As you may or may not
know I have been working hard at a total reconstruction of This Is a Recording. The whole site was carrying 10 years of various stages of disrepair (because I'd start to "fix" something, never finish and instead move on to "fixing" something else) and half assed solutions slapped onto other half assed solutions.
I already made all the pages the old way because I hadn't considered the new way until I was about half way done with the old way.
(lolwut?
)
So, my newest half assed solution is to use WordPress as a sort of content manager/database for the sounds. When I'm done, I'll edit the templete so it won't be (too) obvious the underlying engine is Wordpress.
If you head over to
http://www.thisisarecording.com , you'll notice I'm using the categories feature to, appropriately enough, categorize the sounds (I bet they never figured it'd be used for categorizing!). Some of the categories include the type of intercept recording, frequencies (because there is some overlap such as the green box and blue box tones), the contributor, area code, the gender of the voice talent, service, and, my favorite (I've been wanting to do this for a looong time), semantics (The number you have reached vs. the number you have dialed, if you feel you have reached this recording in error vs. if you feel you've received this message in error, and so on.)
And some others that will require explanation such as Chicago guy. I remember hearing these back when Illinois Bell was still the RBOC. I've never heard this man's voice on any intercept recording outside of the Chicago area (And I've heard many, many intercept recordings.) People who have lived in Chicago will probably know which recordings I'm referring to without needing to hear the sounds.
Others will be added as the need arises.
The advantage of using Wordpress is having a database I can edit on the fly instead of manually adding each sound to each page. Also, the permalink feature will allow people to link directly to sounds which, in the past, was of moderate interest to visitors. The permalink also gives each sound it's own individual page, uncluttered by irrelevant content (and links for the tags) which the search engines will love (Yes, I put a site on the WWW so other people would see it. Insane, I know. But that's how I (t)roll) Finally, it will allow visitors to discuss each sound on their own page. If the comment section is not enough, I will add a message board. But I highly doubt it will come to that.
Because I have unlimited bandwidth, I was considering embedding each sound as well as offering a download link but I am hesitant to do so. So I probably won't.
Comments? Questions? Criticisms? Suggestions? I appreciate all input... as long as you don't do it like a shit-flinging monkey.
