UG Is Planning New Features To The Site. Your Help Is Needed!

Greetings from UG Team! It's been some time since we made actual improvements to the site and now we finally feel like we're up to it again.

We've gathered a whole lot of requests, complaints and suggestions from our users (many thanks to everyone who wrote us!), thought them over and picked the most popular ones.

Most of these new, projected feats are basically common sense improvements, like search options, however some of them do come from our specific user's requests (customizing tab viewing options).

The list is yet to be completed, so if you think Ultimate-Guitar.com is missing something, that could be extremely useful to you or other users, why not share your ideas with us? Here's the appropriate place for them.

Meanwhile, the actual list can be seen and discussed here.

Please, give us your opinion on these new feats. Let's make Ultimate-Guitar.com better together!

Comments

[NiinjaMaster36]

Maybe better spellchecking, not just reposting other articles, and not intentionally trying to cause troll/flame wars at the end of your articles

[D4CE]

Stop doing all the spam/troll articles.

[Rimfrost]

NiinjaMaster36 wrote:

Maybe better spellchecking, not just reposting other articles, and not intentionally trying to cause troll/flame wars at the end of your articles

This!

[I.shower.naked]

no more misleading titles?

[Trent Armitage]

Clean up the music library for tabs...I've seen some tabs that aren't even the right song and they even state that in the tab and it gets accepted.

[SLEESTAK_BRO]

Less Blabbermouth reposting?

[nailsarecruel]

I don't mind the reposted news articles, but come on already: in-house articles should be devoid of personal opinions. Save it for opinion columns.

[logicbdj]

Have a separate section for 'original music compositions' and 'jamming clips.' What I mean is this... some people spend alot of time developing and writing a song, only for it to disappear quickly because people love to post 20-30 second clips of themselves hamming out some riffs and a lead sequence in order to find out how everyone likes it. A thread section for actual, completed songs, and a thread section for bits and pieces that are NOT songs.

[Trent Armitage]

D4CE wrote:

Stop doing all the spam/troll articles.

Has anyone seen the daily Courtney Love article? I can't find it for today

[CronoMagus]

How about a News Vault where you can easily see what news articles were posted in the past. As it is now, you have to know part of the name to bring it up through search. Would be better if I could scroll down a list of old articles in descending cronological order.

[TrollFace]

the misleading title is my biggest problem. i know you want to create more traffic for the site but you make us users think less of you. sadfrog.jpg

[icry]

NiinjaMaster36 wrote:

Maybe better spellchecking, not just reposting other articles, and not intentionally trying to cause troll/flame wars at the end of your articles

But I'm thinking that troll/holywars articles makes a lot of fun in user comments. Sometimes I skip article just to read funny comments =)

[icry]

And more misleading titles!

[killyerscene]

I 110% agree with 2 things here.
Need to archive the News, just hit "Older Posts" and have 'em all listed in chronological order.

CronoMagus wrote:

How about a News Vault where you can easily see what news articles were posted in the past. As it is now, you have to know part of the name to bring it up through search. Would be better if I could scroll down a list of old articles in descending cronological order.

and

Trent Armitage wrote:

Clean up the music library for tabs...I've seen some tabs that aren't even the right song and they even state that in the tab and it gets accepted.

This. Some songs have 22 versions, 10 are crap, 10 arent even the song and 2 are good.

[Alex B Broadway]

Trent Armitage wrote:

Clean up the music library for tabs...I've seen some tabs that aren't even the right song and they even state that in the tab and it gets accepted.

Agreed. One or two accurate tabs are fine, but five crappy tabs, three okay tabs and one accurate tab is just too much.

[Maestro1600]

A dedicated area for the perennial Metallica vs Megadeth argument, to save reliving it after every single article about either band?

[frehley freak]

Whoring every pixel of space on this site to another ad. Thats your #1 worst quality. All the ads that expand and cover half of the page is rediculous too...

[the chalky one]

when i type in a band name, whats up with the little black box? i mean you gotta put your mouse on it to even see your options.

[BigSpence]

Hmmmm. How about a better news section? I say "better" in every way possible.

[iommi600]

Trent Armitage wrote:

Clean up the music library for tabs...I've seen some tabs that aren't even the right song and they even state that in the tab and it gets accepted.

This one.

Also, stop with the misleading titles, and maybe a small change in the comments policy... I mean, I made a joke about Courtney Love once and got a 45 day warning... wtf?
I totally support that you guys are against flaming/trolling, but I see people getting banned or getting their comments deleted for no plausible reason...

