Heavy As Hell Blog

With all the anguish going on in the world today such as the economic downturn, the wars, terrorism, political bickering, we here at Heavy as Hell Light as Heaven decided it was time for some changes in hopes to sort of brighten the mood and make things less dreary.  So we decided to spruce up the site a bit and make things a bit lighter with the hope that the rest of the world might catch on and follow our lead.

So please, let us here at Heavy as Hell Light as Heaven know what you think.

(april fools)

Keith Wagner Heavy As Hell News af2010, heavyashell, lightasheaven

Take The Next Step

Yes, this is open to music sites worlwide! Because we DO love our international users too!

So HeavyAsHell is a great way to promote your site. Sure some of you have fallen in love with posting links. We thank you for that. But what about making sure those links get voted to the front? How can you make sure that your content has a better chance at getting attention here? Well what about using our API? Let me make a deal with you all. The first 5 websites to implement the HAH API into their site in a way that features submissions of that site gets a full write up on this blog. Talk about special treatment!

As soon as you have it ready, send us a message to our Twitter account at http://twitter.com/HeavyAsHell

So maybe have a sidebar where all the HAH submissions of your site are listed? Maybe create a submit/vote button that shows how many votes the story has on HAH? Then your readers can click and vote them to the front without trying to get them to come to HAH and hunt down submissions on your site. So why worry about doing more than getting to the front? Once you get to the front, that’s it right? Not at all! Look at our sidebar. Notice the list of the hottest submissions? So say a submission had it’s time on the front and has since been buried, but yet keeps getting votes every few minutes. Well, then it is buried no more! It gets listed at the top of our front page stories on every page that chart is listed. It is a way to make sure that the submissions from your website stay on the front of the site!

Now I know how hard it is to convince some of you people that something is a good idea. Fine. That wacko Mark is having delusions of grandeur again. Take advantage of my delusions while you still can! The first five websites to use our API on their site will get a write up feature on our blog, get promoted by my personal Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, Blogger, Google Buzz, Linked In, Tumblr, Friend Feed, & Jaiku. I will also promote that write up on the RockMyMonkey.com website, MySpace, & Twitter. Now of course it will also be promoted on the official HAH blog, Twitter account, and Facebook page as well.

So fine. You don’t believe that using our API will help drive traffic to your site. Fine. So do this so that I will promote your website through every place I can for a day. I can also guarantee that some of the more hardcore users of HeavyAsHell will push your site even further by doing re-tweets, hitting the share button, and a few other methods of helping to make sure it is worth your time to give this API a try.

On top of all of this, how about this challenge? Whatever music website has the best implementation of the HAH API by Tuesday morning March 30th 2010 will get an auto-refresh on the front of RockMyMonkey.com! Yes, you understand that correctly. I am willing to sacrifice the traffic of my other site for you people. That’s how much I believe in this. When I get up Tuesday morning I will pick the winner. From 12:01 am (pacific) Friday April 2nd 2010 until Monday at 12:01 am Pacific 2010 the RockMyMonkey front page will auto-forward to that site. Deal?

The truth though is that you will find that using the HeavyAsHell API will help drive more traffic to your site. Call my bluff. I dare ya!

Mark Carras Heavy As Hell News api, challenge, heavyashell, webmasters

In case anyone didn’t notice, Heavy as Hell got some updates this evening! Here’s a quick rundown of the new features.

1. Automatically parse and retrieve story titles and descriptions during submissions - You know when you’re submitting and you have to fill in the title and give a description for your submission? Well now if you just want to copy paste, that’s pretty much all taken care of for you. Upon submitting a website, it should pre-populate the title and description for you. You can then either modify them to your liking, leave them as is, or if you want to enter your own, just clear the fields and enter your own. This might not work for every site, but for the majority it should.

2. Dupe Detection - Tired of seeing what is essentially the same story 5 times? Well now upon submitting a story, Heavy as Hell will search for potential duplicates as to try to lessen duplicate stories. Don’t worry if it pops up for your and your story is original, there’s a link to submit your original story instead…it’s a computer its not always perfect, but we’re trying to make it as perfect as possible.

