Welcome, students, parents, directors, and fans to the 2011 season!!
Welcome to Illinois Marching Online. We have been gearing up for the 2011 season (our 8th full season), and we hope you all have as well. We have had a good deal of things going on throughout the offseason that we feel will enhance the site even more.
We have not had an update in a while and we thought we would share with everyone what has been going on, the rules around here, and some new things we will be doing throughout the season.
1.) We reserve the right to delete your posts over objectionable content, or delete everything you’ve said and replace it with something we want to say.
2.) You are not anonymous on this forum. We have every single poster’s e-mail address and IP address(es). With under 5 minutes of work, we can locate who you are and where you have posted from, usually within a couple of city blocks. If you wouldn’t say it in front of your own band director, you probably shouldn’t say it at all.
3.) Band directors get special treatment on these forums. If you’re a band director and you have any sort of feedback/concerns, e-mail me directly. I strongly prefer that you e-mail from your school account, so that I can be sure you are who you say you are. In addition, if you are an educator and you post on the message boards, please PM me or email me so I can change your account status.
For all the rules, visit the Message Board Guidelines at http://ilmarching.com/forum/index.php?action=rules.
Now, we’re done with the rules. On to the fun stuff of marching band, and some new features.
1.) As you might have noticed, we have updated the theme of the site! Gone are the grey and white tables to display data! The sidebar finally looks right in Internet Explorer (which was no small feat…IE does not conform to standards). However, the biggest change by far is with the forums. We migrated all of the forums from zetaboards to a locally hosted forum software called SMF. SMF gives us SO much control over every aspect of the forums. Hopefully soon, you will be able to use your forum login to login to other parts of the site. Those features, for the moment, are still on the drawing board…but the new forum software will allow us to make those in the future. The only downside with the new forums was the transition. Zetaboards would not give us any data from the old boards, so we had to use a script to pull all the users/threads/posts from the old board. The only thing it could not grab was user passwords (which is a good security thing). So, while you have your old username on the new forum that you had on the old forum…your password was changed. In order to access the new forums, please complete these instructions to recover your new password.
i. Log into the OLD forums, and login with your old account. (These forums are still up, but all of the topics have been closed…so don’t try to post here)
http://s8.zetaboards.com/ilmarching/index/
ii. On the old forums, check your inbox of PMs. You should have received a PM from Mark containing your new forum password.
iii. Log into the new forums with your old username and your new password. Promptly change your new forum password to whatever you like.
http://ilmarching.com/forum
If you have any issues at all, email Mark (moverholt@ilmarching.com), to resolve them. We understand this is a bit of a hassle, but trust us…it is worth it in the long run!
2.) Each bands’ page has been updated to include their show title for the 2011 season. Do you know if your band has their repertoire listed for this year? Check http://www.ilmarching.com/bands_check.php to find out. If your band is in red, you do not have a 2011 show listed with us. PM Mark or I, email one of us, post it on the forums, or use our Info Submission pages: http://www.ilmarching.com/submit_band_info.php
3.) We have submission forms that make it easier on everyone. You can send your information on your band’s 2011 show/past information, festivals, and scores. New this year is an image upload feature that will put your pictures on the respective bands page! In the past, band images were taken, uploaded, and manually added to each band’s page…but not any more! Now you can upload an image you have taken of a band, and it will be posted on the site. Each band can now have multiple images, and the image rotates each time you view the band’s page. It will be submitted for approval (we have to do this to make sure we only display appropriate images…), and once they are approved, they will show up on that bands page! Approval will usually happen within 24 hours. As always with new features like this, if you find any bugs or have any suggestions for improvement, email/PM Mark!
Visit:
http://www.ilmarching.com/submit_band_info.php
http://www.ilmarching.com/submit_festival_info.php
http://www.ilmarching.com/submit_score_info.php
http://ilmarching.com/upload_image_web.php
4.) As usual, we will be predicting all shows in Illinois this season. Those will be posted on Wednesday each week.
5.) There will be a myriad of features this year! By request, the director’s feature has returned. Email me if you are interested in having your band featured. We still have a few spots left! These will be posted throughout the season, usually on Tuesdays. We have a great assortment of bands so far this year. We have bands that compete on the national scene, to bands that are marching competitively for the first time this year, to bands that only march football games. It is always a fun and interesting look into how differently bands are run from one to another.
We will be “live blogging” select shows this year using the Cover it Live software. We will post announcements when we’re doing this, and you can follow along and add comments as you see fit.
There are also some features that will remain a surprise for the time being.
