Over the last month, I’ve been systematically going through every band’s information to make sure everything is up to date, particularly with Myspace links and new releases. Over 150 new band photos have been added, and a lot of out-of-date links have been updated. That’s why you’ll notice that not as many new bands have been added recently.

I also just upgraded the news engine from WordPress 2.1 to 2.6. The site uses a number of custom functions beyond just the visual theme, and I believe it’s all been migrated over now, but if you notice any strange errors, please comment here to let me know. Thanks!

Darktronica now has a presence on Myspace at http://www.myspace.com/darktronica. While Myspace is generally one of the worst sites on the Internet, it’s undeniable that they command a lot of attention in the music industry. The Darktronica profile there will make it easier for me to collect news on the artists covered here, as well as to communicate with bands about new releases and reviews. I’ll be checking it fairly regularly, so feel free to stop by and leave a kind word!

It doesn’t take much poking around to see that not much has changed around here for a while. I spent much of the summer preparing to start grad school, and finally about a month ago moved out to the land of sunshine and smog–Los Angeles. But now I’m situated in Santa Monica and excited to pick up where things left off!

Classes start this week, but I’m hoping to update Darktronica twice a week with new band profiles and descriptions, as well as more album reviews. Right now only about 60 of the 320 bands on the site have full descriptions, so look for that to start changing. I’ll also be sharing tidbits about what’s getting played around the office.

I’m also coding some new features for the site that will give the News blog more action and also integrate it a bit into the band pages themselves. Look forward to it!

I’ve just added a new subpage to the navigation… from now on, when you click a letter in the menubar on the left, instead of keeping whatever band you were looking at in the main content area, you’ll see some quick thumbnail summaries of all the bands in the sidebar. Maybe you’ll see an intriguing album cover and browse around a bit more.

Let me know what you think of the new look!

After several months of design, coding, and content-entering, it’s time to open the gates and start promoting the site! Word slowly started getting out in the midst of all the design, but I feel like the original design of the site is now complete and there’s enough content to be useful for first-time visitors. Thanks for all the support so far, now please tell your friends all about Darktronica.com!

That certainly doesn’t mean I’ll be resting on my laurels, though. Over the next few weeks be on the lookout for a lot more bands to finally get described and reviewed, as well as many new bands still to be added. Once the band pages are more fleshed out, I’ll start reviewing more of my top ten album selections.

Phase two of the site design will include having search functionality, providing convenient links to Amazon and iTunes so you can easily check out music you find on Darktronica, better cross-linking between bands to identify who’s remixed who and such, and designing a voting system for all of you to cast votes for your own top ten lists! Please look forward to it!

OK, so there’s only one actual review so far, but at least the page design is finished. Take a look, and go buy a copy of Boole’s Pheromones, the first reviewed album.

Dr. Linkenstein has been hard at work, please enjoy the delicious hyperlinked flavors now available here!

The site has about 200 bands and 1,250 albums entered so far, with a lot more to come soon! As you can see if you’ve stumbled upon this page, the news section is now functional and skinned with the rest of the site. Most years have a top 10 now, and the genre pages are working even though I haven’t written up descriptions for them yet.

Next up is getting the database set up to do album reviews; once that’s done, I’ll start reviewing some of my top 10 choices. Also need to work on building the Links page. Further down the road, I’m going to add in some search functionality, so you can find more easily find more EBM bands from Germany.

Then comes the monumental task of writing reviews of all the bands that are still listed as “under development.” As you can see, I’ve got a lot of writing to do.

Here’s a selection of the bands next on my list for inclusion on the site. Please leave a comment if you’d like to suggest others!

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