Hello all of GMC
This article will be about improving the GMC website and is part of my participation in the competition
I've decided to use my sense of logic to point out what can be improved. So lets begin
To improve something you need to know what is wrong right?
Now I personally find the website a tiny bit unclear. The are boxes everywhere and sometimes it makes me loose my head a bit. I've had some computer and web technology in school and i've learned that frames are a great way of keeping things clear and simple on a website like this. However these frames should be placed in a good way. A good way and much used way of the usage of these frames is pretty simple: Create 2 frames which separate the website in 3 parts. One horizontally, which could be used as a head( currently
"Guitarmasterclass.net, more then 2000 online guitar lessons and active community". The other frame would divide the rest of the page in 2 parts, one about 5 or 6 times bigger the the other. The smaller one could be used for links to navigate around the page. At the moment when you click on " guitar lessons " or " workshop " a new page loads. This isn't the most convenient way of navigation. Dropdown menu's keeps things together and clear. The bigger part is used for the content a person wants to achieve. Only this part can be reloaded when a link in the other frame is clicked on. This way only a relatively small HTML-file needs to be reloaded, this might save some time. Remember that clear navigation is a high priority one web-building. Another often used way of web building is smart usage of colours. Forms should be quickly to identify from the rest of the page. Black-White differences are a great way of achieving this.
If the grey-white tints are to simillar, people with colour-blindness or other eye conditions might get a little agitated. I will include a simple drawing of how it might turn out. Being able to build a fancy website with nice pics and bright colours all over might look good. But the most important part of a website is its navigation.
An other aspect of a good running community is COMMUNICATION
Communication allows individuals to interact with one-another. I am not really active that much on GMC but if you want to have a good running online community, make sure people are able to simply send each other messages or chat. Again simplicity is the key. Nothing fancy, a clear simple communication system is all there is to a good running community. Maybe a system on the website which allows the student/user to directly send an email to an instructor just by filling in a form. Or a live chatbox where questions can be asked and answered quickly in a matter of seconds/minutes.
The lessons:
I really enjoy the lessons here, and i have learned some pretty sweet skills in the half year i have been a member of GMC. But there seems to be missing a bit of structure sometimes. One teacher places all the notes on tab, the other one includes them in the actual video. Both are good but its better to keep things in one way only. I prefer the tab because then you don't need to rewind the video. This isnt a major problem however if the teachers want to do there lessons their own way that is absolutely fine. Im just a regular guy behind his computer lol.
And I guess that is pretty much it, I hope you guys find some of my information useful. My point of this article was to illustrate how a good website functions and not to criticise GMC's current website, which I think is fabulous. A summary of this article would be that, if you keep things clear and simple, and make sure interaction and communication are running fine, GMC will be a truly awesome place for guitarists
Good luck all and rock out!
p.s Sorry for any grammar-mistakes, I've tried my best and hope I've done well
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For example for communication, you can send a private message to any member straight from the forum (click on the name above avatar), and he will receive it in a popup window as soon as the page is refreshed. I don't think there is faster way than that atm. 
