Hello ibzRG. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. The core of the site as you know is to allow musicians, specifically guitarists to recommend music and gear to other musicians, which is something they do naturally, we've just made it simple and attached a system for you to earn money doing so. We also give the opportunity for you to post vids of yourself playing and blog about your musical or lifestyle adventures both textually and via video, as you have already done. So for the most part the amount of guitar related content on the site and specifically your profile is up to you. We most certainly plan on bringing in content from outside sources to benefit our audience and we've just finished digging through our archives and converting all the vintage guitar.com lessons to be featured in the Get Educated section, here's the first installment: http://www.guitar.com/geteducated

But ultimately guitar.com is about you, not us. We've created and are creating an environment for you to make your own, an environment to foster more peer to peer connections and not the linear "come to our site and see what we say" model, which has proven itself to be limited in scope.

So your concerns are noted and we feel they will most certainly be addressed as we move forward and form partnerships with the multitude of manufacturers and educators currently in the marketplace. And let's not forget Rype, the forthcoming application that will allow you to collaborate musically with the friends you make here on guitar.com.

So again thank you for your note and we certainly look forward to addressing your concerns.

EDIT- Also I wanted to mention that presently and during the first few months of public beta, the site is being populated. Once populated we'll be doing a great many things with the data and focusing on the most highly recommended products from the community, who recommends them, what else they recommend and so forth. We'll also focus on the obscure products that get recommended etc.. We're getting such great data just from beta testing, we didn't know what to expect in terms of user reviews and it's been a nice surprise. We'll also be going after manufactures to contribute content to the product detail pages and manufacturer specific pages that we'll create.

Did you follow the link? There are some explanations there on what I meant.

I was thinking more of maybe some ambient guitar art on the main traffic pages, not actual content in the reserved pages which I'm sure we'll see more of in the future (you didn't need to lecture me again :P I've been reading your plans for months ;P).
You know, little things that sometimes make a big difference. It's been so long I don't even remeber what the old G had that made it so home-y other than the guitar banner-art and the home page being filled with pictureful links to guitar content. Other sites have a guitar-art logo or banner on top too. That's the kind of stuff I'm talking about.

Instead, this site now features ads ("recommendations") on my home page to the point of feeling more like spam than content... I'm not saying it's inherently bad, but the home pages should usually point towards content of the site itself, you know what I mean ? (the navigation box on top there is very practical but falls short in producing the home-y feeling). Home pages full of ads and links pointing outside the site sort of kill the site and to me it feels un-welcoming.
I'm just saying that probably other people feel like that too, so maybe you could add a box with some pictureful links to the site's areas and when you get deals with companies etc, that sort of content in the form of site news or sth should find it's way on the home pages too. No need to remove the recomendations.

I hope I have managed to get my point across. It's really hard sometimes to identify the cause of a feeling and describe it exactly. Maybe if Hetrj would stop in, he might be able to add some insight with his views on the issue.


- RG -
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Hello again ibzRG. I understand what you're saying, but I don't think it's the same thing that het is saying:

"yeah. the novelty seems to be wearing off a bit for me, too. there's just no content to keep me coming back. everything seems to be more geared to just music and advertising with zero emphasis on guitars.... and that sort of defeats the purpose of having a domain called guitar.com."

He seems to be talking about content not graphics or design.

In response to what you're saying, did you know that you can upload a background image for your home page? Take a look at the image I've uploaded to see. This can be done under the "more options" header and by selecting "customize your page".

My initial post got lost so I'll try to be concise this time.

I used Het's complaint as a starting point and apparently wandered off in my own problems... Maybe I wandered a bit too far, running in circles around the point...

Scratch everything I said.

#1 : As far as guitar personality is concerned.
I do have a guitar in my home background, since day 1 actually. :D Not very visible behind the boxes but that's another thing. I don't stay long on that page anyway.
I think when the tab editing feature of some sort (still in your agenda or got lost in the way?) makes it into the forum and other content expands, the site will begin making its guitar ID clear enough. I do think the site could use some emblem that shows guitars some way or another, either independent from the G-splash or one as part of the other. After all, what we guitarists seem to have all in common is showing off that which defines us apart from the others ;D .

#2 : I realized much of my previous rant had little to do with the actual content of the words and phrases I used and nothing to do with het's remark. Between the lines all I was asking was probably some more hints of colour. The arctic silver theme is a good choice, but currently, if the site was a human face, I would describe it as cold und unexpressive, if that makes any sense. Some hints of colour on small things, like buttons, to break the overwhelming dominance of pale grey-scale littered by black spots, could make the site considerably less cold a place.

- RG -
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For your info, het just *signed* my comment in the other thread. So I can't have completely misunderstood him. ;P

I've been thinking about "themes" and allowing each user to choose a theme for the site so as not to make it too specific.. It's simple enough to do with css. Like an electric and an acoustic theme, but also perhaps genres, brands, bands etc..

Sounds interesting! :D Looking forward to it!

Uh, hang on a sec...

Do I understand this conversation correctly that I should be seeing a background graphic on your homepages? (homepage = the page I see when I click on your icon) Because I don't, on either one. Just the usual artic white kind of thing happening.

No. You can add your own background image to your home page. Click on "customize your page" under the "more options" header..