Time again to update the AAm home page?

[Ray4AJ]

Someone mentioned to me today that the homepage needs some updating.

Currently:
About Alizée (Ah-lee-zay)

Alizée Jacotey is a French singer from Ajaccio, Corsica. She has sold more than five million records and taken part in performances throughout the world.

She debuted in 2000 with the hit single, Moi... Lolita, produced by French music legends Mylène Farmer and Laurent Boutonnat, with whom she collaborated on two studio albums, a European tour, and a 2004 live recording

After a three year hiatus, Alizée returned to the limelight with a new team of artists for the disc Psychédélices, which she supported with a successful concert series in Mexico. She followed this in 2010 by the 60s-themed concept album, "Une Enfant du Siècle".

June 28th 2012 saw the release of "A cause de l'automne", the first single from Alizée's upcoming fifth studio album.

Several things have happened since then. :)

I'm not creative enough to come up with any suggestions, but maybe if some other members have some ideas perhaps they could be incorporated into the bio.

[Scruffydog777]

Just a very quick thought, something to include the Disney characters she's now a part of, but DALS is still current and should also be included.

[Antares]

I had intended to just update the most recent details, but then I ended up reworking the whole bio while I was at it in order to maintain a cohesive flow.

Alizée Jacotey is a French singer from Ajaccio, Corsica, whose long musical career has been defined by incredible international success.

Debuting in July 2000 with the provocative single, Moi... Lolita, Alizée captured the attention of the world with her sensational voice and captivating dancing. In collaboration with French music legends Mylène Famer and Laurent Boutonnat, Alizée released two albums: Gourmandises, and Mes Courants Électriques, both of which were met with outstanding commercial and critical reception. The success of these albums was followed by her European En Concert Tour, from which a live DVD was produced.

After a three year hiatus and change in creative support team, Alizée’s music entered a new era that would come to be marked by a variety of novel collaborations as well as dramatic shifts in genre. Alizée’s third album, Psychédelices, featured a fusion of psychedelic and electronic pop influences, while the multi-lingual concept album Une Enfant du Siècle made use of abstract lyrics and a dark electronic sound to tell the story of American model Edie Sedgwick. Her fifth release, appropriately titled 5, reached a new height of professional and artistic maturity, and saw the return of complex instrumentals performed by an orchestra. Alizée’s most recent album, Blonde, infused light pop tunes with retro beats, and even paid homage to Mylène Famer in the form of an eponymous track.

Since 2013, Alizée has begun to diversify in her talents, starting with pursuing her long-held interest in dancing by participating as a contestant in the fourth season of Danse Avec Les Stars. Alizée won first place in the competition alongside professional dancer and teammate Grégoire Lyonnet, and took part in the DALS tour the following year. In 2015, Alizée debuted as a voice actress in the animated film Clochette et la Créature Légendaire, lending her voice to the fairy character Nyx.

Of course, feel free to make any suggestions or point out any errors that I was too tired to catch, and use any, all, or none of this text if you like.

[comjoz]

For inspiration take a look at Wikipedia. ;)

[Scruffydog777]

Should Gregoire be included in some way?

[Antares]

Should Gregoire be included in some way?

IMO I think it makes sense to stick to talking about her professional life rather than her personal life. So if Greoire is to be mentioned at all, it should be in the context of DALS.

[Fall]

There was also a discussion, albeit a long time ago now, to change the picture to a BlondeAlizée one, and Pepon had colored up a great black and white screencap of Alizée back then but she's back to brunette now and I'm not sure anymore if we should use it :\

IMO I think it makes sense to stick to talking about her professional life rather than her personal life. So if Greoire is to be mentioned at all, it should be in the context of DALS.
I concur, good edit btw :)

[comjoz]

Here are my recommendations on how to put together a bio on a homepage.
I think the above bio by Antares is fine. It would be a good idea to put a small picture in the text next to the description of Blonde because it was her last album, after all.
My recommendation is to put a thumbnail of this image: https://twitter.com/AlizeeUSA/status/475091799300911104/photo/1

The title of the picture is An Angel's ID photo! ..., and she really looks angelic in that picture, and even a blonde in addition. :p
Of course the picture should be a link so that you can click on it and see it full size.

