Invisible Movement version 7…is alive!

Happy new year! Happy new Invisible Movement!

I apologise to everyone for the enormous break this website needed to morph into what you’re looking at now. This is Invisible Movement version 7, codename imseven; took about 2 months to relocate and redirect data so no page gets lost, create the new design, test it with everyone from casual surfers to web design professionals, program everything necessary for displaying discography items and completely rewrite copy in some of the sections. And there’s still a lot to be done.

Why it took so long?

Imagine a room where some things have not been touched from 3 up to 7 years. That’s a long time, isn’t it? To illustrate it even better, imagine you were cleaning your room every day while in school and then you started working, moved someplace else and left your belongings behind…any similar scenario would do. Fast forward to the moment you come back and think the mess will take just a day to clean. Nah, it won’t. For some things, even if you were really careful about where you were putting them

That’s how it was like with I-M. Despite sketches for a better organised version and a new layout existing one month after the most recent one went up in September 2008, life happened.

Why was this done, anyway?

The previous theme was a year or two beyond its time even when it was created, it lacked a lot of fine tuning; it wasn’t as editable as it was meant to be and the user experience was horrible. What does that mean? A simple example: the search box wasn’t as prominent as it should be and people were sending a lot of emails about things that actually were on the site. That means both they and I were wasting time trying to find out what they needed. Another bad solution was password-protecting blank pages instead of writing “coming soon”. Let’s not bother with all the examples of things that needed change.

The Visual Concept & Presentation

The goal was to keep the artistic vibe, yet have clearer structure, better navigation, faster loading times and, of course, quality content that can be extended whenever necessary. The idea behind this design was to embrace all the styles John’s been typically showing through his music; but that was a bit impossible, due to how versatile those styles are. The choice had to be narrowed down to the most prominent ones.

The result? A 90s-meets-60s alternativehippiepsychedeliafunk!

The navigation might not be as pretty as it used to be, but it’s been simplified and it’s extensible – if there’s need for anything new, it will easily be added, in the right place.

The search button is in a place where you can spot it easily, it precisely tells you what to do, what not to do and if you get confused, it even provides an example search string for you.

News are presented in two colums, with an image and the first couple of sentences. Just like it was the case many times before – to read an entire news item, you have to click on the item title. As it has always been the case, you can browse news from the front page to the last page back in 2004, by month, year, category or keyword.

Five most recent releases John was featured on, whether they were albums or interviews/performances on DVDs and in theatre-only films, have been listed on the front page, with a small description. This idea came to be as many people were absolutely convinced that The Empyrean was his only work after leaving the Red Hot Chili Peppers. This way, the last five things maestro appeared on will be the first thing you see when you visit the site; you can read a quick description, see the image and buy it if you like; and for more information, you can click on the release and get down to details. Music is what matters most!

The newsletter and RSS subscription options, three most recent tweets and retweets from I-M Twitter and the most recent poll are featured on the front page sidebar, too. On the pages’ and separate news items’ sidebars, the recent releases are replaced by recent news. In the footer, there’s short section of site information, the Facebook Like box, the four most recent galleries, links to friends of I-M and anything official related to John and musicians he’s been majorly involved in past and present.

The Sections

INFO– New name for the stupidly-titled “Of The Man” section. At this point in time, it only contains a timeline, biography, short 411 file and a page on tattoos. More to be added back soon. Oh, and you won’t be able to see it for the next couple of days, until I make it prettier.

DISCOGRAPHY – Completely re-vamped. You will see the rumour mill, see what was never released, disguinish official releases from unofficial ones and list everything by people involved, type of release and, of course, the month/year it was released. And when will you see it? Come next week. If you ask about the tabs & co, they’ll be implemented there, most likely.

GIGOGRAPHY – Still under re-vamp, similar to the one described above. If we waited on it, the site would’ve remained closed until mid-March and that’s not such a good idea. However, two minor pages are already up: a list of cover songs and solo songs played live.

PRESS – Hasn’t changed, other than its name. It used to be called Articles.

GALLERY – Hasn’t changed. But hey, it works and a lot of updates have been scheduled.

AUDIO – Split from “Downloads”. The covers and solo songs from RHCP shows are temporarily down, in order not to confuse anyone. The rest is being populated with 320 Kbps and FLAC files, whenever available.

VIDEO – A redirect to the video archive, featuring its 2009 design and, at this moment, no new videos. But I’m currently deciding what to do with it and how to present it to you.

LINKS – This lacked prominence in the previous version, therefore it’s now in the main menu, with links that were previously there, in random order. The links are being re-checked.

STORE – To save everyone’s time, I put all the CDs, DVDs and the like on a bunch of lists and linked it for you.

SITE – Completely re-written. Features a guide on how to format the things you’re contributing to the site, a proper contact form, a better information page and guidelines on what can be published here and what cannot.

MORE – Links to the site’s outlets aka social networking profiles aka new media channels (if you get the last thing, you’ve been coming here for at least 3 years!). This will probably be placed somewhere else in the next couple of days.

What Else Is There To Know?

To view this website properly, I recommend screen at least 1280 pixels wide, though things should work at 1024 pixels as well.

To download audio files, until the replacement plugin starts working on this server, you need to use browser other than Mozilla Firefox or, simply, rename your files when downloading them.

At this point, the design/layout is not responsive. It won’t shrink on those ity-bity smartphone screens.

The design has not been tested on ancient browsers such as Internet Explorer 6.

The news from the two months the site was down have been actually published. You can go and catch up!

Thank You!

Special thanks goes to the super-talented girls who drew the images you see on top: Clémence Fromager and Ana Mainero. Work by another talented artist, Alba Miocev, will be featured throughout the site once the pages it was meant for are finished.

Another special thanks goes to my dear friend Maja Miljković who helped me by alpha-testing the whole thing and and to the numerous beta-testers.

Many thanks to Travis Lopes who helped me iron out problems with Twitter updates, as well as many other things in the past – your help is appreciated.

Last, but not the least: thank you, all of you. Seriously. Patience is a virtue and you’ve been patient!