Introducing wikiloops albums

Hello there, friends of wikiloops :)

Let me begin with the good news for those among the wikiloops supporters who are still in need of some last minute Christmas presents - we might just have the right tool for you:
Starting today, wikiloops offers album creation.
Albums are a nice item to add online to your wikiloops showcase and they are good to share -
To serve as a nice give-away, these digital albums come with an ready-to-print .pdf cover & tracklist, so if you happen to have a printer and a CD burning software, go ahead and create your first wikiloops album :)

[img]http://www.wikiloops.com/forum/images/cover_preview.png[/img]

[b]How does that work?[/b]
1. Create a standard playlist with 4 - 14 tracks in it.
2. Visit your profile and edit this playlist (edit button)
3. When you are sure you will not have to add or remove any tracks, click "prepare album" and go ahead adding a cover image and editing the details.
4. Click on publish & done you are

Check out one of the first albums out there - assembled by Tofzegrit, and a real praise to wikiloops pink sock funk (I am listening as I type):
[url=http://www.wikiloops.com/album/6297-Marceys+Songs.php] Marceys Songs [/url]

[b]
What else is new?[/b]
The second improvement of the day is the upgraded member showcase which has replaced the "about me" tab on supporting members profiles, and which lets you customize which tracks & albums of yours you want your profile visitors to come across first.
As a little extra candy, a picture gallery is embedded in the showcase, so you may add some live, studio, instrument or cat photos if you wish.

Thanks go out to [b]bleymehl[/b] and [b]Liesching[/b] who gave the final motivational spark to implementing these features in a conspirative meeting in Leipzig a couple of weeks ago.
For those interested, there is a quite complete documentation on those new features in the "feedback & suggestions" forum, were they were introduced and discussed for a few weeks - I will have to add / update the related help section articles as soon as possible - I have to admit, I rolled out this update a bit early to make the album feature available in time for Christmas,
some more things & pages in need will get a facelift quite soon.

Now, once I am at it announcing [b]positive news[/b]:
[img]http://www.wikiloops.com/forum/images/russ_preview.png[/img]
It does look as if one of my long lasting dreams is about to come true - we have started on translating the wikiloops interface to Russian, "we" being me on the technical end and our new member [b]gerodoth[/b] from Stalingrad on the language part.
Working with a language I can't even read is definitly a new challenge and requires some unexpected extras, so we will take some time to chew our way through the whole interface, but it looks as if it is going to happen!

Let me comment on the current [b]funding rally[/b] before I end:
13.75% of our needed budget for 2016 has been collected in our years-end funding rally so far, which has been going on for 30 days today - I guess it is needless to say that I would like to see that rise a little more before the month runs out.
I would not be introducing new features if I had any plans to give up on wikiloops, and I do appreciate anyone who is willing to chip in on the cost of this crazy yet beautiful project called wikiloops online jam sessions.


Let me wish you a nice ending of 2015,
among nice people & with a little extra time for making music
wherever you are and whatever you celebrate :)




Here's the traditional stats of the day:
Tracks online: 48.054
Members registerred: 32.470
published albums: 2 :)