[Fall]

Here are my recommendations on how to put together a bio on a homepage.
I think the above bio by Antares is fine. It would be a good idea to put a small picture in the text next to the description of Blonde because it was her last album, after all.
My recommendation is to put a thumbnail of this image:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BpfdePNCUAAVFp-.jpg:large

The title of the picture is An Angel's ID photo! ..., and she really looks angelic in that picture, and even a blonde in addition. :p
Of course the picture should be a link so that you can click on it and see it full size.
:phehe:

I'm glad you liked that post!

Well I've got plenty more where that came from, including, as I said above, the picture that our dear friend Pepon colored from the Blonde era. Also from that Cacharel commercial.

I will make a little thumbnail of that and post it, so the big real one is saved for AAm's homepage if we decide to use it :)

[comjoz]

:phehe:

I'm glad you liked that post!

Well I've got plenty more where that came from, including, as I said above, the picture that our dear friend Pepon colored from the Blonde era. Also from that Cacharel commercial.

I will make a little thumbnail of that and post it, so the big real one is saved for AAm's homepage if we decide to use it :)


okay, actually I am really looking forward to see how the homepage will look like at the end ... :)

[Ray4AJ]

I like the bio that Antares wrote and since there have been no other submissions I think it would be a great replacement for the current one on the homepage.

I think that since the blonde phase didn't last long, and isn't really representative of her normal appearance, that the photo we choose should be of her with dark hair. Chances are that if someone stumbles upon her and the forum, they had come searching because they saw a brune Alizée somewhere. Not that this is so important.

I think a montage of photos from several different eras would be nice.

[Scruffydog777]

I like the bio that Antares wrote and since there have been no other submissions I think it would be a great replacement for the current one on the homepage.

I think that since the blonde phase didn't last long, and isn't really representative of her normal appearance, that the photo we choose should be of her with dark hair. Chances are that if someone stumbles upon her and the forum, they had come searching because they saw a brune Alizée somewhere. Not that this is so important.

I think a montage of photos from several different eras would be nice.

I agree with the monatage!

[Fall]

:phehe:
I will make a little thumbnail of that and post it, so the big real one is saved for AAm's homepage if we decide to use it :)

okay, actually I am really looking forward to see how the homepage will look like at the end ... :)

I think a montage of photos from several different eras would be nice.
I agree! Perhaps this one will do for the Blonde era? I'd hate to leave it unused after Pep's re-coloring efforts, and it's just so lovely :wub:
http://i566.photobucket.com/albums/ss107/Fall06/Alizee/th_thumbnail_zpsmd9dq5jc.jpg (http://s566.photobucket.com/user/Fall06/media/Alizee/thumbnail_zpsmd9dq5jc.jpg.html)

[comjoz]

I think we should hurry up a little bit with these ideas and updating the homepage because just see what is now the last entry there:

June 28th 2012 saw the release of "A cause de l'automne", the first single from Alizée's upcoming fifth studio album.

If any newcomer to these forums see this, and especially if he is a newbie in the world of Alizee and still knows nothing about Alizee, he may think that the last thing she's done in her career was A cause de l'automne, ... and that would be ... ... somewhat ... :phehe:

[CleverCowboy]

::bump::

I would like to keep this conversation going and maybe make some decisions as a group, but in the end people will have to put in some work to get the end product finished. I will do what I can.

What was my first impression when I came to this site initially? I didn't know what the disco ball represented and her face shot wasn't representative of what I had been used to. Apologies to who had put that picture up, but I'll just be honest about that. For somebody who might have just seen a handful of her videos and know nothing about her dancing but are looking for a fan site, they might think they landed on the wrong site unless they read the bio.

I like the montage idea. In fact, I think the montage should be very large with pictures from every phase of her career. A visitor might relate to just one or two looks that she had and would recognize her.

The Bio should be scratched. Most people who search for Alizee know who she is. A button or link saying "Learn About Alizee" could take them to her Wiki page.

I would like to see a more structured look to the landing page using web parts, if this is even possible. Can have a section titled Alizee Talk with a list of discussions like we have now. Other sections can have her IG, FaceBook, Twitter feeds, etc. Sign Up and Log In might be better on the landing page.

Madonna.com has a very clean look.

This might be a pipe dream without a major overhaul taking many hours of work and money, but maybe a few of these things can be done without much effort?

