woodstock 99

July, 1999.
By Molly E. Holzschlag. (Link to original article.)

Turn on, log in, and rock out!

It's the '60s gone digital. Woodstock 99 will not only wow music fans with its awesome lineup of musical acts, but its Web site serves up some of the finest in design and technology that the '90s has to offer.

Woodstock.com is gearing up for the big event, which will take place in Rome, New York, on July 23, 24, and 25. Begin at the colorful home page, which acts as a portal to all things Woodstock. There are featured-artist interviews, retrospectives, and, of course, lots of stuff to buy.

Figure 1. Woodstock.com harnesses the technology of the '90s to bring you the love and spirit of the '60s.

Whether you want memorabilia from the groundbreaking original Woodstock festival or videos and CDs from current artists, you'll find the goods here. There's information about how to get the Woodstock Pay-Per-View simulcast via cable, how to sign up for the live Webcast (which will be available via streaming media), and where to sign up for a free email account.

As you begin to journey deeper into the site, you'll find yourself digging the colorful, energetic design. If you're streaming-media equipped, Woodstock radio will start playing through your speakers--my current visit has the beautiful voice and powerful songs of Sarah McLachlan setting the mood. The site developers had a lot of fun with the visual design, using creative background designs, bold splashes of yellow, blue, red, and green, and fun, quirky shapes. Each top-tier page uses a similar layout, but with a change in color and background--an interesting, if daring, approach.

The main area navigation options are Concert Info, News, Features, Artists, Community, MP3, Net TV, and Gallery. The navigation for the main sections is consistent, appearing at the top of the page in the form of a client-side image map. It works well and provides an anchor as you surf the site's content.

"The Woodstock.com developers were right to pay attention to the importance of community."

The good news is that each of these areas is jam-packed with information. But the somewhat frustrating concern is that although the similarities between the top-tier pages help keep visitors oriented, there are significant differences in the way each page's information is organized; this includes font sizes and navigation options. Although I like the deviation from total consistency, I personally would have opted for a more congruous approach, at least in terms of fonts and subnavigation.

Figure 2. The live Webcasts are a perfect use of the Web for an event like Woodstock 99.

The Concert Info area, for example, helps folks traveling to the show get organized. The page provides details regarding disabled access, what to do with kids and pets, what to pack, and how to get involved as a volunteer. This kind of information is invaluable and is a fantastic use of the Web, helping ensure that people have a safer, better experience at the event. The concern with this page is the rather jumbled text-base submenu. It's a bit confusing to the eye, and could have been organized with the individual choices in a sentence with each intrapage link separated by a comma, or using an unordered list to keep it organized.

The News page offers articles and columns of interest, press releases and press commentary, and helps staunch rumors. It's set up with headlines and a grabber sentence, and a link to the full article. This is a more sensible layout than that of the Concert Info page. Despite the fact that you have to drill deeper to get information on the News page, it's a neater and more logical design. And although neat and logical is definitely not what you want to be concerned with during the actual Woodstock festivities, it is important to the site's strength.

I'm especially pleased with the Features page design. This page offers the main feature article in its totality, with a right-side hotlink list of past features. Much better! Of course, the Artists page was probably the most challenging to design from an organizational standpoint. The site developers opted to put shortlists of artists from this year's bash, as well as listing Woodstock '94 performers, and even the bands from the original 1969 event.

Although it's interesting to see the diversity of artists, I think focusing on the artists for this year and providing retrospective links would be more effective. It seems that people will come to the Woodstock.com site first to get information about the current event, and then to enjoy information about past events. This premise would make me want to force current coverage to the top-tier, keep links and grabbers for past events well-positioned on that tier, and place the past event information on lower tiers of the site's structure.

Community, being a buzzword of late, can risk appearing like it was tossed in after the central part of a site's design. Woodstock.com's developers were especially savvy in paying attention to the importance of community for the demographic of individuals who'll visit this site—and go to the concert. I'm glad the developers recognized this and made chat and forums vital parts of the Woodstock.com experience.

The MP3 page is a sure winner, with great downloads from many of the artists. All the files are also offered in RealAudio, so you're not restricted to MP3. Similar in approach, the Net TV page is featuring Webcasts and videos before and during the show. In general, the broad use of technology—MP3, streaming video and audio, JavaScript, CGI—on this site doesn't cause a problem because it's all rational. It belongs here. It is necessary and appropriate, not just present because someone thought "Hey, let's do it because we can."

Figure 3. The Features page offers the main feature article in its totality, with a right-side hotlink list of past features.

The Gallery page is a keeper, with great photos laid out in thumbnail form. Up to this point, the photos are all retrospectives of the 1969 Woodstock concert, but that will change after the 1999 event, no doubt. You can then choose the photo you like, and the detailed view will appear in a JavaScript pop-up screen. As it is now, the Gallery page offers a walk down memory lane for the generation that was into Woodstock back in '69, and it's a fantastic piece of history for the younger set.

Woodstock.com is an upbeat, energetic site that offers extremely rich content. Its primary problem is that in its enthusiasm, the site sometimes sacrifices consistency. Technology is very strong and appropriate to the context, but I have some concerns regarding server load. I notice increasingly poor load times as the day of the event approaches. I hope the site administrators have taken this into account and are prepared for the onslaught during the week leading up to and during Woodstock 99.

