ThaSauce: ThaSauce

ThaSauce Launches New Media Tab

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 05:40:38 PST

The media tab was the only thing not completed along with the rest of the site. I talked about my plans for it a bit at the panel at MAGFest this year, and I've finally gotten it to (about) where I want it to be.The media tab now lists a bunch of really great podcasts from around the community, and has now been streamlined for Radio:ThaSauce. There's a lot more that I want to do with it in the future, but for now I think it's a substantial improvement over what we had. Enjoy! :D

Donations and you.

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:14:12 PDT

Nerdapalooza reminded me of something that I've wanted to do for a long time, but have never been able to do much of: PROMOTE. We got 1 run of shirts made, I got some cheap flyers and DVD cases to make stuff happen, but the funds just weren't there to make any serious promotion.

So this year, if at all possible, I want to be as ready for MAGFest as possible, and while adsense really isn't going to get us all the way where we want to be, it'll certainly help a bit. BUT WHAT'S IN IT FOR YOU?

You'll notice R:TS now has a DONATION button, as well. We graciously accept all donations, BUT depending on HOW much you donate,you can get some TOTALLY sweet stuff.

$5 = ALL OF R:TS + More - R:TS doesn't have torrents...yet (though someone did put up a torrent awhile back on TPB). So with a donation of $5 or more we'll mail you a super snazzy DVD with all the R:TS mixes (as of July 10th), as well as some unreleased MAGFest video and some other cool stuff.
$25 = ALL OF R:TS + a shirt, bro - The initial run of shirts sold out...pretty much immediately, and those lucky few who got them should know that shirt is pretty much a collector's item now, because the next run of shirts will be TOTALLY different. Now, I can't promise you a shirt right away, because we don't have them, and I can't afford them right now, HOWEVER the next shipment of shirts has been designed, picked out, and are ready to be ordered. I hope to have them by MAGFest, and with a donation of $25 I absolutely GUARANTEE you will get a shirt as soon as they are availible. This means as soon as I get the BRAND NEW (totally snazzy) ThaSauce shirts with the all new logo design, you will be THE FIRST to recieve one, before they even go on sale.
$25+ = All of R:TS, a shirt, AND unconditional love - I already love you all. To everyone that's stuck with us from the beginning THANKS A BILLION, and I really don't like to play favorites...but I will. Money talks, people.
$100+ = All of R:TS, a shirt, unconditional love AND n00dz. - 'nuff said.

ThaSauce, News Portal for the VGM Arrangement Community previews ''New Sauce''

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 22:59:39 PST

So, since the panel at MAGFest I've been working pretty hard on a new version of the site. The plan was to get across as much information as fast as possible, but to do so in a generally quick and organized manner. I've been pulling a lot inspiration from a lot of other sites I frequent, I've been trying to integrate a lot of new community tools like StickAM and twitter, and I've been putting a lot of time into making sure the page displays properly for all browsers.

As of right now we've moved into a "quasi" closed beta, and I hope to have the whole site tested, and ready for launch by late March, early Febuary (Suzu/Fusion willing).
So, since the panel at MAGFest I've been working pretty hard on a new version of the site. The plan was to get across as much information as fast as possible, but to do so in a generally quick and organized manner. I've been pulling a lot inspiration from a lot of other sites I frequent, I've been trying to integrate a lot of new community tools like StickAM and twitter, and I've been putting a lot of time into making sure the page displays properly for all browsers.

As of right now we've moved into a "quasi" closed beta, and I hope to have the whole site tested, and ready for launch by late March, early Febuary (Suzu/Fusion willing).

The video is kinda lengthy (about 14 mins), but in it I go through the new site, show off some of the new layout, detail some of the new features, and explain some of the stuff I'm working on. I apologize for the quality, and I'll try to get a higher quality version up sometime later.