[Scruffydog777]

I'll try and express some thoughts on this and other things that have been discussed in the past few days later, if I hopefully have a slow night at work.

Yesterday and today have been way to busy for me.

[CleverCowboy]

To throw out another idea, first off, do we offer members anything other than a forum to talk about Alizee? Since it looks like we don't anymore, this site can be replaced by a vBulletin type forum hosted in the cloud. A skin and theme can be designed to brand the site with Alizee America information. Because of our low traffic (currently), we are talking about $20/mo (or more with add-on features or increased bandwidth).

It would have all the bells and whistles of modern forums and upgrades would be done automatically and be part of the monthly cost. Chat box option would be available and administration tools would be modernized.

The only up front cost I would foresee would be migrating current forum contents, but most of the hosts should be able to do that.

[Rev]

The day you move off the web page is the day I disappear.

[Scruffydog777]

As we discussed a couple of days ago in chat, I've noticed many times when a lot of different conversations go on in almost a daily basis in chat when there's nothing going on in the forum and the problem with that is visitors who aren't registered can't see those conversations in chat..

Now a lot of times these conversations are in no way related to Alizée. That doesn't matter. We have young members who come along who are in school and I think they might be very interested in conversations about school or playstations or about the weather or for visitors who work, conversations about jobs.

I feel we need to make this forum a more interesting place to attract new members. Two members have been carrying the financial load for a long time. Lefty will always be a fan of hers I'm sure, but it seems he has moved on from the forum. Even if he still makes an occasional post, it's not fair to him keep carrying the financial load.

Now I'm not looking for any donations at this point, but I would like to make changes here that would make the 'open' forum a little more interesting to visitors. I'd like to have a chat that is available to all. Of course we still need a private chat for obvious reasons.

Many members aren't in a good position to donate. It is my hope that we can bring in more members. The more people we bring in, the more likely more members will come along who can contribute.

I'd like to see some changes made to the forum. Maybe the only way we can make the changes I feel many of us feel need to be made is to buy the server from Ben. I am willing to do that if Ben is willing to sell it.

One thing I'd like to do on our home page is to have a different picture every week. There are so many beautiful pictures of her from many different years, that it's a shame to have the same one up for months.

I think the bio takes up too much room. I'd like to have something that starts the first few lines of a bio, but then have what a lot of web pages have where it will say "more' at the bottom and clicking on that will take you to a page that gives you a full bio.

I'd like to have other pictures from different parts of her career, such as some of her most memorable performances such as Moi Lolita in Amsterdam, J'en ai marre pour Laurette, ACC. Other pictures of En Concert and the two Stars A Domicile shows, SAGA, DALS, Les Enfoires and there are several other shows she was in, so there would be something by those pictures, probably "more' again where it would take you to a page with a story about that event along with links to Youtube videos about these events.

Again to make these kind of changes, I think we'd have to buy the server. If that happens, Lefty is making his payments to Ben, so I think we'd lose his $25 a month then. Somehow, I think we'll find a way to make that up.

For the short term, I'd like to create a thread in the open forum where people could chat and this thread would have a lot more leeway than threads used to have. In the past, we needed members to stick to the topic. The main reason being if in the future, you wanted to looks something up, if what you're looking up wasn't related to the thread, it would be very difficult to find.

But time are changing. There are times when I want to post something, I'm not sure which thread to put it in and today I think we need to make it easier to post. Plus I've seen some interesting conversations in a thread broken up because they went off topic. Sure I want us to still post in a related thread if possible, but if somebody posts in the 'open chat' thread.....so be it.

So like I said, I'm not looking for donations now. I'm just looking for members to do their share to make this forum a more interesting place for visitors to draw in new members. The more members we have, the more likely we are to get members who are in a good position to donate and the more members we get who are willing to donate, the more we can do with this forum.

[CleverCowboy]

The day you move off the web page is the day I disappear.

Rev, I have no personal agenda associated with my ideas, but rather just throwing things out there based on my extensive experience with software updates that might attract a new audience, promote Alizee better, and ensure this site continues to operate years down the road.

If my ideas promote conversation - great. If my idea(s) get nixed - that's fine too. The last thing I wanted was to sow any kind of discord where a current member leaves or would threaten to leave. I apologize if they brought you to that point.

