If you’re just now checking out the site, you might have noticed some changes! Heavy as Hell has been upgraded to version 2.0 of OpenVoter. With this release there are plenty of new and exciting features.
1. Sharing
You can now share submissions with your friends. Just click the share link, enter a personal note if you choose to, and click share. Other users will now get an alert telling them to check out the submission.
2. Distinction Between Stories, Photos, & Videos
You can now submit a story, photo, or video as the actual submission, and browse by type.
3. Alerts
You can now be alerted either by e-mail, or on-site alerts, or both about new shares, comments, and private messages. All you need to do is set your preferences in your account page. By default, alerts are only on-site.
4. Private Messaging
You can now send private messages to other users. Just click the envelope button on the bar on the top of your screen.
5. API
Heavy as Hell now has a basic API. If you’re a developer be sure to check it out.
6. Subscriptions
You can now subscribe to comment threads to be alerted when a new comment is posted on a thread you’re subscribed to. By default you are automatically subscribed to the thread when you submit the story or when you leave a comment, but you can change this in your account page.
7. Filters
You can now enter keywords in the filter page to hide submissions with these keywords from view. Don’t like stories on Radiohead, just add the word radiohead to the filter box and those stories will vanish from site.
8. Blocking Users
You can now block users to hide their submissions and comments from view.
9. Nested Comments
Comments and replies are now nested for easier reading.
10. General Improvements
The site has been generally improved and hopefully it shows.
Well thats a basic summary of the changes, and new features, let us know what you think and what could use improvement.
It’s been a year since the launch of Heavy as Hell using the SocialVoter CMS. We’ve seen some active spans, and some not so active spans. Truth be told, we like the more active time spans a lot better as more content gets submitted so we end up seeing a large range of stories of all types.
Anywho, in the next couple of months, Heavy as Hell will be getting a major overhaul complete with tons of new features and a brand new look. The SocialVoter CMS will still be the management system behind it, but it will have a new name…OpenVoter. I’ve been working on it steadily over the course of the past several months and hope to have it finished up in the next month. Then it will be tested and released here for your enjoyment. I don’t want to ruin the suprise of all the features that it includes, but suffice it to say, the number of changes and everything will make it feel like a brand new system.
In the meantime, enjoy the site, become more active, submit more stories, post more comments. This site isn’t about us the admins, its about music, you and the community!
Oh yes, the end of another contest is here. Although I loved being able to have 3 first prize winners this time, this comes with some lame news as well. It looks as though one person might have put some time into trying to win without reading the rules. Nothing sucks more than having to disqualify a user, but if I don’t it would leave another user shafted. So please know that we here at HAH debated and discussed this endlessly. We did not make this discussion lightly and we know that there could be repercussions for us. So here is the deal…
The winners are “noneck”, “XTRMDave”, & “mcphranklee”. User “Metalgasm” is a user we wish could be a winner, but he is from Canada. Now of course we have no problem with our metal brothers and sisters way up north. They gave us Devin Townsend! Our rules however clearly state that “We are very sorry, but only winners from the United States are eligible due to legal reasons.” Now without going into some big debate on this, you have to understand that we are a very tiny company. We don’t have the funds to pay lawyers to find out what we can do over international borders and what we can’t. So we have to play it safe. However, I have an offer that I hope will make Metalgasm feel he is still welcome here at HAH. Get me your address and I will send you a small stack of cd’s to add to your collection. This is out of my own personal stash. Now this is not something I can do all the time, but I have a ton of cd’s and might feel presured into doing it whenever a user puts in the effort Metalgasm has. Cool? I hope so. The last thing I want is for our international users to feel unwelcome. We love you all. We just can’t afford to include you in any official contests. As you can probably tell, we feel pretty bad about that.
So the three winners mentioned above will be sent an email asking them to get us their snail mail address. As soon as we have that the packages will be sent out. A new contest will be launched soon as well. As always, if you have any idea on what prizes we should giveaway post them in the comments. The only rules for contests is that they be something very recently released, something a wide range of people will want, and something within our $100 per month prize budget. That’s a maximum! We have found that it doesn’t matter how much we spend on the prize. It only matters if we can figure out what you users want the most. So that is what we will try to do. Thanks everyone. Vote up the good stuff with the passion only Hard Rock, metal, and punk fans can!
Win A Jane’s Addiction A Cabinet Of Curiosities Sampler!
