April 2014 site update

[albummaster]

This update is the biggest that BEA has seen in the past three years. There are numerous changes.

A premium membership option will be added by the end of 2014, which has been slow out of the door because I really wanted BEA to manage without it, but the site is now taking so much of my time up that it really is the only way I can think of to keep the site alive. (Premium member features are listed on the Member Levels page, but are not yet active.)

• New features: Added overall chart history page to allow people to see an analysis of chart movements over the past five years
  
• Added overall chart history graphs to allow people to see the movement for individual albums
  
• Added a 'most wanted' albums page (albums appearing most frequently in people's wish lists on BEA)
  
• You can now see the best artists by year or decade from the top-ranked artists page
  
• Added 'random album' and 'random chart' pages to the resources menu - http://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/vi...bum#107431 http://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/vi...p?p=253477 http://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/vi...php?t=3470 . This functionality will be enhanced in a future release, but currently jumps you to any random album or chart in the database.
  
• Users can now pick from their favourites, rated items & their collection when selecting items for their charts
  
  
• Charts: CSV exports on chart pages now include chart & rank notes - http://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/vi...063#254063
  
• 'Real' album and artist names are now shown when editing a chart (as opposed to the transliterated versions)
  
• A newer recognised chart by the same source is now highlighted on chart pages
  
• Moved the 'edit' and 'delete' options to the top of the chart editor (from the bottom) - http://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/vi...304#248304
  
• Full size artwork is shown on hover on some pages
  
• Users can now only download charts to CSV files if they are logged in
  
• Fixed a bug on year/decade charts where the custom sort order is lost after pagination
  
• Fixed a bug where filtering a chart on the chart editor took you to the chart page - http://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/vi...php?t=9276
  
• Fixed a bug where the comment count for a chart could be wrong - http://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/vi...543#294543
  
• Added the ability to compare any individual chart on the site to any of your existing charts & see the albums/artists in common - http://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/vi...php?t=3772
  
• Now show a list of other charts by the same user (of the same type) on individual chart pages - http://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/vi...php?t=4502
  
• Private charts now completely hidden when viewing other people's charts page
  
  
• User data: Added a ratings composition to enable people to see the albums they've rated, filtered by year of release, decade, nationality & artist - http://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/vi...php?t=8184 & http://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/vi...php?t=9380
  
• Added year of release to favourites, ratings, comments, listened, collection, wish list and made it a sortable column
  
• Added the ability to export collection, listened, ratings, favourites, comments & wish list to a CSV file - http://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/vi...php?t=6758 & http://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/vi...php?t=8548
  
  
• Forums: Added minimum user name validation to registration form
  
• [youtube] forum BBCode now supports YouTube's updated link structure e.g. http://youtu.be/xxxxxxx (http://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=221047#221047)
  
• Added a limit of 10 YouTube videos per post to prevent slowing down of forums
  
• Album of day forum posts no longer truncates part-way through the final word
  
• Added an 'about' field to user profiles for people who want to add more details about themselves - http://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/vi...mp;start=0
  
• Added the ability to bookmark favourite/useful posts on the forums in your own personal folder - http://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/vi...php?t=8547
  
• PM notification now more obvious
  
• Fixed an issue where the chart of the day favoured older charts
  
• Deprecated world album of the day
  
• Country flags now shown on forums for list of online users
  
  
• Data admin: No longer allow items to be re-allocated if the ID is less than the item it is being allocated to (stops reallocating to items that might have been in the database a long time & losing child data). Members need to make sure they update the details for the item with the smaller ID.
  
• The enter key no longer submits data on admin pages (to prevent accidental form submissions)
  
• A 'minimum tracks' warning is now shown on admin album page to help flag up possible suspect albums (EPs)
  
• Track lists are now colourised on admin album page to highlight tracks containing feedback
  
• Suspect indicator now shown on admin pages within inline results
  
• You can now only edit 5 items at a time on the admin screens to prevent people hogging the system
  
• Now check if an artist is already a parent of another artist before modifying its own parent artist (to ensure each artist only has one parent)
  
• A change has been made to the way BEA deals with album or artist titles containing non-Latin characters. If a title contains non-Latin characters, the transliterated version can now be overridden from the admin album/artist pages. All titles will be shown in the original alphabet with the transliterated version shown in square brackets - http://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/vi...930#234930
  
• Statistics now calculated more frequently as users complaining about delays (now every four hours instead of every six) - http://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/vi...137#297137
  
• The full release date for albums is now able to be captured. There is no intention to back-populate the whole BEA database with release dates as the information will be too difficult to track down and most likely won't be accurate most of the time. So, only albums that are less than ten years old can to be populated. Initially, the functionality will allow albums to be future dated, so that once the release date is reached they can be un-flagged and re-verified to ensure the leaked artwork/track listing corresponds with the initial full release. It will also allow 'new releases' to be highlighted so that members can see albums released this month etc.
  
• Added a new filter to the newly added albums page to highlight 'problem' items that are difficult to validate
  
• The capitalise tracks option is now always visible on the admin album page

Support us
If you'd like to support BEA, you can do so in any of the following ways:

• Link to BEA from other websites. Talk about us on other websites, create a buzz and get people to check us out (but be careful not to do this in a spammy way!)
  
• Buy your music via BEA. If you discover a new album or track, with help from BEA, use the iTunes, Amazon and eBay buttons on this site to buy it from your favourite store. BEA gets a small commission (pennies), and it helps to pay our hosting fees.
  
• Subscribe to our newsletter. Keep up to date with the latest site news by subscribing to our FREE newsletter.
  
• Use our chart widget. Share your chart on Facebook (or any other website)! You can find our chart widget on the resources page.
  
• 'Like' us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. Liking us on Facebook is a great way to promote BEA! If some of your friends see that you 'like' us, they might check us out too!

The off-topic forums have been shut down so that the site can focus more on music. They may be re-opened at some point in the future, but there is no current time-scale for doing this.

Enjoy the site and more soon...

albummaster