[Rev]

I am just stating that I do not want to see the web page abandoned. It is a (relatively) physical place, which Alizée fans can easily find. :)

[comjoz]

One thing I'd like to do on our home page is to have a different picture every week. There are so many beautiful pictures of her from many different years, that it's a shame to have the same one up for months.

Ok then, for the first week I recommend this moment captured on the pic: ;)

25.2.2000 grainedestars

https://scontent.fzag1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/fr/cp0/e15/q65/10411736_10155296827475574_7452901695525398600_n.j pg?_nc_cat=0&oh=fce796abcde3e7e2331b23d2a1b56e7b&oe=5BFFE3A4

[CleverCowboy]

I am just stating that I do not want to see the web page abandoned. It is a (relatively) physical place, which Alizée fans can easily find. :)

Understood. The archives on this site are valuable and would never suggest we start over. I should have been more clear in my post.

To All:

It looks like we are all agreeing that the landing page needs an update. I would suggest that we get ourselves positioned to be able to make changes before too much time passes and momentum dies down.

If I am understanding correctly, Ben owns the license to the web software and he is no longer an active member. This site started back in the day when leasing forum templates in the cloud was not an option. Probably a software package was purchased and modified locally on somebody's computer (I assuming Ben) with some HTML editor tool like Adobe Dreamweaver. It was then uploaded to a web server hosted by an ISP. So, there was an initial purchase cost of the software which I would guess would be around $300 since it supported forums.

Being that I have known many people who don't do regular backups of their computer and have lost everything at least once in their life, I am hoping the original source code is still intact.

There are a couple of directions we could go.

We can see if Ben is willing to get involved again and make the changes for us and keep things status quo. If he agrees to do this, I think we should ask if he could zip up the modified source code and give it to Ray or Scruffy that could be kept on their google drive for backup. I have seen too many grown-ups cry when their hard drives decide to quit working one day and they have no backup ;)

The other option is if he moved on or has no time to support this site. We can make an offer for the source code and hope he would sell the license outright. It would be up to one of us to make changes and we can move forward.

I guess there is a third option... that Ben never responds. We can cross that bridge if it is necessary.

[Merci Alizée]

Is there a draft of updates which we want on homepage? I can contact Ben for the update.

[LE_LOUP_DES_STEPPES]

Bring back the Alizée bar and grill :D

[Fall]

Alizée Jacotey is a French singer from Ajaccio, Corsica. She has sold more than five million records and taken part in performances throughout the world.

She debuted in 2000 with the hit single, Moi... Lolita, produced by French music legends Mylène Farmer and Laurent Boutonnat, with whom she collaborated on two studio albums, a European tour, and a 2004 live recording.

After a three year hiatus, Alizée returned to the limelight with a new team of artists for the disc Psychédélices, which she supported with a successful concert series in Mexico. She followed this in 2010 by the 80s-themed concept album, "Une Enfant du Siècle". On release day, a private autograph signing was held for members of this forum.

In 2013, Alizée released her fifth album, 5, inspired by her past experiences and relationships. Later that year, she took part in France’s Dancing With The Stars (Danse Avec Les Stars), winning the competition after a dramatic season, and forming a relationship with partner Gregoire Lyonnet. Blonde followed soon after, returning the singer to her pop beginnings.

My dear, she's really answering my prayers. The dark melancholic 80ies sound and her beautiful deep velvet voice. Just listen to that intro with the 80ies drumming, awesome. The chorus, tends to get slightly repetitive, but I never ever want it to stop :wub:

The description currently says 60s-themed, which I think is incorrect. UEDS may be based on Edie Sedgwick, but the album has a strong 80s influence.

I changed that part and kept most of the original text, while adding a bit on 5, DALS, Gregoire, and Blonde. I also added a little on the private autograph session from 2010, because I felt it would add a bit more weight or relevance to this forum within the fandom to new fans who may not know about it.

What do you all think? If anyone would like to offer an edit or alternative version, please feel free to do so! When we're satisfied, we can then finally update the homepage.



Bring back the Alizée bar and grill :D

Hear hear! :beer:

[CleverCowboy]

What do you all think? If anyone would like to offer an edit or alternative version, please feel free to do so! When we're satisfied, we can then finally update the homepage.

