The AfterParty

Now Cluboholic.com users can share their event photos with the world. This feature can be used by anyone whether he’s a clubber carrying a camera, a photographer testing his low-light skills or a promoter who wants to show off his event. You can upload photos from any event in Cyprus that was posted on cluboholic.com’s event list, this applies to recent and old events (if you have some forgotten photos on your hard drive from an event that took place a long time ago you can still upload them for the sake of documenting clubbing history!).

To start an album you will need at least 10 photos. While logged in click on the Create New Album button which can be found at the top right of the Photos section.

The following is a step by step guide on how to create your first album:

• Step 1: Pick the Event you’re uploading photos for at the following screen:

You can use the Previous and Next buttons to move in time through the event list or use Search to quickly find the event you are looking for by typing in a keyword. When you can see the event in the list click on it and it will appear under the Selected Event heading, then click Create. Please note that each user may only create one album per event, so if you happen to find more photos from the same you want to add later, just add them to the album you already created.

• Step 2: Your Albums Page

After the album is created you will be taken to your albums page where you can manage all albums you have created until now and a new empty entry for the one you just created will be there like the screenshot below.

• View - that shows a preview of the album and lets you delete individual photos if necessary.
• Upload Photos - Pops up the upload window where you can select files and upload them.
• Publish -When you are ready this button takes the album online, once published your album will appear automatically in the Photos section of cluboholic.com.
• Delete - Deletes the album and all the associated photos. There’s no way to undo this so make sure you know what you are doing.

After being requested by a user, I’ve added support to the site’s gallery for CoolIris. If you haven’t tried it before it’s a cool little plug in for Firefox and Internet Explorer (will work on Safari too I think) which lets you browse photos from site galleries in a smooth 3D wall. A lot of websites are supported (Facebook, Google Image Search and Flickr are pretty useful) and now cluboholic.com. Get the plugin from http://www.cooliris.com/ and try it out.

In the past couple of weeks i’ve been getting a lot of e-mails through the site’s contact form about Armin Van Buuren’s event at Monte Caputo. I just want to stress out that the events you see on cluboholic.com’s event list are mostly not being organised by us but their organisers posted them therefore any complaints you want to make regarding events please post them in the forum - sending them to me won’t really help much unless its a party we organise; and those are very easy to spot.. (hint: ‘cluboholic.com presents…’).

Here’s some examples of what I received:

Expensive Tickets

We find that the tickets for Van Buuren is exremely high. It is ridiculous to pay 60 euros for a single musician (who the hell is he… Elvis?. Someone is ripping people off. I saw Van Buuren at much better venue in Australia for australian $50 (30 euros). Because of this we are calling all our friends to boycott the show unless the price of tickets drops to half (door price).

and..

Van Buuren event won’t take place at Monte Caputo but at Pavillion in Nicosia (His web site places the event at Pavilion). Is  it because they want the Limassolians to buy the tickets and then ship the to Nicosia?

Must admit the last one made me laugh at how paranoid people can get.

If you really want people to know how you feel about anything clubbing related you should post it in the forum; then both other clubbers and the event organisers will tell you what they think and maybe help you out.

Just added this new feature, that allows you to post comments under each event photo. The same comment system will also be used in other parts of the site in the near future. As always if you find any problems with it please let me know so i can fix it.

It also provides a sneak-peek into the new look of cluboholic.com that’s in the works; we’re finally heading away from the blue shades into a more modern and neutral dark-gray design. Hopefully I’ll be done with it soon. If you’re a web designer and want to help send me a message and i’ll get you in the loop.

Just finished working on Facebook Connect for cluboholic.com. Its a bit overdue, had it in the works for quite some time now but unfortunately it took me a lot longer than I expected. 

For those who haven’t heard what Facebook connect is yet, its basically a way of getting users who are already signed up on Facebook to have access as registered users on third party websites, and in this case on Cluboholic.com. Of course it doesn’t just end there, there’s a lot more to it; for example, as a user you can see which of your facebook friends are cluboholic members and what they are doing on the site, have your avatar change as you change your photo on facebook, post updates from cluboholic.com on you facebook wall etc. There’s endless possibilities but for now only the basic connectivity functionality is there.

