RYM has been updated, adding new themes including a dark mode and compact text mode, new community page and message boards, a feature to see where on the site you've been mentioned, improvements to the search engine and more.
Discussion:
https://rateyourmusic.com/discussion/rate-your-music/rym_sonemic-january-2021-update-general-discussion-thread/
Full details:
https://rateyourmusic.com/development/
Today we are launching the RYM/Sonemic January 2021 update.
This update continues our revised development strategy of bringing Sonemic features into RYM so that they can be used immediately, and in general upgrading RYM to Sonemic one piece at a time. The new features in this update are:
- Updated site design with new headers/footers/fonts - we are standardizing the site’s headers and footers between RYM and the Sonemic Network, to continue the goal of a smooth transition between the sites.
- Themes - we have added the ability to switch between light and dark themes, including an “auto” theme which syncs to the settings on your device. Subscribers have access to four additional themes (light gray, dark gray, pink, classic RYM).
- Compact mode We have added an option to globally customize the size of text and UI on the site. Right now, there are two modes: Normal and Compact, but we may potentially add more in the future.
- New message boards - we have brought the Sonemic message boards to RYM. These boards contain the following improvements:
Mobile-friendly and modern design
More advanced search engine; in particular, the search engine can search for text contained in shortcuts
New polling system with the ability to create various types of polls (single-choice, multiple-choice, weighted-choice, changeable votes, public/private)
The ability to subscribe to threads. Subscribing allows you to more easily pick up exactly where you left off when reading a thread.
The ability to see when you are mentioned, as described below
Extremely fast: discussion pages now load 3-10 times as fast as before
- Mentions feature
Bringing in the Sonemic community system allows us to create another feature which we think users will find useful: the ability to know when you are mentioned in a comment or in the message boards. You can see an overview of the most recent pages where you’ve been mentioned from the menu bar in the header. In a later update, we will an an option to receive notifications of such mentions.
- Search engine improvements
We have added the ability to search by “everything” by default, making it a bit easier to use the search feature. We added an option in settings to allow you to set the default search type to your previously searched item so that you don’t have to change it on subsequent searches. We have also made some slight adjustments so that popular artists rank at the top of searches where multiple artists have the same name. Finally, the search hint is now included in search results for artists.
- New community page
We have updated the community page to show featured message board threads, and to be mobile-friendly.
We have replaced the list of online users with a more concise list focused on people you follow.
The old version hasn’t scaled well and has always been broken as a result (for example, when 4,000 people are online, it only shows 50 people and the flag buttons don’t work properly). We also removed the “new users” list because it is not really relevant either, as new users would typically have no activity during the time they’d appear on that list anyway, and it attracts lots of spammers.
We’ve also added an option in site settings to opt out of having an online status and appearing in the list of online users.
- Many small fixes and improvements
The rating trend now shows the current year and updates automatically
The music map image on the profile page now updates properly for everyone
Every page on the site loads faster than before
It’s now easy to search lists from the lists portal
Users are now reminded to add a search hint when submitting artist profiles
- What’s next
Soon, we expect to open the Glitchwave Beta to new users. We have been working on that project in parallel and are very close to completion, but unfortunately were not able to include it with this update. |
