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Hello again, little did I know ... life is super (super!) crazy and turbulent for me these days ... I just wrote that first post, read the first replies, thought a little about what to say - then: boom .... I have been through so much it would fill an entire thread! But I put it short: Two family members in hospital ... still in hospital (it's been months). One of them is my daughter, who came over 3 months early. Second one is my dad. It looked bleak, really bleak and it also affected my psychological health. I recovered, but it was not easy and still is far from it. It's all so easy and shortly said, but I don't wanna spill out all my personal details in a post, I did enough of this in the past and while it would do me good, I do not have the energetic resources to process all the replies ... don't get me wrong, you are all great, but this is something I want to share only little. The situation is definitely a lot better now though and the outlook is positive again So if anybody wondered about admin absence, there you have the reason. Returning to it now though, I am happy that this forum exists and that I can write that here. No, I will not retire Psynews (if Mars keeps the server alive). I will embrace the requests from people who offered mod help and we will continue on, past 2024 and beyond I have a way better outlook now, a new private workplace under construction and I will now finally be able to be here more. And I also have begun to post Videos again on Jungle TV, which is a sign that I am well

Already did that, but instead of OpenMPT, I used XMPlay to export the tracks to stems (and of course I did it my way). Also, I didn't do any "mastering" since I want to keep the tracker sound as untouched as possible. The only thing I did was bringing up the tracks to (somewhat) the same level, and used a very gentle master limiter just to keep the tracks from clipping of course.

Psynews has been a cornerstone for all psytrance related topics: from music, party/festival annoucements, new releases news, discussion about various topics ranging from album/compilation reviews/talks, interesting video sharing (interviews, old video-clips), production tips and tricks exchange, general talk about culture, entertainment, spirituality and so on. That being said, my opinion regarding the improvement: Disclaimer: I'm aware it requires resources, mostly someones time, knowledge and some money, but here me out. Two things are here important and both of them can be seen as a great foundation for eventual re-haul/improvement of the website/board. First one is content and second one is user-database. Forum/board should be just one segment of the website. The front-page of Psynews.org shouldn't be board. It should look like a interactive web-page where you can find couple of things: - A nice clean horizontal menu with few sub-menus such as: News, Videos, Reviews, Events, Playlists, Forum. You can add Contact and/or Newsletter info as well - Big horizontal header, Psynews logo or promoted banner for certain release/event/something else - Top 4-6 articles should be right below, in form of a box or as a list, but pinned - Eventually side-bar with latest topics/threads from the board/forum - Everything else is a matter of details - Footer with standard copyright and privacy policy Now to the point: When you have already great content, such as well-written reviews or proper music annoucements made by members, you can use that to put it (highlight it) on the front-page of your website, with nice image attached it's like pro-looking article. For example if you are using Wordpress page, you can make great SEO (search engine optimisation) of each article and attract more visitors to check your website and engage in other content (including the forum). It also gives nice exposure to artists, event organizers, label owners, DJ's as something representative. It's a win-win situation. Turn on some social-media commenting below the article, or link it with board/forum, you have engagement. I'm not that much into technical side of things, especially regarding the server/hosting that Psynews got, but I believe it supports latest version of Wordpress. You can get nice web theme/template in style of blog/magazine for like 50 bucks. Everything else is a matter of details, how you segment your page, what kind of plugins are you using and how you format certain text within articles, what images are you using and so on. But let's be honest, it would look much more professional and more involving for many content creators, no matter are they posting new release infos or putting up some album reviews or just sharing the event details with public, as well to some random visitors or psytrance enthusiasts. Regarding the forum membership: I'm aware that many registered members are inactive, but let's keep focus on active members, lurkers and eventually newcommers. Form a small team of 5-10 well-spoken users who will be in charge of re-posting forum content on the front page. Start with ongoing year 2024 - put up all reviews up in the frontpage, pick couple of festival annoucements, some upcoming releases and create 20 articles. You can, but you don't need to re-post other reviews, news, but it would be great to get each month at least 20-most commented/viewed reviews in form of article (form past years), just make sure to change the date when creating the article (in case you don't want to see it up in the lastest article sections). Add couple of articles regarding the most important festivals, share some nice DJ mixes. You can always edit articles, format images, credit the authors. Instagram reels, Facebook posts and new YouTube uploads by labels or artists can be great source for a fine article. All you need is a engaging article title, 200-300 words, link within article, nice looking photo and of course some links. The best thing is to directly add/embbed a clip or a videot. Put some hashtags and it's good to go. Feature some playlists by DJ's - make it on weekly or monthly basis. Daily throwback - put a highlight on some forgotten artist or release or even label. I can go on for hours with this idea, but in the end, what matters is the will to re-shape this great website, and I'm not sure is that even an option, but if someone from Administration decides to deal with it, I will be first in line to check it on daily basis and support it by recommending it. Sorry for lenghty post.

