Hey everyone!

I wanted to provide a new website update for week #3 in our efforts to improve this site as well as to provide an update on the StringTunes website development.

Website – donrathjr.com

We are making really great progress on all fronts! We were finally able to get all of the songs and sound clips into the site including the album presentations. Also, we did get the banner up for the Heart Strings CD, as you can see and we will be putting up our privacy, copyright and use policies in the next couple of days. All together there are over 80 pages of information and counting so we are hopeful that you are enjoying your visits here.

Two new and important articles were added; The Seven Keys to Creation and the Basic Characteristics of Sound for you to peruse. Also, we finished getting the kinks out of the back-end management panel for this site which was a bear to work through but it is now done. We are better organize for the pages and posts than before and our continued efforts in this regard will be helpful too. Also, all of the links are active and working perfectly. We also found a software add-on that keeps us informed of these links so we now know should one go bad. We will be able to fix it right away.

Lastly, almost all of the information from the original StringTunes site is now transferred here. We elected to edit and improve the articles and so they should read better.

Website – stringtunes.com

The all new StringTunes site is coming along nicely too! We have been able to get the basic structure in place and the back-end is identical to the one on this site making it easier to keep up and current on both.

We have found a temporary shopping cart to use in the initial stage of the new sites release and we are populating it now. In the immediate sense, only the CD’s and the mp3’s will be included. As time moves forward we will be adding much more to it offering excellent products such as; instruments, accessories and other goodies.

We have secured the use of a special artists profile that will be presented exclusively on the StringTunes site upon going live! This will be our first of many artist presented in our featured gallery and in the featured artist section of the site. We are very excited about this as he is a nominee and up for a Grammy award next week!

Music – Since the drastic downturn in CD sales has occurred industry wide, many artists are putting out digital only singles. It is a trend that will likely continue for some time. StringTunes will be doing the same so the plans for me to produce another CD have changed. Now and in the short term, as a song is written and formalized it will be released as a single and made available exclusively in the StringTunes Shopping Cart. All in all we are on track for going live on March 1st our original schedule.

Stop back in again next week for another update on our progress. Until then may the great muse in the sky provide the ear candy you seek!

Don