[ne14t]

Get rid of all the damn ads that blast crap through your speakers, like ads are ok everyone's gotta pay the bills but when I open up a news article or something and have

CONGRATULATIONS YOU HAVE WON!!!! and two different Lysol commercials blasting through my speakers at the same time its a little annoying, especially if I am trying to be sly at work.

[NemX162]

Get rid of the gigantic TabPro banners, and such. We also don't want to see a TabPro preview whenever we go to get a GuitarPro tab.

[fuzzymunkee]

How about we get unbiased news that's actually about music? That would be a start.

[theunforgivn]

A search for groups

[WantsLesPaul]

I think a dating service would be a good idea

[steve987]

You post opinionated news articles, or just purposely try to create flame/troll wars in the comments, then ban people for simply doing what you provoked them to say.

[Glen'sHeroicAct]

I don't know how our forum software works, but is there a way to improve the search bar in the forums? When you search for a word, it gives you threads with the word in it, but doesn't tell you what page they're on. If it's in a 100+ page thread, you have to wade through the entire thing to find the page with the highlighted word in it.

[Pan-Tallica]

Checked.

Interesting trends in the comments. We really appreciate the feedback, so please take note of the first link given in this article (to the Site Feedback forum). Your suggestions or complaints can be heard and debated there, where they are more likely to get the attention of an admin than in the comments section of a news article.

Thanks

[Minivirus2]

frehley freak wrote:

Whoring every pixel of space on this site to another ad. Thats your #1 worst quality. All the ads that expand and cover half of the page is rediculous too...

This, to an extent. I understand the need for adversiting, it's why you're here and able to do what your do, but could the adds that expand every time you scroll over them, the video adds that are non muteable unless you click on them and it opens up a new page (which gives the advertiser a hit) and the friggin' adds that tell me "YOU'VE WON!", all be removed?

I have a hard time believing I'm the 100,000 visitor to said site for the past month...

These types of adds are less incline to draw people in, but then again, maybe I'm wrong and it does work. I also understand that it's probably done intentionally to get people to sign up for UG+, but it's just not the right way to do it.

[Minivirus2]

advertising* damn dyslexia

[BlueIceBox]

No more Ultimate-TMZ.com

[Maestro1600]

Yeah, there's some flippant comments here, which are entertaining, but also a whole lot of serious ones.
And after so many of them complain about the standard of journalism, be it headlines, bias or reposting, I certainly hope that any changes do include the news section.
If not, then it clearly wasn't worth UG posting this article!

[rhs5110]

Ninjamaster36 said it best

[Metal-pro]

"Browsing tabs by genres and difficulty" --> This sounds like a good idea.

[JB2500]

no more Courtney Love

[Maiden95]

Less censorship. I understand the personal attack policy thing but on a website like this why can't we see the word F@kc?

[cool_hand_luc]

no posts of oasis each day? they arent even relevant! the tabs are great. you should also archive your news by day so i can easily click on like... "march 13th for example and see all the new stories added that day

[INSULIN]

how bout just the words and chords the full song .i don't need tab with no words geez some people like to sing and play the guitar sometimes

[INSULIN]

I'd like to have chords and words on a tab .some people want to sing and play a guitar .and i like to play my keyboard don't want to have to transpose guitar tab to regular sheet music in my head/all tabs need a version for the words and chords .thank you kindly

[smouch3]

get rid of the F'n adds.

[dewitt]

iommi600 wrote:

Trent Armitage wrote:

Clean up the music library for tabs...I've seen some tabs that aren't even the right song and they even state that in the tab and it gets accepted.

This one.

Also, stop with the misleading titles, and maybe a small change in the comments policy... I mean, I made a joke about Courtney Love once and got a 45 day warning... wtf?
I totally support that you guys are against flaming/trolling, but I see people getting banned or getting their comments deleted for no plausible reason...

I had an account banned for merely observing the [inconsistent] comment removal procedure and the lack of timeliness in regurgitated articles.

I received a warning, but I had already made another observation due to an extreme inconsistency in the moderator's actions (one or two in particular) before I noticed. I already had a warning left over from December, I guess, so my account was banned for observing my surroundings.

The more offending, policy-breaking comments are still there, as I type, Yet many that followed site policies and guidelines, yet were not agreed with or approved by moderators, were deleted.

I've noticed that only a few of the moderators I see around here are actually on the UG list of moderators, too, and the offending individuals are not on that list.