But hey, if those of us unable to attend the concert in person do have to wait in the virtual lines, at least we won't be standing—as our Woodstock predecessors did—up to our ears in mud. Whether you have the good fortune to attend the show live, or you do so only via the Web, you're sure to have a great experience, connect with interesting and diverse people, and have the opportunity to enjoy the very best contemporary music that technology has to offer.

critic's rating

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designer's interview

Molly: What was your role in creating the site?

Caroline Collins: The site was created by ClickMedia; I joined the company after it had been live for over a month. When I came in, I wrecked it, and have been trying to fix it ever since. Mainly, though, I have modified the layout of the home page to help accommodate our many sponsors and partners.

Molly: If this wasn't a solo effort, how big was the team, what was its composition, and what was the relationship of the team members like?

Caroline Collins: Our team is microscopic. It is composed of Sara Maluje as graphic designer, John Kawakami as Perl programmer and Linux sys admin, and me as site producer, head coder, and pinch-hitting graphic designer. Our editorial content is handled by Carolyn Kellogg. We just added another Perl programmer, Michael Sullivan, and will soon be joined by a second artist, Ed Horneij. We work in one big room and interfere with each other's work constantly. I think that's "collaboration," but it could just be a nuisance.

Molly: How long did it take from concept to going live?

Caroline Collins: According to the former site producer, about two months.

Molly: How did you plan the design and functionality of the site?

Caroline Collins: [Note to self: Find out if planning was involved. Also find out what "functionality" is.]

Molly: Did you start with an idea of the existing market and demographics?

Caroline Collins: Yes, and surprisingly, it wasn't targeted at the "Woodstock Generation," but rather at the younger people who are today's festival-goers. As the Milwaukee Party Swingers say, "Every generation deserves its own Woodstock."

Molly: Did the client or someone else impose any limitations that constrained your development of the site?

Caroline Collins: I'm not aware of any limitations placed on ClickMedia by Woodstock.com. ClickMedia was shooting for a funky, handmade look, and I think they did a great job with that. The limitations we work under now are basically shorthandedness and lack of time. And intense pressure. Also, stress.

Molly: What did you have to leave out of the design that you would have liked to include?

Caroline Collins: I'd like to have a little more technological sophistication, such as your basic rollover effects. But mainly, I'd like to have a more text-based navigation system, rather than GIF-based. You'll see some of this when our sister site, Top20.com, launches in late July. Sara Maluje and I have been working nights and weekends to give it a design that is light and tight but still pleasant to look at.

Molly: What feature on the site are you most proud of?

Caroline Collins: We've really enjoyed working with content generated by the users in our Message Boards. We feature fun things such as a poll for a man who was asking whether he should be responsible and stay home with his wife and child, or be a wildman and go to Woodstock 99. Our results showed people in favor of his attending the concert, but he later posted a message to the boards saying he'd decided to stay home!

Molly: Is there anything you'd change on the site now that it's live?

Caroline Collins: We need to move a lot of stuff off the home page and into some subpages. "Add another button to the home page" has become a sad joke, but also words to live by. And, I'd lighten up on the GIFs. I think our content pages would work great in a glossy magazine where it takes a split second to turn them, but are not so good where every click is another little death.

Molly: What was the most important lesson or tip you learned while building this site that you'd pass on to other Web builders?

Caroline Collins: Learn to say no to unreasonable requests. The world doesn't end, in fact, no one even gets sick if you fail to get a certain GIF on the home page right away. The real lesson is that as a company grows, there develops a need for structure and specified production timelines. The transition from wacky, stressed-out anarchy to wacky, stressed-out bureaucracy is painful and may result in hurt feelings, but it's necessary. We're going to try it after Woodstock 99.

Molly: What's your favorite Web site?

Caroline Collins: Statistically, it's Excite.com. I go there often to check the stock market and the news. I like the way I can choose a photo for the upper-right corner to express my feelings. On good days, I use the colorful toucan; on bad days, I use the water buffalo. That way our marketing executives can look at my monitor and predict my reaction to their next request.

Aesthetically, I really like Don Barnett's site, and I worship the background patterns at Trici Venola's site. I enjoy those artists because their work is as much about biology as it is about technology.

Molly: What site do you wish you had designed?

Caroline Collins: Houses.com—I particularly like the way their title tag does not match their domain name. If you could compute the ratio of a domain name's theoretical value to the use to which it is being put, Houses.com's would be a very large number. I'll be very sad after the domain-name holders inevitably sell it to a realty company.

Molly: What was your background before becoming involved with Web site design and development?

Caroline Collins: I was an assistant professor of social gerontology, but I left to study new media at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications program in 1994. I would encourage anyone to leave social gerontology and study new media at NYU.

Molly: When you're not busy building sites, what do you enjoy doing?

Caroline Collins: I like to read off-kilter accounts of ill-advised expeditions, especially those of Redmond O'Hanlon. I'm a Citroëniste, and an animal-lover. I married someone else's high-school sweetheart in 1998, and we relax by pretending we might someday vacation in Australia.