Sound Of Faz Radio is going all in with a 24/7 365 days a year internet radio station. Building it all myself, this is the blog following my journey including all highs and lows of this mammoth project!
I’ve looked back at the app with fresh eyes and made it more “app like’ by adding a fixed horizontal navbar at the bottom. Looks good now!
Need to get some more mixes uploaded and into rotation but that shouldn’t stop me going live but that said, there’s no point rushing things.
I’m expecting to go live early to mid April 🙂
The schedule is now done. A full calendar of what genre is on and at what time which includes non-stop dance music throughout the night on a Saturday for your warm up ‘prinks’ whilst you are getting ready to go out through to your after party when you stumble home!
To my reckoning we are done so we are now preparing the admin side of things and working out the best date for the soft launch. The next blog post from us will be confirmation that we are live!
Not bad progress for just over 2 weeks!
Stay tuned…
A few more things ticked off the list.
Registration
To get involved in the chat when a DJ is live, users will need to create an account and log into the site. All of this process is complete and emails have been coded (welcome, password reset etc.)
Conditional logic for player page
Once a DJ is live, the main player page will automatically show a ‘we’re live’ link which links through to the player/chat room.
Mobile App
A full mobile app is in the making but for now, we have a PWA (progressive web app) so once you go to the player page on mobile you will be prompted to ‘Add to Home Screen’, this will install the Sound Of Faz Radio app on your phone. To all intents and purposes it is a full mobile app (but in reality, its just the site wrapped in a mobile app) This means going forward you simply hit the SOF icon on your phone and the player will open (just like any other app) Currently working and tested on Android, for iPhone users PWA is not fully supported by Apple as of yet so you will need to manually ‘Add to home screen’, this still needs to be tested on iPhone (all in good time)
According to my project list, all that is left is to create a schedule page on the site which highlights what is on and when. We don’t have a roster of live DJ’s (at least not for now) so it will be more a category of music genres so you know when to tune in.
Stay tuned…
When a DJ is live (when I say ‘a DJ’, I’m just referring to me for the time being!) I opted to retain the standard layout of the player and a chat room that everyone is used to. This page is now done and looking good on mobile too.
Added a horizontal scrollbar to the chat to avoid a never ending page when there’s lots of comments. As it is, you need to register to chat. I’m going with this option as it’s the only way to ensure any comments have a name next to them plus it allows me to monitor how many are using this page.
Its a bit of a shame Live365 doesn’t offer a ‘minimal’ widget so it is just a play button and a very narrow player cos if it did, this page would be even more awesome but we need to work with what we have.
We’re pretty much approaching the finish line now. I need to plan the schedule for the automation (what music is playing and when) but that will be the very last thing I do. Next step is to start uploading mixes and add markers in for the individual track metadata. This is going to take a while, I’ll probably get a good chunk uploaded to start with, go live, and continue adding more and more. It’ll be a semi-regular ongoing process adding new music anyway but all of that is much easier to maintain.
I see the end on the horizon!
Stay tuned…
