[Kode]

Content
The new fanart.tv site is currently under heavy development, we are hoping at launch to have a bunch of new content we can start drip feeding out over the launch month, Kodi is one of our biggest users (around 60 million hits to the API a month), so I thought I'd post on here to see if any of the Kodi community would be interested in contributing content to the site.

It could be movie reviews, tv show reviews, music artist featurettes, but in particular we would like some content promoting Kodi, so articles about Kodi, news about Kodi, tutorials on setting up Kodi, Guides on setting up Kodi on a Raspberry pi, basically anything movie / tv / music / tech related that our users would find interesting.

By launch we would like to have 40 - 60 articles ready to go so we can put out 1-2 articles a day and give us some breathing room to get new content.

Translations
Another area we are looking for help is with translations, the new site will be multi-lingual from the get go, we are pretty well covererd for spanish (have had 3 people request to help with the spanish translations), but anything else we need help with.

Developers
We are also looking for developers interested in helping out with the site, if you would like to help us bring this project to life (there is still a lot to do), then get in touch with us!

The new site is being built with the following technologies - Laravel 5.2, Postgre 9.5 (though this isn't set in concrete at the moment), jQuery and SASS, so if you have have any experience with these, or think you can bring something else to the table then we should definitely talk!

In addition, if you have experience maintaining networks, linux, dedicated servers, virtual servers, load balancing, SQL, backups, amazon s3, elasticsearch or vanilla forums we would love to hear from you as well.

Get in touch
The easiest way to have a conversation about all this is if you pop on to our IRC channel #fanart.tv on freenode, but you can also message me on here and I can give you gtalk/hangouts/email info.

[Lunatixz]

Awesome news... Thanks for keeping the site updated

[BobCratchett]

I'll be entirely honest, as far as a man enjoying a drink or 6 can - with a site (as far as current public perception is concerned) that is dedicated to fanart, I don't see the need (from an end-users perspective) to extend your content beyond that. Having said that, if doing so is what you need to do to survive, then more power to you. My own knowledge of Kodi is limited and as such, so is my ability to contribute to any attempt to keep any supported use of Kodi alive - however, if I can help in any way to link menu items (particularly those created by the Skin Shortcuts script) and available fanart, please contact me (with specific information on the guide you'd like me to provide) andd I'll be exceptionally happy to put together info or a guide based on my limited experience.

Otherwise I consider fanart.tv to be an essential Kodi resource and, though I may not directly approve of the direction you're taking it, I do approve of the need to monetise it and - if I am able to assist in any way, please do contact me so we can talk. But, be aware, the current majority of Kodi users don't consider it as a source of articles and how-to's, and it may not be as easy as you imagine to convert the perception of the site to such.

[Kode]

Thanks for your comments BobCratchett.

It's not about monetising anything, I am trying to give members more reasons to engage with the site, the more engaged they are with the site they more likely they are to help out, whether that is with creating images, moderating, creating tutorials, translations, etc.

The site currently gets around 300,000 visitors a month for over a million page views and has 30,000 registered members (how engaged those members are with the site i.e. not very, is another matter), the point is a lot of those people might not actually be Kodi users at all, they might only know of Kodi as "one of those pirate boxes you can get on ebay", I was hoping to allow another avenue where Kodi can try altering that perspective as well as provide interesting content for the members who *are* engaging with the site.

[Kode]

Having said that maybe we should concentrate on stuff that is more directly related to the site rather than general articles, so:

* Showcasing Kodi themes that use fanart.tv images
* Showcasing apps that utilise the API
* Photoshop tutorials
* Gimp tutorials
* etc.

[zag]

Few requests from my end from a regular user and uploader:

- Improvement to global search (not having to click the category to see the results)
- Latest artwork more prominent (at the moment I regularly click the music section, then scroll down a long way, then click the banners section to see the latest)
- Site Activity feed would be nice on front page or something
- User charts more prominent (a good feature to engage regular uploaders)
- Integrated theme for forums
- Some kind of simple VIP api access page, current vip membership seems a bit complicated to me and spread out over site. See Trakt tv for good example of it.
- Guides on a single page, embed youtube maybe?
- API on a single page with examples (had to go searching for members api key on old site)
- Uploader website widgets (showing last upload, good for motivation)

Just some advice, I've always found MySQL easier to tweak for performance than PostgreSQL. MySQL has some cool new JSON field data features in 5.7 that could be really useful. Your on a good track with the other technologies although I've seen some random problems with xml using laravel.

[lucy2468]

wow

[Kode]

Thanks for your comments zag

Postgre JSON support is currently more mature and from what I understand the indexing on it is better, having said that I am trying to keep it as abstracted as possible so we can switch between.

I'll try addressing all of your points.

- Global search will get some work, I'm going to play with using elasticsearch, but if you have some specific thoughts on how it could be improved I'm open to suggestions.
- Latest artwork being more prominent is something I want to do, though I haven't figured out exactly what I'm going to do yet
- I've already started this, guests will see some intro text and get the latest 5 activity items, logged in users will get the full activity feed on the home page
- There will a dedicated Contributor centre on the new site
- Looking to switch to vanilla forums and I would like to theme it but we'll see how long it takes.
- Not 100% sure what this means, as the VIP link is in the header on the current site like on trakt.tv, but for sure the new site will hopefully be better
- A single page like: https://fanart.tv/tutorials/ ?
- I'll try to signpost API stuff better
- Not a bad idea, not sure if anyone would use it though?

Thanks for the comments though, if you have any more or would like to see a sneak preview of what I am doing with the new site feel free to hit me up on the irc channel #fanart.tv on freenode

[zag]

Regarding the VIP page on trakt here: https://trakt.tv/vip

I just liked how it was set out with a clear small cost and extra features listed on the same page.

I think it encourages users to donate a little each year, while giving them premium features that make it feel worth it.

[zag]

I just added this to TADB and thought it might be a nice feature request for fanart.tv too.

- "Add to collection" button (so that a user can add a movie, tvshow, artist to their personal "collection")

Then you could have a page which shows which artwork is missing for a users personal collection