I have been taking some mental notes of some things that members had commented in chat or in a forum post that would improve the web site, plus I have my own ideas. I am just going to list them all out in bullet points so I can just get them all out there in one place. This is a "wish list" only and there are no expectations tied to them.

What makes the suggestion process difficult in this case is we do not know what the limitations are, whether it be a limitation of talent, money, time or the software this site was developed with. In any case, here is the list.

* Allow non-registered users to view chat, but not be able to post until they register. Have it viewable from the landing page. (of course, some recent conversations would have to be scrubbed).

* Adding language packs to the site to attract international members. A few language that come to mind is Spanish, Russian, and French.

* Convert the landing page to HTML5 for a more modern, dynamic experience. Some of our younger members had expressed that a redesign of the site to something more modern would be appropriate.

* Update the forum to a more recent version but still retain all history.

* Change the strategy in which site donations are collected. There should be more transparency of annual operating costs, financial goals should be made viewable to members and progress toward goals should be regularly updated.

* A forum should be created that is private to members only. This thread is a good example of something that should not be visible to non-members.

* How about a forum for other French singers? There might be a thread created for Lorie, once the web crawlers do their business, a Lorie fan might end up on this site after a web search.

* The landing page is probably what most chatter has been about. There is at least one dead link, and the Podcast is not relevant anymore. It can be a work in progress and evolve in steps, but taking that first step has been the hardest.

[Fall]

* Allow non-registered users to view chat, but not be able to post until they register. Have it viewable from the landing page. (of course, some recent conversations would have to be scrubbed).


I think part of the attraction to the chat is the privacy that only other members can see it. It was public for a while when it replaced the "Bar & Grill" chat feature, and it was made private I think at the request of members who had used the Bar & Grill. That chat feature was sort of like an old school chat room that announced your entrance and exit from the room to others there, I suppose it helps to know who you're talking to, and who's "just watching." I'm not against making it public once again, especially if it helps the forum.


* Adding language packs to the site to attract international members. A few language that come to mind is Spanish, Russian, and French.


Can you explain what you mean by language packs? As a native Spanish speaker I would welcome the opportunity to chat and interact with other Spanish speaking Alizée fans, I would imagine with the upcoming shows in Mexico that they will have lots to say.


* Convert the landing page to HTML5 for a more modern, dynamic experience. Some of our younger members had expressed that a redesign of the site to something more modern would be appropriate.

* Update the forum to a more recent version but still retain all history.

Sounds good to me :)


* Change the strategy in which site donations are collected. There should be more transparency of annual operating costs, financial goals should be made viewable to members and progress toward goals should be regularly updated.
I would welcome this as well, but I have no contact with Ben myself, and I've never been a mod on this forum so I don't have any insight to the behind-the-scenes stuff :dontknow:


* A forum should be created that is private to members only. This thread is a good example of something that should not be visible to non-members.


I think this would help if we were to make the chat public like I mentioned.


* How about a forum for other French singers? There might be a thread created for Lorie, once the web crawlers do their business, a Lorie fan might end up on this site after a web search.

There are multiple threads for other artists and genres. I started a Michael Jackson thread (http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5762). Those threads are certainly welcome in the Other Subjects forum, but they never get much attention. Most people end up here for Alizée only.

Mylène
http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7808
http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2587
http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showthread.php?t=289
http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1248

Yelle
http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4407
http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1731

Ewa Farna
http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5098

Sade
http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6369

The metal thread
http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4131

The Hip-Hop Thread
http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5568


* The landing page is probably what most chatter has been about. There is at least one dead link, and the Podcast is not relevant anymore. It can be a work in progress and evolve in steps, but taking that first step has been the hardest.

The dead link I think, is Alizée's official website, but I guess the podcast isn't relevant anymore. It was a significant part of my early fan experience because at the time it was somewhat recent, but those days are now long gone. Maybe we can replace it with the Instagram page, since the Twitter and Facebook are linked as well. Merci Alizée and Ray gave me free reign to update it around January '14 and I posted regularly for about a year, a little over. I may start posting again now that there is more buzz with the shows and the forum changes.

Edit - the AAm Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/alizeeusa/) has 250 posts and 350 followers

[CleverCowboy]

Can you explain what you mean by language packs? As a native Spanish speaker I would welcome the opportunity to chat and interact with other Spanish speaking Alizée fans, I would imagine with the upcoming shows in Mexico that they will have lots to say.

