Update on “The Update”

“The Update”

I am working on a massive overhaul of the site.

StudyBass is 16 years old now. I’ve built, rebuilt and broken the site many times over the years. Most times when I did major revisions, it was under some duress or severe time constraint. Due to the panic, I was never able to dig in and do things the way I really wanted.

This time around I’m getting ahead of the next panic and digging in. There is plenty to fix, optimize and improve.

Utopia of Learning

As I work on this update, my mantra is to make the site a “utopia of learning.” Every decision I make I am asking myself does this improve the user’s music learning experience or interfere with it? It's all about learning here.

The To-Do List

Some of what I’m working on:

• Upgrading the backend technology. I’m starting over from scratch here almost.
• Mobile experience. I know, it's currently a nightmare.
• Layout and design – Uniformity, improved navigation, typography, all of it.
• New lesson, exercise, song and quiz pages.
• Improve the fretboards.
• Improve my lesson deployment system.
• Accessibility for the visually-impaired.
• Improve audio and video delivery.

• A number of new learning tools. (You’ll see.)
• Lay the foundation for several major future parts of the site.
• Search function. I removed Google search for privacy reasons and haven't replaced it.
• Improve user and supporter features.
• New payment gateways instead of PayPal only.
• Upgrade the site email system.
• And, a number of other things I am forgetting to list.

New Tech

A lot of technology has greatly improved and matured in the past couple of years. PHP 7.2, many frameworks and libraries, CSS Grid Layout (awesome).

Devices and how people like to use them have become more predictable. There’s a lot to work with and it’s a lot to learn. I’ve gone through over 80 hours of tutorials just in the past few weeks boning up on new web technology I will be deploying.

Coming Not Soon

I expect this will take months of work. I’ll still be posting new lessons between my coding and design odysseys. If it seems like I’ve disappeared for stretches of time, don’t worry; I’m always working on something.

I’m both excited and scared about this update. Your enthusiasm, kindness and shared love of music is why I'm doing this. Give thanks to the supporters making this possible.

I’m looking forward to StudyBass being your utopia of learning.