One more important note is, you'll notice I'm not referring to the site as "ThaSauce 3.0." That's because, in my eyes, this is not the 3rd version of the site, this is the ONLY real version of the site. Everything up until this point was merely testing, and planning, but THIS site is truly what I've dreamed of since the beginning.

News Comments Now in the Forums

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:39:18 PST

We've actually had this feature working SOMEWHAT for quite awhile now (albeit a few automation issues). I've finally decided to activate it for a number of reasons.

Our forums are sexier than ever now.
Spam on the site is a constant problem and exists almost exclusively in the forums.
There's a lot of changes coming up, and this is pretty much going to be the basis of all comments. So I might as well get this over with now.

Comment on this story on our forums

Paper Your Walls with the New ThaSauce Wallpaper

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 08:10:09 PST

I've had the new logo sitting around for awhile, and while I still can't afford to get those new shirts printed, I decided I'd make some wallpapers.
You can download the whole pack here:

http://thasauce.net/misc/thasauceWallpaper.zip

I also included a PSD template so you can make around with it and customize it for yourself.

Enjoy :o

New ThaSauce T-Shirts Ready for Pre-Order.

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 21:02:44 PDT

The design is finished, and I'm ready to order the shirts. I just need to know how many to get. Right now shirts will cost $20 a piece, which includes shipping. HOWEVER the more pre-orders I can, the cheaper the price gets. I'd like to see it get down to around $15, but it's really up to you people.

ThaSauce reaches 1,000,000 hits!

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 06:31:52 PDT

Sometime during the night we hit 1,000,000 hits.

That's...kinda nuts, yo. HOLLA!

Site statistics since May 2005:

All-time: 1001535
This Year: 366035
This Month: 53097
Today: 1383

Happy ThaSauce Day!!

Mon, 05 May 2008 04:43:37 PDT

It's hard to believe on this day 3 years ago a little brainstorm of mind became a reality. Looking back on it now, I'd have to say that ThaSauce has, in different respects, both fallen short of my expections and greatly exceeded them. Our userbase is constantly growing, we're poised to make 1,000,000 hits within the next few month, but still there's a lot of room for improvement and a LOT of work to be done.
The first thing I'd like to give you guys today is 3 new mixes up on ReMix:ThaSauce. They are 'Escape into Twilight' from NiGHTs by Skrypnyk, 'In Search of Light' from Mega Man X4 by long-time OverClocked ReMixer and Judge DarkeSword, and 'Pixelated Tales' from Tales of Symphonia by newcomer Showroom Dummy. I'm extremely pleased in how far R:TS has come, and we will continue to bring you guys excellent works from artist around the community that don't quite fit into OCReMix's guidelines for whatever reason.

You will, however notice that R:TS has been rather stagnant. That's partly to blame on my part, but it's largely because we simply don't have the submissions coming in. As of today we've barely recieved ANY submissions, save ones we've asked people for personally, all year. If you visit and enjoy ReMix:ThaSauce spread the word! The only way we can continue to provide you guys with music is if we have music to provide, and the only way we're going to get more is if more people know. So if you know someone who's remix can't get on OCR for whatever reason and has never heard of R:TS, be sure to send them are way as we'd be MORE than happy to have them.

Another thing I wanna mention is shirts. The initial run of shirts sold out a LOT quicker than I had ever anticipated. Since then I've been working on ways to get enough money for a second run AND working feverishly on a new design (a work in progress of which is displayed above). I'm glad to announce that as of today I'm am working toward the step of completing the logo and readying the order. This means that I NEED TO KNOW what sizes to order. If you want one of the shirts, please reply with the size you want. And remeber the bigger the order is for me, the cheaper the shirts are for everyone.

I plan on updating this post throughout the day, so be sure to check back later.

And thanks to everyone for their continued support. I really couldn't do any of this without you guys.

Sincerely,
Doug :o

Multi-headlines: BACK!