There are many other issues that could be addressed, but there is no point in having strong-opinion-inciting articles when you have dictatorial moderators running around banning people for making mere evaluations, opinions aside.

[SOAD_SoG]

Less Misleading titles and more interesting news.

[dewitt]

CronoMagus wrote:

How about a News Vault where you can easily see what news articles were posted in the past. As it is now, you have to know part of the name to bring it up through search. Would be better if I could scroll down a list of old articles in descending cronological order.

That's how it used to be, until maybe a year or two ago. Then, for some nonsensical reason, then changed it.

Now, you pretty much have to know the news you're looking for if you want to find it. But why would we be looking through the archives for information that we are already aware of?

[firebowl99]

Well like the some of the artists names are incorrect. For instance, if you want to find a tab by a song by Daughtry, all of them except for one are placed under the artist Chris Daughtry. This is kind of confusing and totally incorrect. The songs are by the band he's in called Daughtry, which is named after him like Van Halen is named after Alex and Eddie and Bon Jovi is named after Jon, not by Chris himself.

[iscreamicecream]

pls change the layout of the site..its getting boring

[Skuzzmo]

Sort your feking mods outs.

Most inconsistant shower of shit I've seen on a site. Couple are ok and seem to take their responsibilities seriously but most don't give a toss what they're doing....

[Kueller917]

Lighten up on the advertisements. I know they give revenue but they clutter up the entire site so much.

[wylde1994]

Fire the guy who writes all the articles and get a someone who's good

[b_flo]

Post stories to date, not 2 or 3 days after it happened. How about getting news from reliable sources...like the crew? Most will give you the REAL insight to artists/bands, instead of what the media portrays them to be. I think fans deserve what their favorite artists/bands really think of them.

[All_Acoustic]

I had an account banned for merely observing the [inconsistent] comment removal procedure and the lack of timeliness in regurgitated articles.

I received a warning, but I had already made another observation due to an extreme inconsistency in the moderator's actions (one or two in particular) before I noticed. I already had a warning left over from December, I guess, so my account was banned for observing my surroundings.

The more offending, policy-breaking comments are still there, as I type, Yet many that followed site policies and guidelines, yet were not agreed with or approved by moderators, were deleted.

I've noticed that only a few of the moderators I see around here are actually on the UG list of moderators, too, and the offending individuals are not on that list.

There are many other issues that could be addressed, but there is no point in having strong-opinion-inciting articles when you have dictatorial moderators running around banning people for making mere evaluations, opinions aside.

Better watch out, they might ban you for this comment!

[DroneBlues27]

Ok UG i haven't posted for a while, but I felt the need to do so for this article. I think that most of UG's overhead should be dedicated to the tabbing portion of the site. Although there are so many other qualities to this site that I love (articles, news, forums, etc.), I feel that UG's forte (pun very intended) should most definitely be tabs.

I think UG should consider the reality of the internet and the content out there that in some respects, but not all, supersedes UG's content. If you google guitar tabs, UG is the first site to pop up right on top. If you google music news or another category, for instance, UG is (sadly) not the first site. In fact, you'd have to go through probably dozens of pages to find UG. The average user will most likely click something on the first page. This is where UG can thrive. If UG can strive for perfect guitar tabs, as well as expand (as they have been with the features of UG plus) then almost undoubtedly UG can achieve a sort of guitar tab monopoly online. Let's face it though, with the economy of the world (namely the US where I'm from) in turmoil, people aren't even willing to pay $0.99 for their favorite song let alone several dollars for some of the features that UG has.

Although this strategy might be a little bold and have short term costs, I think the long term investment potential is far greater. In this age, "free is for me" is a popular slogan. If UG made more of it's features free, I think they would see an exponential increase in downloads as well as website traffic. Wherever there is dense web traffic, there is an even denser check that an advertiser is willing to write to market on a site. And although for users ads may be a pain in the ass, those who desire the service enough are willing to look past that and deal with that small inconvenience. I have a feeling, although i could be dead wrong, that UG doesn't make the majority of it's money from people paying for the ad-free version of the site. I think UG is concentrating too much on short term profits rather than long term investment. It's only a matter of time until people will find another site/service that is free and the people (sheep-le) will flock to that, which inevitably will damage UG's well-being.

