Metalfans.co.uk

Metalfans.co.uk is a new site part of the Maidenfans.com network and is the next major project for RW::Scripts. Metalfans is going to replace Metal For Life which was originally part of the Maidenfans network but has now ceased to be.

When complete, the Maidenfans network will become the Metalfans network and Maidenfans will become a child of Metalfans.co.uk. Still with me? Good :)
So this is how it's going to work. We intend to build a heavy metal website based on all thats great about Maidenfans:

• The community of fans
• The regular up to the minute news
• Tour dates, interviews, articles and more...

What we're then going to do is improve all that stuff and add a shed load more stuff! (Vague I know)

Metalfans won't be your average metal news site like Blabbermouth or Metal Hammer. This is going to be YOUR metal site. We're not calling it metalfans because it sounds cool - it really will be all about the metal fans. How we're going to do that we're not prepared to say just yet incase anyone else does it before we finish it! But let me just say that the metal community hasn't ever had anything like this before and I hope that it will bring metal fans around the world together and provide something no other website has done before.

At present we've been working on converting Maidenfans database and backend software into something that both websites can share, with Maidenfans news appearing on Metalfans and Metalfans news appearing on Maidenfans (whenever something to do with Iron Maiden is mentioned obviously).

The first step has been updating the news script. This has proved to be quite a challenge as we've decided to embrace the wonders of AJAX. This basically means we can refresh bits of the page without refreshing the whole page. This has been used to provide a search box where you can enter the name of a band and it will provide a drop down of bands matching what you are typing - kind of an auto-suggest for metal bands :)

Buoyed by my success at this I've decided to use AJAX in other parts of the site too. It's coming along very nicely and allows us to offer the fans much more flexibility on what they see. Metalfans is your site so you should have it show the things YOU are interested in and thats just what we plan to do.

We'll post more in this blog as development continues but please feel free to comment on this below.