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:08:58 PST

I'm glad to announce that Suzu was about to fix my all-time favorite features on the site: the Multi-headlines module!
For those of you unfamiliar with the Multi-headlines module (as it's been broke for awhile now), it's a single massive RSS feed comprised of multiple RSS feeds from stuff that would be generally interesting to people in the community. Gaming news, music news, artist updates, webcomics, podcasts, WE GOT IT ALL.

You can subscribe to the whole feed via RSS.

ThaSauce MAGFest VI Panel now available on Google Video

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 22:44:15 PST

I've been workin' hard to get all the videos from MAGFest up everywhere I can (YouTube, Facebook, Google Video) and I was finally able to get the ENTIRE panel up on Google Video, so anyone that missed it and was interested on what went down, check it.

Temporary implementation of pop-up ads

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 00:17:30 PST

I'd like to apologize right away for the pop-up ads. A friend of mine gave me a really good offer, and I REALLY need the money right now. Plus I'd like to be able to make enough to put towards the next batch of shirts since the demand @ MAGFest was so high (by the way, 1 large still availible if anyone wants it).

Anyway the ads'll only be around for a few days or so. They're by no means permanant or even long term. So do me a favor and be sure to navigate with the nav box on ThaSauce and move all around R:TS with the top navigation :(.

Sauce Digest: Changing Leaves Edition

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 05:06:28 PDT

A noisy video, hard-to-see content, and a few bugs round up the reasons for this month's list of planned changes. You'll also finally get a chance to put your points to use. Plus, a new way to access ThaSauce is on its way!Another layout change will top off this month once the new featured content module goes into place. This'll include new sections for featured links, artists, and projects, which'll be automatically featured based on age, popularity, and content type. Part of the plan is to move this farther up the page, somehow interspersing it with the news content.

Also part of this is an all-new video module, which will include a YouTube player and more options for viewing and saving videos.

A re-style of the forums is in order, we're going to be bringing it in-line with the rest of the site, as well as wiki upgrades that should let us re-open public registration. We'd like to also update the wiki's style, but there may not be enough time in the schedule for that.

Here comes a chance to spend some of those points you've been accumulating over the years. By the end of the month I'll have the raffle module in place, where you can put up your points for a chance to win a ThaSauce T-Shirt in your choice of white or black. Shirts are also available for $10 + Shipping, email or PM Xerol for information or orders.

Finally, we've had a PSP version of ThaSauce up for a while (which also is due for an upgrade), but now we'll be adding a Mobile version of the site! It'll be accessible from any web-capable phone or PDA, and have mobile-friendly features for keeping up on the latest articles.

One half million, on the real.

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 20:37:21 PDT

500,000 hits @ ThaSauce.net!!
Yeayaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa boyee!!

ThaSauce: 2.0

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 00:18:35 PDT

We're finally live. It's not as drastic a change as I would've liked, but only because we've slowly rolled in these features over the last 6 months or so. Drastically new are the Tags module, which lets you tag any story, and the new front page, which is more news-site-ish. As you can see below we're still adding some dynamic multimedia content, and we're also tweaking the theme to fit the new features.Coming up soon we'll have new userpages, finally finish the forums-based comments system, clean up the news submission process (the one thing I haven't touched at ALL, because the existing code is the worst thing imaginable) and hopefully find a way to get Multiheadlines up again (which isn't able to update due to a change in the server config made by the host, which we can't override).

The Feedback forum is now open for news discussion as well, so you can put ideas and questions about news stories there. I've also put up some News Style Guidelines.

So, get out there and tag some articles.