This contest is over. Winners will be announced within 24 hours and a new contest shortly after that. Stay tuned!
This week we are going to try something different. This time we are going to give away 3 first prizes! We have three sampler cd’s from the new Jane’s Addiction box set A Cabinet Of Curiosities. One of them could be yours!
Details on the prize:
A Cabinet of Curiosities is a compilation box set by alternative rock band Jane’s Addiction, released on April 21, 2009 on Rhino Records. The collection includes three discs of demos, rehearsals, remixes, covers, and live recordings from the groups initial lifespan of 1986–1991, and one DVD featuring the movie Soul Kiss, the band’s music videos, and concert footage.
This very rare sampler of Jane’s Addiction’s first ever boxed set contains rare demos of “Mountain Song” and “Stop!,” an amped up remix of “Been Caught Stealing,” a rambling live clip of “LA Woman” that could raise Jim from the dead and more.
Sampler includes:
Mountain Song (Radio Tokyo Demo)
Up The Beach (Demo)
Stop! (Demo)
No One’s Leaving (Demo)
Been Caught Stealing (12” Remix)
Ripple
L.A. Medley (Live)
1% (Live)
Ain’t No Right (Live)
Ocean Size (Live)
Details on the contest:
How you earn “points” to win:
As always, you earn “sins” (points) for submitting links to stories about hard rock, classic rock, metal, punk, industrial, glam, goth, grunge, grindcore, hardcore, metalcore, etc. It’s not just metal! For example, we think THIS VIDEO is Heavy As Hell along with stuff about Jane’s Addiction. Voting for stories others submit also gets you “sins”. The third method of getting “sins” is to comment on submissions others have made. Pretty much just be active on the site. The point of the site is to be social, so make sure and “friend” users with the same musical tastes as you have. Feel free to invite friends, too. To get votes on your submissions feel free to recruit on metal forums, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, or wherever else.
Four Hints on how to win:
If someone was to just vote for every story in the upcoming section that they think deserves a vote, they could have a good chance with that alone. In fact one of the people that almost won recently got almost every single “sin” for voting alone. It’s just that easy, people!
Voting for other people’s stories can only help your chances of winning.
If you don’t vote for other people’s stories it can really hurt your chances in this contest.
Voting down spam (Viagra or anything else non-music related) gets you votes, too! The whole point of the site is that everyone is a moderator.
The first user chart means nothing:
We used to give the prize away to the top users of all time. Now it is all about who is the top user of the week, so unless you are currently involved we don’t care. I know that’s harsh, but this site needs active users! So that first chart means nothing really. Eventually we will give the Top Users Of The Month/Week/Day charts their own page, but until then please scroll down to the chart that counts most! We hope this makes new users feel more welcome. We are all about new users!
How can you tell if you are winning?
Go to the Top Ten Users Chart link at the bottom of every page. The first chart is ranking users overall and has nothing to do with this contest. The important chart is the one below that. It’s the one that says “Top 10 Users During the Latest Contest” in big bold letters.
Winner will be announced Monday May 25th.
Once we receive the address of the 3 winners the prizes will be sent out to them. We are very sorry, but only winners from the United States are eligible due to legal reasons. Users worldwide are welcome to be a part of the site, but this contest has to be for U.S. residents only. Of course any user suspected of cheating, gaming the system, or being involved in activity that could harm the site or it’s users may be banned. Being banned from this site will disqualify you from this and any contest.
18 years or older please.
Now there is no way for us to check this at all, but for legal reasons we have to say that you must be 18 years old to win the contest. Why? Because if some kid wins and his parents get all pissy with us, we can say it was against the rules for the kid to have entered the contest in the first place. So if you are below 18, please be honest and let us know so we can give the prize to someone who is over 18. No ID check though, because we can’t think of a way to pull that off.
We still only want guitar based music!
So why no rap? Rap doesn’t use guitars! We want to celebrate people who actually play instruments. This is what we are passionate about. This site was started to talk about hard rock, classic rock, metal, punk, industrial, glam, goth, grunge, grindcore, hardcore, metalcore, etc. No rap, rapcore, dance music, techno, hip hop, pop, or country. So we strongly discourage those styles. We are not big fans of Emo either, but that’s a whole different subject. Now before thinking there are racial reasons for us not liking rap, please look up the bands God Forbid, Bad Brains, Kings X, & S2C. I’m pretty sure the admins of this site have not only voted up stories of black artists on this site, but submitted them as well. It’s not about color, it’s about the music! Play an instrument or go away!
