Slaying Steel: Metal :: Alternative :: Rock

[Zetan]

Site Name: Slaying Steel Site URL: http://www.slayingsteel.com Site Owner: Zetan Site Designer: Zetan Theme Designer: DzinerStudio DSv1 / Slight customisation by Zetan Site Genre: Metal :: Alternative :: Rock. Music discussions, news, reviews and events.

In October 2008, we decided to change the domain name of our site. This is due to the change in focus from a purely broadcasting radio stream, to a community driven site where people who have a passion for Metal, Alternative and Rock music can have a place to discuss this vast and very diverse genre. You can read a little about our brief history on the following page.

The audio stream will continue to feature a rich and diverse selection of great music, from classic rock through to the extremities of Death Metal.. Fear not, we have quite a collection at our disposal, which is why we established our site in the first place.

After many weeks of painful consideration of many, many different ideas for a new domain name we finally arrived at Slaying Steel. We came up with ideas from, Lost Souls Domain, which is the title of a track from the legendary British Death Metal band, Bolt Thrower. This track can be found on their 1989 album, Realms of Chaos. We also checked the availability of that too, realmsofchaos. com looks to be a family site displaying pictures of their grubby kids. Bah.. If only they knew what the name means to the Metal community.

We spent hours running through track listings, mulling over pints of beer in the pub.. general names: Vendetta, Intrepid Metal.. you name it.. we thought of it.. Each one registered already, check out this one: beyond11.com, yep.. it’s a holding page to make a fast buck, there are many domain names registered purely to sell for profit later. We wanted to be original, we wanted to be unique, we needed an easy to remember name.. but we also had the idea of saluting a great band.

Krisiun’s - Slaying Steel, is the first track from the Brazilian destroyers 2008 release, Southern Storm. We felt that Krisiun surpassed all the criterior for us and our domain name. Southern Storm see the band of 3 brothers at the top of their form, sonically laying to waste all in their way.



Of course, as with many other forum based websites, discussions of other topics take place in designated boards. These boards are available to registered members only. Discussions in these areas are of a more private nature which casual browsers don’t get to see the topics that our members can freely discuss.




The above description is a copy/paste from page 1 of our About Us page. There are 2 pages, the second page is about the history of LAB Radio.

There were so many changes in the original topic for our old domain name, LAB Radio, that I felt a new topic would be better to showcase our site with. We tied 1st place with Dragox.org in the Site Of The Month competition, March 2007 held by TinyPortal.net before the competition was shelved, this was also before I became a Support Team member here.


The orginal LAB Radio topic can be found HERE
The Site of The Month thread is HERE
More about my site can be found here: http://www.slayingsteel.com/index.php?page=about




[UPDATE 7th November 2009]

I've given the home page a little make over.

• Streamlined the homepage
  
• New custom player skin designed by me. Need to update the Popup player and find a home for the popup button.
  
• Moved side blocks to the forum
  
  
  
• Need to work on the bottom half of the page, maybe have the news side by side instead of vertically.
  
  
  
  [UPDATE 9th June 2009]
  
  
  As I can no longer run a dedicated audio stream, I have recently invested in new audio / video player for the home page, including a popup player enabling guests and members to continue browsing the site without interruption to the player.
  
  Currently we don’t have many tracks loaded into the player, but over the coming weeks / months, I will be adding many more.
  
  I will also be featuring “unsigned” or bands that are not well known in a new playlist.
  We are limited by server space at this time, but I’m planning to upgrade the hosting plan to accommodate more tracks, since I’m no longer paying for a stream host.
  
  I realise that it’s a niche genre of music that’s not to most peoples taste. But it’s a nice site that is a labour of love.

[IchBin]

Site looks good ZTN. Nice theme. Browsing through it a bit, I think my only complain would be that the frontpage looks a little bland. You need something there to spice things up a bit. Color, graphics I don't know... But I found it hard to focus on anything. Just my $.02. Other than that, I liked the layout. Looks like you have the member group color mod installed or something? Highlighting those names in the forums made it looks pretty good.

4 out of 5 stars from me.

[G6Cad]

I agree, something is missing, a lot of text only get a bit slow some how, but if i know you correctly, i think you will get the bits put to gether to an overall supergreat site with great music and fun people to chat with  :up:

[Zetan]

Just lazyness.. I will make a point again of adding images to each news item as it does break the page up.
I'm aiming for a more streamlined look.. Not too much going on, easier navigation as opposed to main menu, a block menu for different areas, then the Shop, Gallery, News Myspace links.. Then there is a seperate DJ menu available to only that group.. I'm not surprised people were saying te site was hard to navigate.. Easy for me.. I made it that way.

Also over time, I've removed all the gimmicks, clock, counters.. arcade scores.. etc. TP is great, it can also encourage people to clutter the site with junk.. Page filler.

I plan to have a tiny Online/Offline status indicator next to the radio menu.

[Zetan]

Updated with a new theme. See first post.

We also now have a dedicated Featured video's board. Turn the volume down if you want to take a look, be aware, it is heavy metal.. very heavy in places 


Z

[cepsi]

 cool site. Didnt know the led zep tour fell thru

[Zetan]

cool site. Didnt know the led zep tour fell thru

It's not just the tour that fell through.. from the article, it seems the whole reunion is over.

[Zetan]

[UPDATE 9th June 2009]

See first post.

[Inny]

Quite a good site Zetan, pity that im not a Rock/Alternative fan boy, but i will send you some of my site members over

[Zetan]

Quite a good site Zetan, pity that im not a Rock/Alternative fan boy, but i will send you some of my site members over

Thanks for the comments I do like other genres of music too, but since the age of 14 - 15 my passion for metal, rock and alternative has just grown. Any site is only as good as it's contributing members.

[Crip]

Nice site ZTN!

[Ken.]

Nice updates Zetan. :up:
I liked the 'old' look and find this new one just as appealing.

[Zetan]

Thanks guys Ken has been a regular visitor to the site for a while now.

I've been busy working on skins for the A / V player, currently set up for audio only. I could have just used a player from last FM or something, but I feel it's too impersonal for a music orientated site.

[ZarPrime]

Z,

Your site looks fantastic.  If it's possible, it looks even better than it did before.  I've always thought your sites was one of the best out there. :up: :up:

ZarPrime

[Zetan]

[UPDATE 7th November 2009]

See first post dated as above .

[Crip]

Zetan , your main-menu has went ...haywire bro?

[Zetan]

Doesn't look like it loaded fully. I take it you're using Safari, or FF?

[Crip]

FF3 ---

Safari --

[Freddy]

Cracking site

[Zetan]

Zetan , your main-menu has went ...haywire bro?

thanks Jeff!! Took a little while to find:

Code Select Expand


#wrapper {
margin:0 auto;
min-width:750px;
max-width:1140px;
padding:0;
width:1140[x;
}


width:1140[x;

Should be: width:1140px;

That's what happens when you work in low light

[Crip]

Well it's fixed now bro , really slick work on that !!
..... looks much better now, than it's ( out-of-box-look ) -^{≥} -

[Zetan]

I still have some work to do. I'll update this when I'm done