Language packs are forum plug-ins to support whatever languages that you want. You have seen the language pull-down menus on web sites where it converts all the text to the language you select? I believe this is a vBulletin forum site and I checked their web site and vBulletin does support multi-languages, but I am not sure if this version of vBulletin does, since it has to be at least 10 years old.

But you are right about Spanish speaking Alizee fans having a lot to say. We have an active member right now whose first language is Spanish. At least half of the comments left on Alizee's YouTube videos are languages besides English and I am not optimistic that Alizee plans to sing in the US. It would be great to hear from those who went to her Mexico City concert and elsewhere without language being a barrier.

I have more responses but would like to wait until some others chime in.

[Fall]

We've had a few members drop by the forum who aren't usually active, just giving this thread a bump so they can see it.

[Scruffydog777]

Definitely seeing some different members posting here and I'm sure it's because AF is no longer around. I don't see much changing with this forum so maybe it is better that another website is started that has different language forums. This is a forum that we the active participants have little control over. That all may well change soon and be dictated by how well her come back goes.

[Merci Alizée]

I have got access to the homepage.

[Fall]

Ok! Then we can get to work. I posed a possible update to the bio information which is currently way out of date. CC suggested we get rid of the bio entirely. So, we should have a poll of members who would rather keep and update the bio, or get rid of it.

The other matter is updating the image. There was a consensus I believe, that we should have either a GIF or slideshow of images from different eras. This would save us the trouble of having to update a single image every so often. A few images should be enough because I don't think people spend that much time on the homepage anyway; they won't get "old" in a hurry.

Additionally, I requested that we add an Instagram tab to the links at the top of the page. Aaronius originally created an @AlizeeAmerica (https://www.instagram.com/alizeeamerica/) account but forgot the email and password for it, so it's kinda dead. Ray created an account named @AlizeeUSA (https://www.instagram.com/alizeeusa/) which I've been posting on since January 2014, and sharing the posts on AAm's Facebook page and Twitter. I'm having second thoughts about getting rid of the Podcast section. Maybe we could renew it, and post them on Soundcloud or something, that could be a cool project. We could interview different members about their Alizée experience and talk about events past and present. If there's not enough interest, then we can get rid of it but I hope it can be considered in the future should we have more active members.

Some have mentioned that AAm seems to be one of the last Alizée forums still running; I would like to invite members of other international forums to join AAm :) Familiarity with the English language isn't a problem - since few of us speak French, we're used to using Google Translate :D

[Merci Alizée]

Although it's expected that the members would know a bit about Alizee when they visit this site, but still I feel bio isn't long and with those links to buy albums it is basic requirement for homepage. If we don't have bio, then what do we have there?

Homepage banner needs update.

We can add instagram too. I have access to home page now and can make changes there.

Edit:

I have been taking some mental notes of some things that members had commented in chat or in a forum post that would improve the web site, plus I have my own ideas. I am just going to list them all out in bullet points so I can just get them all out there in one place. This is a "wish list" only and there are no expectations tied to them.

What makes the suggestion process difficult in this case is we do not know what the limitations are, whether it be a limitation of talent, money, time or the software this site was developed with. In any case, here is the list.

* Allow non-registered users to view chat, but not be able to post until they register. Have it viewable from the landing page. (of course, some recent conversations would have to be scrubbed).

* Adding language packs to the site to attract international members. A few language that come to mind is Spanish, Russian, and French.

* Convert the landing page to HTML5 for a more modern, dynamic experience. Some of our younger members had expressed that a redesign of the site to something more modern would be appropriate.

* Update the forum to a more recent version but still retain all history.

* Change the strategy in which site donations are collected. There should be more transparency of annual operating costs, financial goals should be made viewable to members and progress toward goals should be regularly updated.

* A forum should be created that is private to members only. This thread is a good example of something that should not be visible to non-members.

* How about a forum for other French singers? There might be a thread created for Lorie, once the web crawlers do their business, a Lorie fan might end up on this site after a web search.

* The landing page is probably what most chatter has been about. There is at least one dead link, and the Podcast is not relevant anymore. It can be a work in progress and evolve in steps, but taking that first step has been the hardest.

