverse!

New Fediverse handle!

First things first! For historical reasons, our handle on the fediverse was @mixtape. To coincide with the launch of the new version of the site, our handle has now been changed to @nham!

Sadly we couldn’t bring our followers over from the old handle so if you were following @mixtape before please now follow @nham to continue to receive music updates.

New flagship discovery feature!

The NHAM Radio player is now available on the home page, along with the latest video in our collection and a link to the next event.

So listening to the best Fedi music, expertly curated by Sam (@ethicalrevolution), is only one click away!

But wait, there’s more! Notice the little “popup” link in the title bar of the RADIO box? Well you guessed it, it launches the Radio player in a separate popup window, so you can keep exploring the site (and the rest of the unenshittified Internet), without interrupting the music!

And you can also pop-out the featured video!

Usability Improvements

Thanks to those title bars in the different boxes, you no longer have to solely rely on color to know what you’re seeing, especially if you navigate to a screen which contains a mix of news, reviews and releases (when you click on a tag like bonkwave for instance 😇).

And thanks to the “More” links in the title bars, you’re always a single click away from the full list of NEWS articles, REVIEWS or RELEASES.

Speaking of tags, the new TRENDING bar below the main navigation bar allows you to go directly to what’s hot, no matter where you are on the site. Thanks for the suggestion, @RobertaFidora!

Finally, the MENU (accessible at the top right of every page), has been totally revamped and reorganized. Check out the featured articles on NHAM to find your bearings in the music Fediverse, access a plethora of Community resources, or why not filter the news or reviews to only show original NHAM content?

Esthetics

While some of you will probably regret the loss of the previous version’s, shall we say, brutalist design (you know who you are), we have chosen to soften the spiky edges and add a bit of CSS smoothness to the interface.

While esthetics are subjective, we want to help people discover fedi music and musicians, and we feel that having a somewhat more inviting site can only help achieve that goal.

And having a little imagery (radio album covers, video and event thumbnails) on the home page doesn’t hurt towards that end either.

Form still follows function, and the site is still just as lean and mean (in a softer, gentler way ^^) than before!

Miscellany (TMI)

Logo

The NHAM logo is no longer displayed in black on a white background in dark mode, and in white on a black background in light mode, to alleviate eye-strain and better meld into the page design.

You might notice that the tagline below the NHAM logo changes on each reload 🙂

Navigation Bar

The main Navigation Bar has been redesigned with brand new, more consistent icons.

The LISTEN, WATCH and ATTEND labels were changed to RADIO, VIDEO and EVENTS respectively, for better consistency with the NEWS, REVIEWS and RELEASES labels.

It is also displayed on one, two or three lines depending on the screen size (it used to be displayed on two lines on larger screens, which was a waste of vertical space. And the buttons can no longer be as easily misconstrued as “headers” for the content below them, a paradigm that broke down on phone screens for example).

News, Reviews and Releases boxes on the Home page

We’ve grouped the news, reviews and releases on the home page into single, unified “boxes” instead of separate boxes for each item.

We’ve bumped up the number of items from 3 to 5, so you get a little more info before having to click on the aforementioned super handy “More” links in the title bars.

News, Reviews and Releases category pages

The dashed or solid outlines of the boxes in the NEWS, REVIEWS and RELEASES category pages (which distinguish external links from internal ones) have been redesigned to make them a little less, well, aggressive 😅.

On medium and larger screens, the individual post boxes are now displayed in a tidy grid, instead of a single column of boxes of varying widths, which means less scrolling.

Posts

When you land on a review or a news article like this one from somewhere else on the Web, the colored NEWS or REVIEW title at the top of the page now tells you where you’ve landed and what you’re reading.

As an extra visual reminder, interface elements like bullets and tables are also the color of the corresponding category (news article, review, release).

The comment fields and the fediverse reactions widget below the posts have been brought closer in line with the rest of the design.

Footer

We’ve included links to useful items in the footer: A direct link to the legendary NHAM Mixtapes that started it all, to the What is a Fair Music Platform? post, and to the Browse By Tag page (which I use all the time).

And probably other details I’ve forgotten.

Let us know what you think!

Hopefully, you’ll find NHAM 1.0 easier and more pleasant to use, and you’ll be more inclined to send your friends our way so they can discover the rich and wonderful world of music on the Fediverse!

[Read in full on NHAM]