To be clear, rap and techno do NOT count for this (or any) contest at this site. This has always been the case with this site and it always will be. Users earn points for down voting stories about rap, rapcore, dance music, techno, hip hop, pop, or country as well since it is looked at as spam.
The contest has already started!
When does the contest start? If you are reading this it already has. So CLICK HERE and get started already!
Yes we have more contests to be launched. My hope is to have the next one up and running by Tuesday morning. First off I need to announce that Dave (aka XTRMDave) has won yet again. I have a strong feeling that anyone could have beat him by voting alone. You people didn’t even seem to try. Well, my goal now is to find something our users care enough about that you all fight like Hell to get it.
Dave, I still need you to tell me what game system you want that Wolverine game on. It was last months contest and we need to get that for you as soon as possible. Maybe along with the Slayer 7 inch. Let us know and it is yours good sir! Thanks for the support.
Now Let me end this with one small request. I am noticing several independent bloggers starting to use this site to promote themselves. I think that’s awesome and I totally encourage that sort of thing. However, keep in mind that this is all about the social aspect. So please take a look at the submissions of others and vote them up if you think they deserve it. I’m just not getting enough vote activity and that tells me people are not getting social enough around here. I want you independent bloggers to get some valuable networking out of this site as well. Thanks.
So you people didn’t seem to be too excited about the Wolverine video game contest last month. So this month we are going to try something different. This time we are going to do a different contest every week! Now although we are not totally dropping the video game thing, we are going to mix things up a little. This first week will be for the very rare “SLAYER 7-INCH - ‘Psychopathy Red’ - FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE…” we got from the band’s press agent.
Details on the prize:
“Psychopathy Red,” is the first new track from Slayer since 2006’s thrashterpiece “Christ Illusion”. It has been available as a 7-inch vinyl disc since Saturday, April 18th, 2009 (as part of the third annual Record Store Day). Only 5,000 of these limited edition discs were manufactured worldwide, so this is a very rare item!
The blood-red vinyl “Psychopathy Red” 7-inch collectors item is packaged in a special Russian crime scene “evidence envelope,” as the song was inspired by the heinous Russian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, aka the Rostov Ripper, who confessed to brutally murdering 56 children. The song was recorded by the band - guitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman, bassist/vocalist Tom Araya, and drummer Dave Lombardo - in a Los Angeles recording studio last October.
Slayer is currently in a Los Angeles studio recording a brand-new album due out this summer. The band will co-headline with Marilyn Manson on the five-week Mayhem Festival set to kick off July 10th in Sacramento, CA. In addition, Kerry King and Tom Araya made a special appearance at the Ephiphone Revolver Golden Gods Awards last month, where they presented the “Best Live Band” award to Slipknot. Slayer was presented with its first Golden God Award in 2004 when the band was named “Best Live Band.”
Details on the contest:
How you earn “points” to win:
As always, you earn “sins” (points) for submitting links to stories about hard rock, classic rock, metal, punk, industrial, glam, goth, grunge, grindcore, hardcore, metalcore, etc. It’s not just metal! For example, we think THIS VIDEO is Heavy As Hell along with stuff about Slayer. Voting for stories others submit also gets you “sins”. The third method of getting “sins” is to comment on submissions others have made. Pretty much just be active on the site. The point of the site is to be social, so make sure and “friend” users with the same musical tastes as you have. Feel free to invite friends, too. To get votes on your submissions feel free to recruit on metal forums, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, or wherever else.
Four Hints on how to win:
If someone was to just vote for every story in the upcoming section that they think deserves a vote, they could have a good chance with that alone. In fact one of the people that almost won recently got almost every single “sin” for voting alone. It’s just that easy, people!
Voting for other people’s stories can only help your chances of winning.
If you don’t vote for other people’s stories it can really hurt your chances in this contest.
Voting down spam (Viagra or anything else non-music related) gets you votes, too! The whole point of the site is that everyone is a moderator.
The first user chart means nothing:
We used to give the prize away to the top users of all time. Now it is all about who is the top user of the week, so if you are currently involved we don’t care. I know that’s harsh, but this site needs active users! So that first chart means nothing really. Eventually we will give the Top Users Of The Month/Week/Day charts their own page, but until then please scroll down to the chart that counts most! We hope this makes new users feel more welcome. We are all about new users!
