Notice anything different? Yup, we got a new domain name! Curtosey the beautifully written yet criminally unreleased Down On The Farm. And yes, I know it’s twatted up the non-news pages, but unless one of you knows how to define a php define(”VARIABLE” /location) type thing globally from a single file, then it may be that way for a couple more days… Anyway, as the news is working again, here’s some more interesting stuff Davey just let me in on…

Davey MacManus will be a guest speaker at the Building A Business On ‘Free’ seminar on November 5th. Also attending will be record execs, music website owners, game designers and copyright meanies to talk about weather it’s “viable or indeed advisable to give music away and if so, how can it be done in a way that doesn’t compromise artists’ income, integrity or longevity?” Best of all, it’s free to attend; just check the website for details on how to register first, then go along and grill Davey on why there’s so many great songs they still haven’t given away free.

If you spot any errors or suchlike in the website, esp. the blog, then please leave a comment (hopefully they work again) and lemme know. Moving hosting provides is sooo much fun . But hopefully ’tis finished now, so on with the news…
Update: Hit more for a current buglist, they’ll be fixed asap.

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Please excuse the look and on rare ocasions functionality of the site over the next month. I’m updating the graphics as you may have noticed and trying to reposition everything correctly. Then I’ll be changing the menu bar from a frame layout to single page layout, and finally moving the site’s hosting provider. So err… if anything breaks, I’m probably fixing it while you browse, but if anything is majorly messed up for more than a couple days then do let me know at the usual address.
Update: Yes, this means ignore the temporary dual menu bar going on at the moment

Here’s a couple of site plugs for you. First is Jonte’s Web Garage, a web design and hosting site by the same guy who made The Crimea’s official website so you know the man’s got good taste.

And the other one is Inky Design, a graphic design company that aren’t so Crimea related but it’s run by some friends and they need a bit of promotion so… If you need a logo or other design work by experienced artists and also the nicest people I know then check em out. If they’re good enough for Transport for London they’re good enough for you Between them and the above you could get your own online presence in no time. Now if only I could stop this site looking such a mess…

Normally don’t mention Crox stuff here but as you’re unlikely to notice if I dont, and as it has a small effect on this site…

The Crocketts Unofficial Website at inaudible.co.uk/crocketts has just had it’s news page updated with a kinda merged version of the blog on this here Crimea site. It’s been adapted for the Crox site so you can clearly see the difference, though any news posts there will still appear on the archives page of this site so if you spot any weird posts that aren’t on the this front page and have a totally different look, then that’s why.

Other than that, you shouldn’t notice any difference here at all, though obviously if you do then lemme know. Anyway, head over to inaudible.co.uk/crocketts for more info, and if you’re wondering “who the hell?!?!”, The Crocketts are just Crimea members Davey & Owen’s old band.

Time for some long overdue thankyous from me to all those helping to make this site as great as it is…

First up, thanks to Lee at Velocity PR for providing content over the SOTWH release. If you want some decent PR yourself, they’re your guys .
Paul Duffy from the official site has also provided a few things and is keeping the street team in order.
Cheers to Inaudible authors Denyer and Iain for helping me find all those album release articles on the web.
Obvious thanks to Owen & the rest of the band for doing what they do best and giving me something to do with my life.
And finally, thanks to everyone reading this site, especially those of you who’ve sent in news / photos / various other random stuff or just left a comment or two.

Slacking? Me? As if, I still ain’t left my chair. Annnd Davey’s just lovingly sent me about 300 more links. Oh well, they can wait; I’ve been busy updating this site as well as finding out what else is new on other Crimea sites. Here be the low-down:

Someone was looking for this earlier, and as the release caught us all on the hop I hadn’t got one ready, but it’s now finished and here, in all it’s glory, is the wholey unofficial Secrets Of The Witching Hour lyrics page. If you can fill in any of the (albeit very few) gaps, please comment below.

Another returnee to this site is the gig listings page, though it’s missing the kinda excruciating detail my obsessed self would have added in times gone by. But it’ll do you for the next couple of months anyhow.

More updates come in the form of downloads; I’ve added both of Crimea manager Steve Taverner’s radio interviews to the downloads page. And I do appologise for the lack of any other working links there, lord knows how long they’ve been like that but I promise they’ll be fixed very soon.

Not my site but the official one this time. TheCrimea.net’s photoblog was updated sometime last year with summer tour photos. Fun with glasses and bananas abound.

