EricMillerDesign

Songwriter101 Website Redesign

Songwriter101 is an online community of over 40,000 songwriters and musicians. The site focuses on the business and technical sides of the music industry and songwriting, with articles on topics such as copyright and recording software. A great deal of the traffic is within the forums, where songwriters collaborate, share lyrics and discuss music. We were first involved in launching the site in 2003, and so we were very excited to work with BMI (who powers the site) on the redesign.

Content & Goals

With seven years of statistics and feedback to incorporate into the redesign, there was plenty to work with to determine the changes to the site. The client asked us to focus on the community and most-used content: the articles, frequently asked questions and lingo (which offers definitions of music industry terms). The site was moved from pMachine to ExpressionEngine, opening up a lot of possibilities for new features in the forums. We also wanted to simplify the join and login processes, making it easier for people to join in on the discussion through forum threads and comments.

Early Concepts

The initial concepts for the redesign focused on music imagery, incorporating a variety of music-related graphics into many of the site elements.

After some discussion, it was determined that we didn’t need to go too far with the music theme, and we took a step back to simplify the design while maintaining some of that look.

Final Design

For the header, the client wanted to keep the logo and maintain the physical aspect of the site. We moved away from the 3-D metal look in favor of subtle textures, and used a backstage pass for the logo along with some items you might find on a songwriter’s desk: sheet music, concert tickets, a guitar pick and an audio plug. Dropdown boxes allow a user to search, join or login without visiting a separate page.

A complete redesign of the forums within ExpressionEngine (the site’s content management system) can be a major undertaking, with a stand-alone set of templates and tags. We redesigned all of the forum pages, creating a new, simple interface. The redesign also allowed us to expand on the features available to the community, which now include full profiles, buddy lists and private messaging.

In the approved site design, we kept the music elements in the header and went to a single, clean content area. The articles and community are front-and-center, with a list of tags to see articles by category and the most recent forum posts and comments in the right column.

View more screenshots in the portfolio or visit Songwriter101.