Month Two: Changes and Pains
i don’t know which month has had its greatest growing pains and progressions. the initial month (month zero) was before the site was posted and looked a lot like that meme of the dude writing literal fire on paper. only to look back after the first real month of the site being live and seeing that i was, in fact, NOT writing fire. Month one had a great deal of changes and discoveries. happy for all of them (ouch)! Month two now feels squarely behind me. i know because that same revelation i have felt two times before this has come to me once again, almost in dutiful time. i think this past month has found its own flavor of new challenges, recurring old ones and doors opening to fresh batch of completely fields of terrifying problems.
i just wanted to list the changes to the site in the past month, again, for posterity.
the summer special edition: is now complete. besides a brimming level of pride for the whole thing (held together by scotch tape and dreams), i also found it incredibly taxing. many people i know think i’m just having a carefree happy fun time over here. it may not seems like that much to post twelve times in 4 weeks (really 5 weeks) but it truly was a beast. i do have a life outside of here you know. but that doesn’t mean i’ve shorted this feature or the site by any means. my greatest joy this month are the little Japanese Eki-train style stamps over each review that have been featured across the special edition. a genius flourish if i do say so myself! it is a Japanese tradition represented tastefully in each featured review. they are also a link right back to the original feature, in case anyone in the future finds these reviews and want to explore the site deeper. terrific stuff. so in the future i can create new and different Eki stamps to apply on articles for future Special Editions. i love the idea so much. very fun, very subtle. the dancing version of Sago for the summer feature was a quick and irreverent placeholder i drew on a sticky note for my desk for the July 1st opening date. then it was uploaded as another placeholder for the summer feature. i fell in love with how goofy he looked, this version of him quickly became the de-facto version for the whole edition in totality. so he really was meant for the center of the Eki stamp. in the end the whole summer edition felt astonishingly cohesive. my particular favorite reviews were Hitsujibungaku’s Don’t Laugh It Off, Suneohair’s SKIRT, RYUNSEKEI’s TOKYO SNIPER, Enjoy Music Club’s FOREVER, oh and Perfume’s GAME. they all pushed me in new ways or introduced me to a new perspective. SKIRT specifically gave me a sense of joy and appreciation of life, it was a powerful album. one i wanted so badly to rate higher. Don’t Laugh it Off was an album i was quite tepid on for a while, yet it remains my most revisited after the month has gone by. FOREVER broke the mundane mold of writing, i really had a blast writing it. it felt low stakes enough that i could get just as silly as the artist themselves. i learned a lot doing that. TOKYO SNIPER feels like my best writing to date. not because it is particularly transcendent, but it feels like the first time i have been able to collect and articulate my thoughts into good strong writing. a real hallmark of my growth after two months of some truly awkward efforts (though nonetheless personal). all that said, i just wanted to give a postmortem on the whole thing. some thoughts and feelings can never be conveyed, but i wanted to give a few of them anyway.
site changes: i have become more adept at wielding this damn website to my wishes. truly, in all the dramatics, it certainly feels like a Arthurian Quest to find enlightenment or slay some giant. the Eki stamps took some of the most complicated coding on this site. i have replaced all buttons with hand coded versions (they can go drown in a sewer). i have implemented a collapsing navigation bar, it looks great on desktop. i have re-positioned the nav bar elements on the mobile version of the site, they now look quite lovely. i reworked the front page many many times. it is still not perfect, but definitely better than it was. i have added a nice clean look to the reviews’ rating number. i have added a place for future Special Editions. i have added a place for genres, we will be getting to that. i have added a staff member, which came with a whole new realm of site fixes. i have included a search bar.
the search bar: it took about 6-8 real hours to implement. i guess i really am just using this portion of the site to air my grievances. enjoy the drama! the initial search bar was perfunctory, but necessary. after i slept on it, i knew it should be better. i must admit the desktop version is still a bit janky, but the mobile site has a much better and effective search bar. suck it!! email me “golden orchid” if you’ve read this far to receive special mention in an upcoming feature. seriously tho, it looks great, and works surprisingly well. as long as the word or tag is mentioned, it picks it up. kinda really cool.
i have unfortunately killed the splash page. the one with Sago and the site motto. when you visit “www.thesagasureview.com” it now sends you strait to the front page. i loved it so much, but i knew it was time for it to go. it just felt so… classic Sagasu. i built one on for my personal site and hoped to keep it for at least a couple years. it seems vision beats out affection, a life lesson. dropping it meant that site visitors would be less confused where to begin, and i can funnel everyone to critical information just by the main site URL. the result is much more powerful and is mutually beneficial for both me and readers. the splash page just made it an extra cost of admission to the site before “getting on with it”, as they say. RIP. i will miss you.
outside of this are very small fixes. putting Japanese titles in classic quote 「brackets 」helps achieve a stronger site identity. some back end SEO optimizations. social media rubrics for future posting. and if you text someone the site link, it should now look like a professional shorthand. etc etc.
it feels like most of the efforts this month have been on larger ideas than the small minute projects. which, i suppose, is a sure sign of maturity. i have been grossly focused on the summer feature, wrangling in Chance (the new staff writer), and future working a year-map for the site so it can grow in the proper directions. the fixes i have been (and will be) making will be smaller and smaller in scope but more critical to the site’s identity. i need to adjust the review pages to feel more professional for instance. or work to tighten up the clarity of the rating system. ironically, i had once created The Sagasu Review to be a very personal critique of music and other parts of the industry. yet as i move forward, i feel as if i can express my true self less and less. expression is fat, fat cut in means of the site finding a more professional voice. so now i don’t really have a place to express myself, until i need to discuss site changes here. and that is going sooooo great. maybe i’ll have to do something about that…
in any case, it has been an exciting and thoroughly rewarding three months of the site until now. i hope that the next month will be just as interesting. i really do mean that!
The Sagasu Review is only getting better. upon a growing catalog of music reviews, the site will be accumulating a veritable spirit bomb of interesting content and human reflections. stick around to discover more!
sincerely,
Marcus Landeros
Editor-in-Chief, The Sagasu Review
currently listening: Suneohair — Aoi Niji 「 青い虹」