How can you tell if you are winning?
Go to the Top Ten Users Chart link at the bottom of every page. The first chart is ranking users overall and has nothing to do with this contest. The important chart is the one below that. It’s the one that says “Top 10 Users During the Latest Contest” in big bold letters.
Winner will be announced Sunday May 10th.
Once we receive said winner’s address the prize will be sent out to them. We are very sorry, but only winners from the United States are eligible due to legal reasons. Users worldwide are welcome to be a part of the site, but this contest has to be for U.S. residents only. Of course any user suspected of cheating, gaming the system, or being involved in activity that could harm the site or it’s users may be banned. Being banned from this site will disqualify you from this and any contest.
18 years or older please.
Now there is no way for us to check this at all, but for legal reasons we have to say that you must be 18 years old to win the contest. Why? Because if some kid wins and his parents get all pissy with us, we can say the kid shouldn’t have entered the contest in the first place. So if you are below 18, please be honest and let us know so we can give the prize to someone who is over 18. No ID check though, because we can’t think of a way to pull that off.
We still only want guitar based music!
So why no rap? Rap doesn’t use guitars! We want to celebrate people who actually play instruments. This is what we are passionate about. This site was started to talk about hard rock, classic rock, metal, punk, industrial, glam, goth, grunge, grindcore, hardcore, metalcore, etc. No rap, rapcore, dance music, techno, hip hop, pop, or country. So we strongly discourage those styles. We are not big fans of Emo either, but that’s a whole different subject. Now before thinking there are racial reasons for us not liking rap, please look up the bands God Forbid, Bad Brains, Kings X, & S2C. I’m pretty sure the admins of this site have not only voted up stories of black artists on this site, but submitted them as well. It’s not about color, it’s about the music! Play an instrument or go away!
To be clear, rap and techno do NOT count for this (or any) contest at this site. This has always been the case with this site and it always will be. Users earn points for down voting stories about rap, rapcore, dance music, techno, hip hop, pop, or country as well since it is looked at as spam.
The contest has already started!
When does the contest start? If you are reading this it already has. So CLICK HERE and get started already!
X-Men Origins: Wolverine video game giveaway contest!
Ok, so I’m pretty sure that we got a bigger reaction from the “Guitar Hero: Metallica” contest than we did for the “Guitar Hero: World Tour” contest. I find that rather strange since “Guitar Hero: World Tour” cost about 3 times as much as “Guitar Hero: Metallica”. So price maybe has little to do with it? Maybe you all already have the game systems and gear, but want more games? The whole trick is finding out what you people want the most. So this month we are going to give away a copy of the “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” game. Yeah, I know this one has nothing to do with music but we couldn’t think of a way to keep with that theme.
You pick what game system version you win!
Now the REALLY good news with this one is that it is available in a ton of formats! So the winner will be able to pick if they want the game for the Nintendo Wii, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, Playstion 2, and even for the PC!
How you earn “points” to win:
As always, you earn “sins” (points) for submitting links to stories about hard rock, classic rock, metal, punk, industrial, glam, goth, grunge, grindcore, hardcore, metalcore, etc. It’s not just metal! For example, we think THIS VIDEO is Heavy As Hell. Voting for stories others submit also gets you “sins”. The third method of getting “sins” is to comment on submissions others have made. Pretty much just be active on the site. The point of the site is to be social, so make sure and “friend” users with the same musical tastes as you have. Feel free to invite friends, too.
Three Hints on how to win:
If someone was to just vote for every story in the upcoming section that they think deserves a vote, they could have a good chance with that alone. In fact one of the people that almost won last month got almost every singe “sin” for voting alone. It’s just that easy, people!
Voting for other people’s stories can only help your chances of winning.
If you don’t vote for other people’s stories it can really hurt your chances in this contest.
The first user chart means nothing:
We used to give the prize away to the top users of all time. Last month we gave the prizes away to the top 3 users of the month. This month we are giving one prize to the top user of the month. So that first chart means nothing really. Eventually we will give the Top Users Of The Month chart it’s own page, but until then please scroll down to the chart that counts most! We hope this makes new users feel more welcome.
How can you tell if you are winning?
Go to the Top Ten Users Chart link at the bottom of every page. The first chart is ranking users overall and has nothing to do with this contest. For the rest of the month, the important chart is the one below that. It’s the one that says “Top 10 Users During the Latest Contest” in big bold letters.