Moral of my story: make stuff free, maybe not forever. just give it a shot UG and see what happens. Maybe give incentives to your employees for ways to cut corners/ improve the site. But maybe you won't even have to cut corners! if you look at how far down the comments go on some of news articles and discussions, it's unbelievable how much space is empty that could be used for ads. And the beautiful part about it for the user, is most of the time a user is able to download some sort of ad blocker to block the ads anyway.

PLEASE UG GIVE YOUR LOYAL USERS FREEEEEDDDOMMMMM AND YOU WILL EARN FREEDOM IN THE PROCESS!

[hekainu]

My personal irritation with UG, and I've been a member since 2004, is the extremely poor quality and narrow range of the music news articles. It's always so predictable and old. Why not post about the release of new albums by bands instead of letting such things slip under the radar in favour of yet another Courtney Love or Axel Rose article?
There really needs to be some form of quality control on news articles.

[ledzep426]

I think we need more misleading article titles.

[Crux_king]

i think it would be awesome if you guys could code a slightly more forgiving search function for tabs. It would be nice if it was something similar to google's.
For example if i was to type in "rado head" it would be nice to get a "Did you mean Radio Head?" thing.

Thanks for the time

Crux

[Pan-Tallica]

dewitt wrote:
I had an account banned for merely observing the [inconsistent] comment removal procedure and the lack of timeliness in regurgitated articles.

Seeing as the third paragraph of your post mentions "site policies", I'm sure you're aware that we don't allow users to have more than one account. For the record,the comments section of a news article is not the place to accuse a moderator of "inconsistent comment removal procedures"... That's what private messages are for.

I received a warning, but I had already made another observation due to an extreme inconsistency in the moderator's actions (one or two in particular) before I noticed. I already had a warning left over from December, I guess, so my account was banned for observing my surroundings.

If your comment was mature, you would not have been warned for it. If it was remotely related to the news article in question, you would not have been warned. Of course, I cannot look into the nature of this "banning", as your comments were made by another account. As I said, if you have a problem with the way a moderator does something, send him/her a private message. We're all very approachable.

The more offending, policy-breaking comments are still there, as I type, Yet many that followed site policies and guidelines, yet were not agreed with or approved by moderators, were deleted.

Please direct me to the comments about which you are speaking. We don't delete things arbitrarily, nor do we delete things with which we disagree. We're not idiots (contrary to popular belief).

I've noticed that only a few of the moderators I see around here are actually on the UG list of moderators, too, and the offending individuals are not on that list.

I have nooooo idea what you mean by this. There are column moderators (such as myself), forum moderators, and administrators.

You must realize that we do our best here. We're not getting paid, just spending a bit of time each day trying to keep the site friendly. We try to remove only offensive posts, but the distinction between offensive and non-offensive is not always black and white. This is especially true in news articles about disliked or too-frequently-in-the-site-news artists. When a wave of comments like "I don't care" or "stupid title" come in, it really contributes nothing to the possibility of having a discussion ABOUT the current article. There's a place for discussing the type of articles that are posted - the Site Feedback forum. The columns themselves are for discussing the content of the articles.

I encourage you to use the Site Feedback forum if you have any further suggestions. Private message a moderator if you have a question about his or her actions.

[Pan-Tallica]

Crux_king wrote:

i think it would be awesome if you guys could code a slightly more forgiving search function for tabs. It would be nice if it was something similar to google's.
For example if i was to type in "rado head" it would be nice to get a "Did you mean Radio Head?" thing.

Thanks for the time

Crux

I would like this as well. My typing is sloppy on a good day lol, let alone when I'm holding a pick and have a guitar balanced on my lap. I'm going to bring this comment to the Site Feedback forum, if you don't mind.

[Family Reunion]

No more misleading titles. Stop posting so much of one artist ie Dave Grohl, Courtney Love, Axl....

Spell-check if you get it from other articles.

Maybe add some underground band article section or something to.

And, the main reason I'm on ultimate guitar, make it so if I, for example, type in hendrix, and see his list of tabs, I can press "star" or "title" so it goes in alphabetical order, or from highest rated

[DemonMusicInc]

On the tabs, get rid of the video lessons thing. It's on all that tabs even if there aren't video lessons. Only put them on tabs that actually do have lessons for that song.

[BradTheBluefish]

Us users do too much of the work in creating tabs

[Jellyfrank]

A way to favorite tabs so they can be readily accessed later. Also, maybe this could enable suggestions on the home page based on what you've been looking at lately... The "if you liked that, you may like this" on the side of a tab works well, maybe integrate that into the home page?