Also trying to trick me in to complacency is the Davey’s MySpace blog which, although not looking like it on the main page, has been updated numerous times in the last few months. I’d try and be funny about it but the Davey’s tales of near self-halm and depression are about as fun a read as Kurt Kobain’s diary. Speaking of which, I’m gonna be dead myself if I don’t get something to eat soon…

Likey? Dare I say it, that dark green border does look a bit weird with the curved corners of the header one down…, and the sidebar deffinately feels all kinda wrong on the right hand side (what are we, american?) but it shouldn’t be too hard to fix.

If you didn’t check out the test blog earlier, you can find all the posts from there further down this page. Obviously the past 5 1/2 years worth of Inaudible.co.uk posts are also there. Don’t think I’m done yet, though, there’s still plenty of improvements to add. And keep your eye on those sidebar feeds for more photos / vids. But go ahead and click em already.

If you find anything out of place / messed up, feel free to email me at the usual address (christopher@inaudible.co.uk). Or just leave a comment, cos they’re finally back!

PS. Guest authors you should be able to login too. If you don’t see the login link on the right, go to inaudible.co.uk/blog/wp-admin. And I say this knowing full well you’ve all bloody forgotten your login details / that you were ever allowed to add posts in the first place.

How’s that sidebar look? I’m just gonna leave it like that for the night. It’s 2am ffs. Maybe I’ll add something later… or just lose it altogether.

I know I said two months, but for once I actually bothered to put some effort in to something. Here’s a sneak peak at the upgraded news page, I’ve still got a few tweaks to do but expect it sometime in the next week or two. And you better love the little auto-updating sidebar image feeds as much as I do. Oops, did I say “image” feeds? Heh…

1, 2, 3, etc… Sorry about this, just deleting various things and wanna make sure I deleted the right stuff. If you’re reading this, I didn’t mess anything up :o)

I’ve just set up an account at wordpress.com to test out their software and see if it’s suitable for replacing the current blogging software on this site (basically what makes the news posts you’re reading now). I’ve added a few entries to see what it’s like, and so far so good. There’s a number of restrictions on the wordpress hosted version that I just can’t live with (no editable CSS / layout styles, and it’s doing something weird to my pics) so it’s deffinately not there to stay. What I probably will be doing in the future is installing the software on this site so I can change get the layout and look inline with the rest of the site, then hopefully transferring all the old posts to it so you don’t lose the past four years (bloody hell…) of Crimea news.

For now though, take a look at the new Crimea blog and see if there’s anything that you like, don’t like, stuff that works, stuff that don’t, and let me know about it (comment’s are back!). The latest entries on the blog are linked to on the right of this current news page (thanks to whoever invented RSS and the guys over at Feed2js.org) but it’ll be mostly off-topic type posts there and proper Crimea news here unless I get real lazy. All being well I expect to replace the software on this site sometime over the next few months. And thanks to Denyer for making me see sense :o)

So they need more posts to test. What the hell is it with all these question marks on the titles?

Edit: Fickr RSS feed of Crimea photos is now up on the right too. Ooo get me, this place is becoming very “Web 2.0″. We just need a CrimeaWiki now and we’re all set for the web’s community age. I’m just thankful I don’t gotta learn D XHT XML anymore.

“Hello World!” etc etc.

Inaudible.co.uk’s blog need replacing. Wordpress is the only thing that appears to come close to Greymatter’s customisation. I’m just hoping it does RSS.

YouTube account’s suspended! Finally, I have some street cred! And clearly not quite as much copyright permission over Crimea and Crocketts vids than one would hope an unofficial come official come unofficial come possibly-soon-to-be-official-again website could have. Ah well, back to the regular downloads it is, until I find another solution. This would never have happened if my Media Player For The Web? aka. “Distributed YouTube” idea had taken off / been invented in the first place. Oh well…

If anyone knows of some decent blog software that can accomplish what’s currently being done here (just the main page (fully customised template and CSS) and archive (don’t really care, just needs custom CSS), the rest of the site is hand-coded html), but has decent comment/spam controls and is reguarly updated, then please leave a note on the message board. I’m thinking of ditching the current software, Greymatter, unless I can find a decent hack for comment spam control (such as a random character generator), and it looks like it’s way past it’s sell by date in terms of software updates. Plus, my hosts seem to hate it :oP

Happy Christmas :o)