Sauce Digest: July Duct Tape Edition

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 07:18:41 PDT

I'm certainly taking my good old time with it, but work on the new site is proceeding slowly. To be able to say it's proceeding at all is a good thing in this case. Anyway, here's a summary of the changes and other important things going on:

The first and most major change I've put in recently is creating forum topics for each story - this goes in with the new comment system that's going to be in place in the next week/month/year/whenever I get around to it. Basically, rather than having to deal with the clunky phpNuke comment system, the comment form will just put a reply to the forum thread, and the comments shown in the article will just be read from the forums database. The old comments are going to remain in their current form, as it's way too much of a hassle to convert all the HTML to bbCode, plus removing it altogether is bound to break some part of the site I didn't know existed.Advanced users of the site may notice that the Multiheadlines module isn't working properly - this is due to something that changed in the host's configuration that we have no control over, apparently a lot of hosts are making this change now because the functions involved are commonly used as part of domain kiting schemes. To skirt the technobabble, basically it means the module can't open external files, and therefore can't read feeds. Once a solution to this problem is found, rather than simply patching the old module a new one will be put in place, as the current one is rife with bugs and issues, especially on the administrative side.

Pretty soon we'll have a few new layouts to be tested, and we're looking for a few people to give feedback and suggestions on these ideas. If you want to participate in this, send me a PM and I'll give out instructions when the time comes. We're getting really close to bringing a lot of new features online, but just keep getting hung up on small things.

I certainly hope to be able to set up the hopper sometime in the next week, which will allow you to simply drop in links to things you want to see stories about, while we do all the hard work. We'd especially like to see more music and video links, since they'll be playing a major role in the new areas of the site.

So that's about it, until next month, keep your stick on the ice.

Sauce Digest: April Hovercraft

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 09:24:37 PDT

So as you might've noticed over the last month or so, we've been changing things (again). A lot of the changes came "out" today, including the navigation blocks on the left. To ensure that the new features get used to the fullest extent, I'm going to give a mini-tour of the changes.

First off, the navigation and forums blocks. If you hover over a line with a → on it, a pop-out will appear. We're going to expand the lower part to have full site navigation. The biggest advantage of the location of these blocks is that the links are available from any page on ThaSauce, except for subsites like R:TS and the forums.

Now, these pop-outs may look a little 'broken'. That's because they're meant for the new theme, which you can change to already (just go to your account options and pick the TwoPointOh theme). This new fixed-width layout works in 1024x768 resolution and still has room to breathe. If you look at an article in the new theme, you'll notice it's broken into columns. This is one of the features that isn't complete yet. In addition to columns, longer articles will be broken into pages for easier reading.

Notice those last two sections under the News block? Music Links and Videos are two new "topics" that can be selected when submitting a story. However, they aren't intended to be used in that way. Check the appropriate boxes in the "associated topics" section when submitting a music link or video and it will appear in the appropriate section. We're also going to add a few more sections in the near future, for games, pictures, and links, as well as a multimedia portal where you can view this content in a convenient fashion.

A bit of a note: you'll notice that embedded videos tend to be messed up in the two-column format; this is another thing we're ironing out before officially rolling it out. While viewing the site over the next few weeks, bear in mind that things may look broken under the old skin since we aren't designing the new parts of the site to work with it.

ThaSauce is still looking for writers! While the changes in the site will allow a wider range of media to be submitted, we still need good old-fashioned articles as the core of the site's content. If you can't think of anything to write about, visit #thasauce on irc.enterthegame.com, and we'll give you ideas.

ThaSauce: We're coders, not writers.

ThaSauce Forums: For Your Benefit

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 11:39:44 PST

That's right, the ThaSauce Forums are for your benefit. Not only can you scope out the songs currently being checked for quality for Remix:ThaSauce by the Arbiters, you can voice your opinions in the open Remixing forum. Also, you can let us know what you think about the site layout, content management, and other design issues on the Feedback forum.
The Remixing forum doubles as the Public QC Arena and the Musician's Help Sauce, where one can ask questions pertaining to getting the best bang for their buck out of their weapons of choice. Exceptional threads will be condensed and their contents posted on ThaWiki, which will in the future work together with the VGMix Library so that there is no conflicting information between the two. The Dev forums is for developers, coders, and scripters who are looking for resources within the Video Game Music Arrangement community, for website owners looking for someone to assist them in building websites, and for game developers to show off their goods. Just made an original song? Swing on by the Pimpage forum! Here you can showcase your music that isn't on R:TS for all to see. Of course there is also a R:TS Review section, where you can share your thoughts and offer criticisms of the music hosted on Remix:ThaSauce. There is also an open Projects forum in which you can offer up ideas and samples for community projects, not necessarily exclusive to video game music.