[thebigal]

Could you make the resolution of the site bigger.
I have logged onto UG daily for years and really love the site.

Maybe add more features for upcoming releases, I still use wikipedia and other sources for that

[mizou]

More pro tabs!

[FlyingPirahna]

Fix the overabundance of ads. Pop outs the cover the screen, two copies of the same ad blasting two seconds apart from each other, the TabPro thing crammed everywhere it can fit.

Get better reporting. It's embarrassing to come here everyday and see more and more obvious troll baiting articles, blatantly copied and pasted articles, how important articles are presented (IE, no more dead musicians getting buried by the latest Mustaine/Grohl/Courtney Love interview).

[brkisby]

I think you need a mobile site when you go on the browser.

[brkisby]

I think you also need to make Tabs pro online more accesible on the mobile phone.

[IPwnBabies]

I think the site should be super pink and brown!

[FlyingPirahna]

Add an edit button for comments so people don't have to double post to correct their typos.

[GenerationKILL]

You want a tip?

Ban anyone under the age of 24 from posting ANYTHING.

Stop the 50 Zillion reviews for guitars by "metal guitarists."

[powachord]

how about a link to all the past interviews?

[js81221]

If I get quoted from an article, review, or interview, I want to be notified. So, like YouTube, we can have a more in-depth discussion-experience.

[ketangupta96]

i really think that people who post Guitar Pro tabs should be given more points than those who post Tabs or Chords. Making a Guitar Pro tab requires much more effort than making normal Tabs.

[SoulShredder]

Not so so important. But if you are redesigning the site layout, make things bigger and more spacious. everything is way too cramped.

[Jugulator_cro]

powachord wrote:

how about a link to all the past interviews?

Yes, this! The interviews are undoubtedly the most quality part of the site.

[beyondthegrave]

a way to like a post in the forums would be nice.

[aig91]

BradTheBluefish wrote:

Us users do too much of the work in creating tabs

There are 1.4 million users on this site. Who else is going to create the tabs? Did you expect the administration to create all of them? Do you really think there are enough people on the UG Team to add a sufficient amount of original tabs every day? The whole point behind the tab system is to GIVE AND GET.

[ebmusicman16]

I don't know if anyone else gets this but when I search instead of a list of suggestions there is a black box and I have to use the up and down arrows to see what each one says.

[-xCaMRocKx-]

NiinjaMaster36 wrote:

Maybe better spellchecking, not just reposting other articles, and not intentionally trying to cause troll/flame wars at the end of your articles

D4CE wrote:

Stop doing all the spam/troll articles.

I.shower.naked wrote:

no more misleading titles?

TrollFace wrote:

the misleading title is my biggest problem. i know you want to create more traffic for the site but you make us users think less of you. sadfrog.jpg

I think it's fairly obvious what people want. Just a shred of journalistic integrity.

[csensesfail92]

have "official tabs" made by members of the band

[SISO]

Someway to edit comments would be a nice addition too.

[joshuahughes34]

more ultimate guitar widgets

[joshuahughes34]

with community pulse, being able to see what is getting you your pulse.(i.e. 30 points today - 5 from tab rating, 4 from thumbs up comments, etc) i never know where my points are coming from

[jamie_hough]

ebmusicman16 wrote:

I don't know if anyone else gets this but when I search instead of a list of suggestions there is a black box and I have to use the up and down arrows to see what each one says.

Yep I get this Ive been meaning to work out what that is. When you type in the search box and instead of seeing the predictive list its all blacked out. Dont know if that can be looked at?

[bumpofkokoy]

NEWS about REAL ULTIMATE-GUITARISTS, not about who the best frontman is according to some irrelevant website

[amithkallupalam]

A feature that allows the user to keep track of all of his posts, started threads etc. We really need this. Or is it there already?

[tomba93]

Delete old less accurate versions of tabs, if there are better newer versions

[Primus2112]

Bring back the chat bar.

[Darthkp]

GenerationKILL wrote:

You want a tip?

Ban anyone under the age of 24 from posting ANYTHING.

Stop the 50 Zillion reviews for guitars by "metal guitarists."

I'm well under 24 years old and yet I still agree with this..

PS: The "metal guitarist" thing was funny.

[Roran109]

If you guys wanna make Tab Pro better, make so it doesn't automatically pick the very first GP version someone posts, which is usually a mediocre first attempt which we rate at 3 or less stars. Make chose are 5 star GP tab.