Winner will be announced May 1st.
Once we receive said winner’s address the “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” game will be sent out to them. We are very sorry, but only winners from the United States are eligible due to legal reasons. Users worldwide are welcome to be a part of the site, but this contest has to be for U.S. residents only. Of course any user suspected of cheating, gaming the system, or being involved in activity that could harm the site or it’s users may be banned. Being banned from this site will disqualify you from this and any contest.
We still only want guitar based music!
So why no rap? Rap doesn’t use guitars! We want to celebrate people who actually play instruments. This is what we are passionate about. This site was started to talk about hard rock, classic rock, metal, punk, industrial, glam, goth, grunge, grindcore, hardcore, metalcore, etc. No rap, rapcore, dance music, techno, hip hop, pop, or country. So we strongly discourage those styles. Now before thinking there are racial reasons for us not liking rap, please look up the bands God Forbid, Bad Brains, Kings X, & S2C. I’m pretty sure the admins of this site have not only voted up stories of black artists on this site, but submitted them as well. It’s not about color, it’s about the music!
To be clear, rap and techno do NOT count for this (or any) contest at this site. This has always been the case with this site and it always will be.
The contest has already started!
When does the contest start? If you are reading this it already has. So CLICK HERE and get started already!
That’s right people! I have to say it was a very close contest and I for one was rather thrilled to see three people give a good fight for this one. I wish we had three copies to give away, but it’s just not in the budget right now. So we will be getting a hold of Greg soon to find out which version he wants.
Now I feel it should be said that a mysterious user named Googly was kicking some major butt all the way up to the end by doing nothing more than voting! In fact a few suspected him of cheating or gaming the system, but we could not find anything but legit activity. So I have to point out that this proves that voting alone can get a brand new user pretty close to the winners spot without even submitting a story! I hope this makes more people realize that they can win this thing no problem. Thanks a ton Googly for showing everyone that it can be done!
I also want to thank XTRMDave for giving Googly and cGt2099 a run for their money. I hope all three of you are able to give it your all for our April contest. This contest has Adamantium claws and will be announced April second…to make sure everyone knows we are not joking.
So here is a screenshot of the final “sin” totals for the March contest.
To start with:
So you all might have heard about our current contest for the Guitar Hero Metallica. Well, we need to get the word out on our little contest. So I have a deal for you. I don’t care if you are an SEO expert, internet marketer, blogger, social media expert, or just someone with a ton of followers on Twitter. I will judge the contest by not just who gets the site the most traffic, but also who gets people to be active on the contest. I will look at who brings new inventive ideas to the table. I will be watching many social networks, other social news sites, and several other places I must keep secret.
What earns you points?
Well, unlike our other contest, this does not have an automated point system. This is judged by many factors and will be picked by the HeavyAsHell staff. However, there are a few things you can do to greatly improve your chances. Get any story about this contest on the front page of a social news site. Blog about the contest. Send a Twitter message promoting the contest. Post the contest page to your Facebook page. Vote the story up if you see someone else submitted something before you. Now of course the best way to win this is if you think of a few things that I haven’t listed here. Use your imagination.
The true reason for the contest:
Now I will be honest and admit that there is more than one reason for this contest. Of course we want people to be more active on this contest, but I also would love to have some SEO, internet marketers, and bloggers I can recommend to bands, labels, and music fans that come to our small family of websites. The question is if can you promote something that is outside of the SEO of an SEO blog. If you can get the word out on something in the real world we will know you have what it takes to trust our contacts to you. Good luck everyone! Feel free to ask any question in the comments or contact me directly on Twitter.
Now for a few boring rules:
First off you must be over 18 to win. We are very sorry, but only winners from the United States are eligible due to legal reasons. Users worldwide are welcome to be a part of the site, but this contest has to be for U.S. residents only. Of course any user suspected of cheating, gaming the system, or being involved in activity that could harm the site or it’s users may be banned. Being banned from this site will disqualify you from this and any contest. No one directly connected to this site can win for obvious reasons.
What you win:
Now since we want everyone to jump into this contest no matter their musical tastes (unlike the contest you are spreading the word about), we wanted the prize to be something everyone can use. So we are giving away a $250 Amazon gift certificate! This means it can be used to buy anything offered on the Amazon website. It will be given by email, so make sure you give us the right email address.