Even if you manage to get the site backup, it's unlikely that you can get the AAm domain name anytime soon.


Current chat doesn't support view for guests. Need to replace it with some other chat mod for public view.

Updating the forum software and other bulk changes are dependent on server access which we won't get anytime soon.

[Scruffydog777]

I've been tied in with so much other stuff, I haven't had time to revisit it until now. I think CleverCowboy had some very good suggestions.

One thing wrong with the bio is it's only 3 1/2 paragraphs long and to be quite frank, 1 1/2 of those paragraphs are about failures. I question the statement ' .... a successful concert series in Mexico.' , which makes no mention of the cancelled concerts in Paris, not to mention other locations that were dropped before they would've been cancelled. If I was trying to impress someone with Alizee's performances, I would never show them one from Mexico.

The picture I think we all agree needs to be changed. Though this was a great moment for her, the picture is just a 'cute' picture. That's fine when the forum was in it's heyday with lots of members, but in the past couple of years, we went through some pretty lean days.

So we can't put all our eggs in one basket by using just one picture that may appeal to some, but not to others. There are so many great and so many stunning pictures out there, we need to post several to draw potential new members in. To make them wonder where these other pictures came from and no I'm not talking about the revealing pictures from JPVA, ML or JEAM, but there are many appropriate pictures from those performances.

There are pictures from En Concert, pictures from the early years, so many great pictures from Les Enfoires, DALS, private life, yet we have a picture of her holding a trophy where all they can really read is 'anse stars'. IF they figure it out, this particular picture wont be enough to pike their interest.
I think the information window on the home page needs to be wider so we can include either more info, or more pictures.

[CleverCowboy]

I think the information window on the home page needs to be wider so we can include either more info, or more pictures.

Pictures. Many as possible to span her whole career. Keep words to a minimum on the landing page. Bio should be a link and not take up so much real estate. People will identify her with the photos and know they are at the right place.

[Scruffydog777]

I agree!...Pictures from her whole career, some of which these visitors haven't seen before will make people want to investigate further.

[Rev]

Her eyes in the current picture grab you, so I am really supportive of keeping this picture. However, more pictures can be added - possibly, one flashing after the other. Also, there is a lot of space on the screen that is not currently being used.

Another thought is having a mobile version of the home page as well. :)

[CleverCowboy]

Her eyes in the current picture grab you, so I am really supportive of keeping this picture. However, more pictures can be added - possibly, one flashing after the other. Also, there is a lot of space on the screen that is not currently being used.

DALS is an important part of Alizee's life, so the current picture and maybe a few more of her and Greg dancing should be included.

The rotating picture idea is a good one. There might be room for even two parts of the home page to rotate pictures.

Maybe we should start posting thumbnail images on this thread of pictures that can be reviewed and voted on? Maybe decide on a count of pictures, like 20, 25,...?

We all have our favorite pictures, but I think a couple slots should be reserved for pictures of her from her two most famous videos, JEM and La Isla Bonita. Those seem to be the entry videos for most, and would be instantly identifiable for new fans. For JEM, I prefer a front shot of her with the sailor suit, not one from behind showing the goldfish. I don't think I have to explain why.

[Rev]

But ... I like the red fish! :)

[CleverCowboy]

So do I ;) A red fish shot with her looking back over her shoulder is epic, forever burned in the minds of millions. So is that shot of her performing JPVA where her blue dress rides up on her when she bends over, which is all over the Internet.

The question I am asking is if this site should define itself in a certain way using photos that Alizee might consider embarrassing? Or, maybe they don't bother her. I just don't know. It's just my opinion that our home page at least should portray Alizee in the best light possible. Now that I am writing this, maybe a red fish photo would not be a bad idea because it is iconic. But the upskirt - not.

[Scruffydog777]

We 'try' to make it a place where if Alizee visited it, she would not be embarrassed by photos posted here. A video might be a different story. A picture focuses on one view. A video might have a frame that if saw by itself might be embarrassing, but not when viewed as part of a clip.

[CleverCowboy]

I have a couple of gifs with the fish. I am assuming the home page supports gifs. These are not bad and like the first one better. I would like to see what you all have.

https://imageshack.com/a/img923/3099/9hEweH.gif

https://imageshack.com/a/img922/4319/a4WEvr.gif