I’ve been teasing this for a while (so if you’ve followed me on social media it’s probably not a big surprise) – and now it’s ready!
blip blop is now officially located at https://blipblop.net. The old site will stay live, but some content has been removed for SEO reasons and can only be found on the new site (news posts and Now Playing-posts).
Is everything on the new site perfect? Probably not. I’ve been looking around for bugs and issues for the past couple of weeks and I think I’ve get the most annoying ones fixed at this point. But of course there’s a chance that I’ve overlooked something. If you find a bug or you’re having issues with parts of the site please feel free to contact me.
I was originally planning to just do a clean move from the old site and have it ready by November last year, but ended up feeling that it needed some serious improvements. These are (mostly) done now and I’d like to present some of the new additions below:
The Releases
Every single release on blip blop now has it’s own individual release page. This means all different versions of a title will also be individually represented. This took a lot of work, but ultimately means that it’s much easier for you guys to use the search function to find specific releases.
A lot of parameters have been added to each individual release and when opening a release page you’ll now see links to the involved composers, performers and labels as well as the games and/or platforms represented on the release. Along this you’ll find a lot of practical info such as catalog number, release year, release country and more. And of course there’s still VGMDB and/or Discogs links for all releases that have one or both of these.
For a full breakdown I suggest reading the Understanding Release Pages-guide, which I wrote to explain all this new data in greater detail.
New Page Categories
I’ve added even more categories to the left sidebar, including one for DJ Breaks And SFX releases, a list of Pony Canyon’s G.S.M. releases and one for a brand new type of releases that wasn’t represented on the old site – releases with Vinyl Data.
More Resources
As noted earlier there’s a guide for understanding the data in release pages, but I’ve also added a guide on Getting A Proper Turntable Setup. This was done because I’ve noticed a lot of people getting introduced to vinyl records via these new video game music releases so I thought it’d be appropriate to do a simple guide on what equipment you’ll need, what the equipment does, where to find it, and so on.
As we are seeing more and more both brand new as well as more experienced labels getting into the video game music on vinyl business I’ve also added a list of Current VGM Labels with links to their stores, social media pages, etc. This list is a good way to get a quick introduction to each label and follow them on social media for the latest updates.
Automated Data
This is mostly enjoyable for myself as it makes it much easier to create, edit and update data on each release as I only have to do it in one place now (where I had to do it wherever a release was mentioned on the old site). This means that titles are now represented in several category pages and under several games (even if it’s a compilation release) when it’s related to a lot of titles.
This also brings me to a favorite feature of mine – the sidebar calendar. It gets the data from upcoming releases and will always display the five upcoming titles that are closest to their release date.
Secrets!
We’ll they’re not mind-bending or anything, but there are some funny things hidden here and there. I can’t really spoil those here now, can I? 😉
More stuff!
It’s still a work in progress – as I get more feedback on the new site and I learn to fix some of the known bugs (and those that will inevitably be found over the next couple of weeks) more stuff will be added and fixed on the site. I have more control over the content and functionality than ever before so I’m still open to suggestions!
Oh! And I fixed that damn left sidebar so that it will stay put when you scroll down on pages, which was probably the most requested feature of all!