You’ll notice in the forum the  buttons. There’s two possibilities, if you are not already registered to cluboholic.com, you have to click on the button, and a facebook-style popup will show up explaining that you have to login to facebook (or just connect if already logged in). Then you’ll be forwarded to a new page where you are given two options, to either become a user of cluboholic.com with your full name as it is on facebook or with a nickname that you can enter. Then you have to enter a password that you will be using with cluboholic.com in case you want to login indenpentandly from facebook (note that even though it can be it doesn’t have to be the same as your facebook password). Thats all, you’re done, click Connect and you’ll be able to use all cluboholic.com’s registered user features as long as you’re logged into facebook.

If you’re already a registered user of cluboholic.com and your email address is the same on both sites then you can link the accounts together and whenever you visit cluboholic.com while logged in on facebook you’ll be automatically logged in here automatically. The benefit of this is not obvious for now but it will be as soon as more facebook related features get implemented. 

The whole system can be considered to be in Beta so if you encounter any problems please let me know!

For anyone who might be interested in the more technical stuff:
Cluboholic.com’s user system is based around its PHPBB3 forum, one of the most popular forum systems available but unfortunately lacks Facebook Connect functionality.  After some googling around I discovered that till now no one managed or tried to get Facebook Connect to work with PHPBB3 and yet while there’s been a lot requests for it. This is what basically caused the delay in implementing Facebook Connect on cluboholic.com. The main issue when I’m working on things like this is to ensure that any changes made to the current system won’t break future upgrades which means most work has to be done externally. The way it is done now, absolutely no changes where made to the PHPBB database, and everything was done with changes to two template files and the addition of one more include on the main page files of PHPBB. Later if i have the time i’ll post here full info of how its done cause i’m sure there’s people out there who’d like to have it too.

Lemos @ Klub D Flyer

It’s been more than three months since it opened but I only managed to pay a visit to Klubd last Saturday. I was one of the regulars back in the days when it used to be spelled with a ‘C’, so to me the most obvious things when going there after so long were the differences. The first thing you notice upon arriving, is the change in the entrance, the long side corridor has been replaced by a more direct entrance which, after entering the club, evidently saves a lot of the wasted space. The big bar has been moved and split into two, and the DJ box was relocated to the far end of the length of the main section of the room. You can’t but notice the LED panel on the roof and behind the DJ which is a nice feature for an otherwise completely black/dark place. What became immediately apparent about it, is that after the first five minutes it loses its novelty factor and you no longer even notice that its there. The sound system was sufficient, by Cyprus standards, nothing extreme but provided an above average club sound, at least to the dance section. As a non-smoker, I felt that they should improve with air-conditioning / ventilation which didn’t seem sufficient.

I was surprised the most by the people; not sure if it’s the same every time since this was a ‘carnival’ themed night and people on such occasions act a bit crazier than usual, but almost all of the 120-140 people who were there were dancing and enjoying themselves. The whole atmosphere had the same feeling of parties that took place 3-4 years ago when people used to go to electronic dance events to have fun and not to pretend they are someone else. I guess that goes with the whole philosophy of the club, there’s nothing pretentious about it, no VIP sections and other similar peculiarities, just a dark room for people to listen to music, have a drink and enjoy themselves. And since I mentioned drinks I have to say that the bar prices are lower than the competition’s; Jack Daniel’s Coke at Klubd is 7 euro while at Versus is 10.
The music played by Lemos is not exactly my style so I don’t think its right for me to make any comments about it, but seeing people enjoying it, I take it, was good.
Overall seems like klubd has acquired a stable crowd, after the first ups and downs with the entrance prices. It seems like a good effort, it definitely has its place in the Nicosia’s clubbing scene, filling a gap that was created when it closed.

A long coming feature is now available; party organizers and promoters may now upload flyers to their events. After your event gets approved and posted to the front page you can upload up to 5 images to accompany it through the Modify Event page (you can read about modifying events here). Images in RGB JPEG format and up to 1MB in size are accepted, anything larger than 900×900 will get scaled down to fit that size while keeping its aspect ratio the same to avoid distorting the image. You can use this feature to upload more than just flyers and posters, possibly other artist artwork or images relevant to the party.

Does a dance club need a valentine’s night?

I felt compelled to post about this subject.  First of all I have to say I am not one of those people who believe that valentine’s should be celebrated the way it is – I believe it’s a yet another opportunity for overpriced dinners and useless gifts, an idea abused by marketers world-wide to the point that people feel the social push to do something on that day assuming they have someone to do it with or feel bad about it if they don’t. Along with everyone else even clubs and apparently their managers are living in this fantasy too, which is fine, but when it comes down to Dance clubs I think it’s a bit weird.