6.) Anyone who writes a review of a show can send those to us, and we will post the reviews. The reviews must be unbiased. We had a few reviews last year if you want a reference. Don’t think you have to review every band at a show to submit it to us. While it is nice to see a comparison across all the performing bands, if you only want to review a few of the bands…send us those too!! We will post them.
7.) We will be updating scores for each show as usual. That means if you have official scores for a show, email them to us. The quicker we have them, the quicker they will be posted on the site. They will also be posted on Twitter and the Facebook Fan Page. If you have recap sheets as well…we like those too! And they will be posted alongside the scores, as we have done in the past.
Which brings me to the next point: Illinois Marching Online will continue in the frightening world of Web 2.0. We are on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. We will use Twitter to update scores of whatever shows the staff is at, plus news going on around the state. We’ll also use the Facebook Fan Page to update users of scores as well. Tell your friends that use the site to become fans of the Illinois Marching Online page as well!! We have also added a link to our fan page on the left side of the main page.
Here’s the links to each site:
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ilmarching
To follow the ilmarching updates on your cell phone, text the following to 40404: Follow ilmarching.
Note: Standard text messaging rates do apply.
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/ilmarching
Facebook Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/ilmarching
Continuing this year is the CafePress online store, where you can get all of your wares with the Illinois Marching Online logo on it. Great gift for others or yourself. The store will be revamped with new products for 2011 in the next couple of weeks! You can visit the CafePress store here: http://www.cafepress.com/ilmarching.
Videos: A couple of years ago we introduced our partnership with Quick Draw Films to provide video of Illinois Marching Bands. When it was first introduced, we simply directed you to our YouTube channel, where a few videos have been posted. Last year, we revamped the video section, and added some more videos from past seasons. That new page is located at: http://www.ilmarching.com/videos.php, or you can click the Videos link in the menu bar. When you first load the page, you will notice it is similar to a tv channel, where something is always playing.
We’re going to do something a little differently this year, regarding videos. Our representative with Quick Draw Videos has moved out of state, and we’re going to try to find a new video company to partner up with. In the meantime, there is now a thread dedicated to 2011 marching band videos-you can post either in state videos of bands from local competitions, or out of state bands that you find on YouTube. We will not allow competitions where Mr. Video is filming (generally ISU, State marching band competitions, or BOA events. In addition, absolutely no Drum Corps International videos will be allowed, unless it is a corps video or promoted by DCI.)
To add a video to the thread, create a new post, click the YouTube button, enter your video link in between the tags, and click “post.”
Directors-if a video of your band appears in the thread and you wish to not have it posted-contact me. We will take it down.
Illinois Marching Online has always been, and will forever be a free site for its’ users. Keep in mind the people that run this site are volunteers who have donated (and will continue to) hours upon hours of manpower to this site to make it what it is today. Mark is always taking my wild, crazy ideas that in a million years could never work, and somehow makes them work. If you have any ideas for improvements, do not hesitate to contact us.
Everything comes out of pocket for the site: hosting fees, advertising fees, tickets, gas, and other various items. If you like what you see, would you please consider donating with PayPal? There’s also a donation button on each of the main pages. If you do not have a credit card, and still wish to donate, we can work something out. Email Dan to discuss this. We understand times are difficult, and we will definitely appreciate any contribution that you make. In addition, as our way of saying “thank you,” we will have different levels of contribution, where the staff will give different items to thank you for donating to us. You will also be publicly thanked on the site as well.
The site probably would not be around anymore if it were not for the generosity of our sponsors-past and present. Thank you to the following past sponsors: Phantom Regiment Drum and Bugle Corps, The Blue Stars Drum and Bugle Corps, Paramount Theater, and KnightFire Drum and Bugle Corps. Thanks as well to Paul Katula, for his donations over the past couple of seasons. Thank you to our current sponsors: Fitzpatrick Music and Voxitatis. These sponsorships and donations are greatly appreciated.
We still have several opportunities for sponsorships available for the 2011 show. Contact us for more information.
We are glad you are here. Stay tuned throughout the season for the latest scores and reviews and good luck to all of the bands in Illinois. We at Illinois Marching Online hope everyone has a fun, safe, and successful season. Make sure to promote the site to all of your friends!
As usual, if anyone has any suggestions for any improvements, suggest them to Dan or Mark.
The Illinois Marching Online Staff
Staff Emails:
Admins
Dan Balash-guaranteed response time within 12-24 hours.
Moderators:
Kurt Antonini
Paul Strain
John Donovan
Contributors
Andrew Beckwith
Chris Klaus