3. Change and Canceling Your Vote - Accidentally vote a story up or down when you didn’t mean to? Well have no fear, now you can change your vote or if you want to cancel it, you can do that too. To change your vote, simply click on the opposite arrow. Cancelling your vote is done from either the story’s page or from your user profile.

4. Bands - Now bands can have their own profile unique to them. Bands can register on the site and create a profile letting users know their website, MySpace profile and more. Sorry, but as a band you can’t vote on stories, but if you want to participate as well, just create a user account! Now what do these bands mean for users? Simple, as a user, you can become a fan of the band. When you become a fan of the band, your sins transfer over to them (don’t worry, you keep them too) so try to get your favorite bands at the top of the sins list! To view what bands are registered with the site, just click the ‘Bands’ link in the category bar and you’ll be given a list of the bands registered.

As always keep enjoying the site and have fun promoting music that rocks!

If you happen to stumble across a bug, please let us know at http://www.heavyashell.com/about/bugreport

-Keith (DarkNemesis618)

Keith Wagner Heavy As Hell News, New Features heavyashell, newfeatures, socialvoter, update

Well I’ve started work on the next version of Heavy as Hell / SocialVoter and I’m curious to see what people want to see in the next version. So go on, comment, let me know and you just might get your wish when the next version rolls out!

Keith Wagner Heavy As Hell News, New Features changes, development, heavyashell, socialvoter

Mark Carras, the one who just LOST his challenge will be cutting his hair today at 4pm Pacific / 7pm Eastern! He is planning on streaming it so be sure to check it out at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/rockmymonkey so be there to check it out.

Saturday Night Monkey will be airing at the normal time (9pm Pacific / 12am Eastern) at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/rockmymonkey

Keith Wagner Heavy As Hell News challenge, heavyashell, locksoflove, markcarras

At 10:38am EST this morning, the 1,000th story became popular. What this means is that Mark Carras, who issued the Heavy as Hell Challenge to get 1,000 stories front paged by October 1st. If that was done, then Mark will shave his head and donate his hair to locks of love, as well as $1,000. Well like you can see, we have 1,002 quality popular stories so guess what, Mark will be cutting off all his hair.

Congratulations everyone. Before and after pictures will be posted as soon as they become available.

Also, keep submitting stories, just because the challenge has been met, doesn’t mean that this site is going anywhere. We want to see Heavy as Hell become a key destination for your social music news!

Keith Wagner Heavy As Hell News challenge, heavyashell

I’m not sure if anyone noticed, but Heavy as Hell was down for about 15 minutes today while I worked on incorporating a new feature into the site.

On your account page, you will see a new field called “Favorite Bands”. In here you can enter in your favorite bands to let your friends and fellow Heavy as Hell members know what bands you like and listen to the most. Simply enter the bands seperated by commas.

The cool thing is that when someone views your profile, they’ll see your favorite bands and by clicking on any of them, it will take them to a page that shows all articles tagged with that band’s name!

So, go on, update your profile and let us know who you like listening to the most!

Keith Wagner Heavy As Hell News, New Features favoritebands, features, heavyashell

Mark’s challenge has been in full swing since the launch of Heavy as Hell on the 1st. Currently we have 13 popular stories, 987 short of the stories needed to fulfill his challenge which is definitely for a good cause.

So help both Mark make his challenge and help Locks of Love help kids who are less fortunate than most of us. I would totally shave my head for Locks of Love with only 500 popular stories, but alas my less than 1″ of hair doesn’t do much.

Anywho, post, vote, comment, lets make Heavy as Hell the one stop shop to share links, photos, stories, interviews and videos of the music we all love.

Keith Wagner Heavy As Hell News challenge, heavyashell, locksoflove, mark, music, popular

As of Midnight last night the new Heavy As Hell has now been re-launched featuring the SocialVoter CMS (Content Management System). Heavy As Hell is a site for you to submit stories, vote up stories, and comment on stories all related to Rock, Metal, Punk, Industrial, Goth, and industry news in general. So go ahead and register for an account and submit some great stories for the community to read.

On a side note, user avatars currently aren’t working. I’m looking into that now and hope to have a solution in the next 24 hours. In the meantime, enjoy!

Keith Wagner Heavy As Hell News Heavy As Hell News, heavyashell, metal, music, relaunch, rock