So! Check it out! :)
Forums.ThaSauce.net

Sauce Digest: New stuff for February; writer$ wanted

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 18:10:50 PST

Prepare for another rollercoaster of downtime, nonfunctionality, and slowness over the next few days as we add some new features. Most of these are designed to make submitting news and promoting ThaSauce easier.First off, we've got Digg links on every story page, in the "Related Links" section. Soon we'll add a button somewhere around the RSS feed button to make it easier to find.

The next new feature is going to take a few days to put in, but should really help towards making submissions easier. If you have a link or short tidbit of news that's not quite a full story, you can drop it in our new news hopper where we collect these short bits and links, and once every few days will post a digest-style summary of what we've got. This will be placed on the left bar somewhere, for easy drop-and-go functionality. We'll have more details once it's implemented.

In addition, we're working on a new sorting system for articles. In addition to being able to sort articles by date and category, soon you'll be able to browse stories sorted by reads, rating, and a new system called SauceRank, which takes all of the pieces of a story and factors them into a single "score", giving highlight to new, popular, highly linked, and highly rated articles.

Call to all writers

As you might've noticed, our recent push to have daily columns failed spectacularly. Obviously the reason for this was that we didn't have enough people to keep up with the volume of writing required, so we're putting out a new incentive: money. I'll give out a portion of the advertising revenue for whoever can take over at least four columns a week. For more details, visit us on IRC at #thasauce on irc.enterthegame.com.

That's all for this Sauce Digest, stay tuned for the aforementioned updates and another edition next month.

New daily columns

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 10:17:10 PST

As you might have noticed, it's been a little stale around here lately. Luckily, we've been working hard to get things rolling again, and you're about to see the results of those efforts.

We're setting up a schedule of daily columns to provide more current and useful content to you. Starting this week, we'll have some of these columns filled, and hopefully have permanent status on them by next week. If you have any news that would fit into any of these categories, or into any of our categories, let us know.

Monday: New Games! Most new games usually come out on Tuesdays, so we'll give you the scoop on this week's releases a day early.
Tuesday: The Tech Report - Each week, we'll cover one topic in depth. It could be a console, or a specific piece of PC hardware, or just something cool we found.
Wednesday: Sales & Releases: A listing of the best hardware and software deals found over the last week, and reports and updates on commercial projects within the community, because musicians need to eat too!
Thursday: WIPs Galore! We'll go through and give some deserving WIPs some attention.
Friday: The Competition Report. Keep up-to-date on all the friendly (and sometimes not-so-friendly) competitive action on OCReMix and other places around the community.

Weekends will have some additional content. Not exactly news, but just something to keep you occupied:

Saturday: Featured Songs. Each week we'll feature a remix or original that we feel merits featured status. We also accept submissions for Featured Song material; just remember we're trying to spotlight some of the lesser-known material that deserves to be seen.
Sunday: Guest column day. An editorial by a guest on something not entirely community-related, but that still ties-in in some way.

These columns aren't exclusive to one writer, and depend mostly on the legwork of our staff and guest staff, so if you've got any news relating to them, let us know and we'll work it into the reports (and give credit where it's due, of course).

Redecorating a bit

Thu, 05 Oct 2006 12:06:46 PDT

As you can probably see, we've done some redecorating around here. This is a new, more simplified design which puts more information at your fingertips and makes it easier to get around.
We've moved the old links box on the side to the top of the page, rearranged the navigation (a handy links bar at the top of the page, as well as quick search and topic jump navigation on the side), and cleaned up the blocks a lot. As always, we're open to suggestions on improving the site, so leave some comments. (Note: Comments system is still kinda messed up, but we'll work on that soon.)