Frankly: it was about time. Some parts of the Dubroom website were left untouched for years and had a lay-out which in the meantime you could give the label "ancient". Yes, we are living in an era wherein we can speak about ancient history of the Internet... Enfin, a serious project had to be launched and today (April14, 2014) it's time to announce the completion of it.

Let's take a look at the major changes and improvements.

REMOVAL OF ADVERTIZEMENTS

Visitors of the Dubroom will notice that there are no more advertizements. Except for the Dubroom Message Boards (a complete different story), all pages at dubroom.org should now be without them. More privacy, much faster loading of pages, less irritation because of completely irrelevant and sometimes outright offensive third party messages: the reasons can be considered pretty self-evident.

MORE UNIFORM NAVIGATION

Even though this can and will be improved, it is now much more easy to browse through the different sections and subsites of the Dubroom. Links to the main parts are on the right side, relevant topics and categories on the left side and on top of every page. At the bottom you can find a search box which looks at the Dubroom website, blogs and message boards.

MORE INTEGRATION

Various subsites of the Dubroom (like the CRC and the Babylon Observer) have their own category at the articles and video/site review sections as well as message board(s). There is now much more integration between them all. You can browse research archives, but also video's or articles or reviews. Too technical? Never mind. You should be able to land more easy at the place you want to be. 

DUBROOM DOWNLOADS

Many files have been uploaded straight to the Dubroom server and the Dubroom's account at Kim Dot Com's MEGA.co.nz website. We're talking about all chapters of Radio Dubroom, MP3/WAV albums from the Dubroom Net Label and Creative Commons archive as well as files from Studio Dubroom and books.dubroom.org. No more dead links or difficult procedures.

COMPLETE MAKE-OVER

Some subsites needed much more than "just" a new look. Take video.dubroom.org or links.dubroom.org, our video and website reviews. Or even the podcast reviews, now at mp3.dubroom.org. Too many links to offline stuff, too difficult to navigate, too much to old. Therefore, all video's, websites, podcasts etc were actually checked for availability which -needless to say but saying it anyway- took many hours and even days. All this is done with the result that especially the video and website review sections are completely made over.

REMOVALS

Some subsites have been taken off-line. We're talking about artists.dubroom.org, jahroots.dubroom.org and suredread.dubroom.org. They will be put back online in the near future as they are re-build off-line. There are too many things that needed to change and too little urgency to do it with the highest priority. Music by Sure Dread and/or JAH Roots is still presented, where artists.dubroom.org linked to too many outdate things.

FUTURE FEATURES

Next to artists.dubroom.org, jahroots.dubroom.org and suredread.dubroom.org there are more things yet off-line but scheduled to be added to the Dubroom at a later date (not too late, though). One of these things is a Site Map, from where it should be possible to get to any section rather quick. Another one is a "Forum Watch", which in the end should integrate postings from members of the message boards with pages on dubroom.org.

WHAT REMAINS...

In the end, you should still be able to get everything that was there before. All the music, research items and other stuff that form the bulk of the content of the Dubroom. There's even additional material that has been uploaded in the process. Should a page have changed, a redirect page has been left so off-site links should still lead to the right place. In fact, thousands of redirect pages have been uploaded during the last weeks.

A NEW FOUNDATION

Adding new articles and reviews to the Dubroom before this renovation was like building on sand. The "foundation", if you will had become outdated. The new lay-out is like a new foundation, a solid rock to add more reviews, articles and what have you. Where there are many flaws to this analogy, the idea is the same: it's not smart to build/add things on a weak groundwork. With that weak groundwork removed, building on it has become fruitful again and in fact has already started with two chapters from Radio Dubroom and several reviews. 

JAH Willing, more to come regularly. 

One Love, Give Thanks,
Messian Dread (Dubroom Webmaster)

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