Here’s what on for this Valentines night:

• Lover’s Day @ Club The Escape
• “If music be the food of love, play on” @ klubd 
• Valentine’s Night @ Versus

 

Club The Escape will celebrate Valentine’s with psychedelic. Yes people in love can listen to psychedelic too, the question is though, will people in a relationship who actually celebrate Valentine’s go to a psy party? Of course when was the last time that Club the Escape had made some sensible decisions?

Who are the customers of these clubs to start with? It only takes going out a couple of times to make reliable statistics that they are 18 to 30 year olds, mostly single middle-class male. It’s unfortunate even if we won’t admit it, that the proportion of women to men in clubs is small, and for dance clubs it’s just laughable.  While everyone is aware of this fact, Versus is planning night based on ‘let us find you your Valentine’ theme. I was wondering how they’re planning to achieve that in the ‘natural/normal’ way but then I noticed that they have a low-priced open bar; which then translates the ‘let us find your Valentine’ to ‘let’s get you wasted and you might end up going home with someone or something’. At least people at Klubd seem to have put some more thought into the subject realizing that it won’t help them promoting Valentine’s as a night for people in love with each other but for people in love with music and at the same time kept their price the same as previous weekends (before anyone complains even though it’s a bit irrelevant with this posts’ topic I have to mention about their price drop from 25 to 10 euro since they opened a few months ago – which for some is taken as a sign that they failed and by others as a sign that they are quick to spot their mistakes and fix them).

Anyway, simply put, what I’m trying to say with all the above for anyone who hasn’t already got it, is that dance clubs on this particular over commercialised day, should keep the same character and theme as every other night they are open after all they are the ‘underground’. Keep the same pricing model and don’t waste their money on stupid decoration that doesn’t really impress anyone. The one’s who will celebrate this night will probably exchange their gifts, go spend their 50-60 euro per person (yes it’s the men who pay) at a posh restaurant (aren’t they all posh nowadays?)  and then go home have a good one; they will definitely not come to a dance club full of drunk men breathing down the neck of their women. So what’s the point of having a valentine’s night at a dance club?

Happy New Year 2009!

New Year’s Eve hangover is over and we’re finally getting back to our routine and WORK.

I made a few worth-mentioning updates to cluboholic.com during some spare moments of the Xmas period:

• Modify Events - A useful feature for event organisers and promoters who may now change the details for events they posted - something that couldn’t be done automatically before.  It works like this: when a submitted event is approved to appear on the event list an email which includes a password is sent to the user who posted it. Any time later the user can go back to the Add Event page, enter the password and make changes to that particular event. This way the promoters/organisers don’t need to be registered users and saves a lot of time of getting the changes up since before they had to e-mail and wait for me to make the changes.

The next step is for a feature to allow the flyers to be uploaded straight from the Add Event form.

• Automatically generated search engine friendly URLs  (and also user friendly) for the events on the event list. (If you don’t know what it means then it means it doesn’t matter to you).

•  Blog on the front page - I finally got rid of the Rumors from the front page and in its place you can now see the latest blog post titles with a short description.

Since this is the first post to this blog I’ll start with what it’s all about. The main purpose to this blog is to keep a log of what’s being updated on cluboholic.com - more in terms of features and fixes rather than in terms of content, even though from time to time I’ll be posting about content updates too. As a secondary subject I’ll be posting here about some of my thoughts about music, parties, the clubbing scene in Cyprus and abroad as well as some online discoveries. Finally – and this is going to myself – I hope my schedule allows me keep updating.

New feature on cluboholic.com is the new Blogging software (surprise surprise – you’re using it right now). It’s based on what seems to be the most popular blogging software out there – Wordpress (unfortunately I had to go through quite a few before I realised it). It took a big effort but I finally managed to integrate it with the rest of the website’s user system - so you can now post comments on blog entries without having to re-register. As long as you’re a registered user at the forum then you’re automatically logged in on the blogs as well. Its important to understand that anyone can create a blog (actually you can create more than one blog per user and even have multiple users writing under the same blog) there’s no limit. Next task is to integrate it with cluboholic.com’s front page so that the entries get automatically posted there and add some more plugins and themes.

In the meantime.. Merry Christmas!