Zander's Picks
An album-review site for a music lover: his friends' three favourite records, each one reviewed and scored by him, shown as spinning vinyl on a podium — and a dashboard where typing an album's name fills in everything else.
Zander has opinions about music, and his friends kept asking him to rate their favourite albums. This site gives those opinions somewhere to live. Everyone he reviews gets a page with their top three records on an Olympic-style podium — first in the middle, second and third either side — and every album gets a page of its own with his score, his write-up and his rating for each track.
It is built to feel like handling records. Each album is a picture disc that spins on the podium; open one and the record slides out of its sleeve with a tone arm resting on it. The home page puts everyone's picks in one list you can sort by newest, name or score, and a stats page works out the rest on its own: his top ten, whose taste he rates highest, how his scores spread, and which decades and genres keep coming up. Every track has a thirty-second preview, so a visitor can hear what he is talking about.
Zander is not technical, so the dashboard does the tedious part. He types an album's name and picks it from the results, and the artist, year, cover, label, genre, running time and full track list — with every track's length — fill themselves in. All he writes is the review and the scores. The same search sits on the home page, where anyone can send him their own top three; they have to pick each album from the results rather than type it, so every suggestion that reaches him is a real, specific record.
It is a hobby site, and it is still built like the others: one password for him, sign-in attempts limited, suggestions from strangers checked and rate-limited before anything is stored, and a one-click export of everything he has written.
What it does
- Each friend's top three on a first-second-third podium of spinning picture discs
- An album page where the record slides out of its sleeve
- His score and review, plus an optional rating for every track
- Thirty-second previews of every track
- Everyone's picks in one list, sortable by newest, name or score
- A stats page worked out from every review: top ten, score spread, decades, genres
- "Most aligned with Zander" — whose favourites he rates highest
- Type an album's name and the cover, year, label, genre and full track list fill in
- Visitors can send him their own top three, picked from real search results
- Suggestions checked and rate-limited before they are stored, and never shown publicly
- Search with Ctrl+K from any page
- One-click export and import of everything he has written
Want one like this?
This was built, launched and is looked after by me. Packages and prices are published — read them before you talk to me.