Where else on the internet can one find lists / topics of Train related Psy/Goa-Trance tracks!? #) And Reggae, and so so much more 🙃

I think it would be sad if the forum closed despite being used less. We cannot know or control the future, there is a chance there is a mass movement towards, not away from forums in the future. May I ask.. how come the gigging artists of the scene do not come an invigorate a forum that would be in their interests to invigorate ? Their absence is quite loud. We can all say we have no time. We prioritize and make time for what we like and what benefits us most, as is natural. Like many genre specific forums there are the fans side to discuss music and producers sub forum. I believe one factor for the production side is that making psy trance sound as a top level production is extremely difficult, we may as well not lie about this and it takes long term practice and dedication. It can be disheartening, I bet 95pct give up and even if you pay for the courses available it does not make a great track for you. Maybe some big producers will see this and they could spend a little time to engage and support something that will be missed if/when gone. Even just a little personal presence, not giving away their top kick and bass secret sauce. Just saying hello once in a while. In any event things go where they go, we cannot control all. In life a little spreading of bets is no bad thing.

I personally would prefere it if the forum keeps running. I'm only posting once in a blue moon but I do read it way more. And I've been able to discover some amazing tracks/artists/albums through this forum lately so it is still very helpfull for me. I don't think it's that bad if moderating the forum only happens with a delay. Considering the forum is not very active anyway I don't see any harm with that.

Yes keep it running, I have some spare time if you need help I think I can help too forums still have some advantages no pub and not so distractive.

All i want is fewer smileys i miss the old few n selected Psynews emojis. Now -at least on my phone- it's hell opening up the smiley selections... So much lag n crash .. :posford: 😛h34r: ..... Love your dedication to the forum, RTP. Keeping it alive.

thanks RTP! whatever u chose its all good. it is kinda dead, but thats just a reflection of the internet in its entirety. we are getting ancient and the new kids are just into their tiktoks. the golden age of the internet is long behind us, still remember the first time i got connected back in 1994 on a 28.8k modem. those were the days i support the goa constrictor to become a mod 😃

I love this place and if you need any help with Mod/Admin'ing, I'd be happy to support. 😃

i'm reading psynews since the beginning and registrated in 2010, but i never posted a thing until 2024 but i was reading everything and discovered a lot of fantastic music trough the years because there isn't a lot of acitvity the last years, i decided it's time to start posting better late then never! over here (belgium) we are very lucky with parties, all were less than 50 km near my house there were (and still are, but less) parties every weekend with a lot of big names, i went (sometimes i could go on my bike) to acts as dimension 5, chi-ad, asia 2001, astral projection, hallucinogen, xenomorph, ka-sol, texas faggot, osom, kindzadza, x-dream, ubar tmar, ra, kox box, crossing mind, procs, infected mushroom, ... 20 years ago there were never ending party weekend with acts like that every weekend, insane if you think about it, sometimes i went to a party friday night, saturday morning to other party in a forest and then saturday to the last party untill sunday afternoon.......all with great acts..or great dj's we were very lucky over here with a lot of people who organised a lot of parties. now i release how lucky i was to be part of that time of partying....and also lucky that i survived that period😀

For me personally, life is very different at 50, no longer listen to much new stuff and very happy to keep listening to the classic dinosaur music on Flintstone tech, with no party's this part of the world, not part of the scene, hence not much to talk about, however still like to stop by from time to time and whittle, and see what all you youngins are doing, and drool over the amazing old school artists doing retro sets I could only ever dream about attending, occasionally some new music takes my eye, but in general think I past the boom boom! It's indeed a very different place here now, and while not for me with to much engagement, I can see how others still love to be here, think this post is important everyone addresses to move forward, certainly wouldn't want to see it archived,however it costs time and money to continue so needs to be a balance if to continue this way. RTP you and other mods have done an amazing job to continue and keep our Goa paradise alight, thanks for doing this, but if the time came to retire psynews, would certainly support that decision