Introducing Interactions: A New Feature of Where to Dance

Welcome back, followers of our news channels! We have some exciting announcements for Where to Dance. Today, we are unveiling our vision for how Where to Dance will work from here on out. We have made significant improvements to our system to better support our visitors. Let's go over some of the changes we made and why they matter.

Battling the Bots:

We have invested a significant amount of time in combating internet bots. Our website is hit with thousands of bots each day, and we have been actively reviewing our logs and developing strategies to prevent them from influencing our website. We have decided to move from backend integration to frontend integration. Many bots tend to load pages, spam forms, and attempt to attack the website. To combat this, we have created new detection methods, including forcing some of our tracking to use JavaScript to load our metrics. With this approach, we have been able to filter out most, if not all, bots, making them less effective than ever. By loading metrics on the frontend, we can now track how you interact with Where to Dance, including unique views, total views, articles read, impressions, and videos watched. This data helps us understand what you, our audience, are looking for in terms of interests.

Interactive Categories:

Every user now has a say in the direction of the content they desire from Where to Dance. Every action you take when interacting with our categories has meaning. If you visit a category or dance style, watch the live video channel, or read an article, you are helping decide the direction of our content creation. The categories are now smarter and will adapt according to each user's interaction.

Overwhelming Amount of Categories and Dance Styles:

With over 27 major categories and 190 dance styles, creating just 6 articles for each would result in 1,302 articles. If we published 6 articles a day, it would take 217 days to complete the task. This is an overwhelming amount of work just to establish a baseline.

Using Metrics to Prioritize Content Creation:

Not only will the website interact with each user, contributing to how the website is featured on the frontend, but we can also use these metrics to focus content creation on the most interactive categories. Instead of blindly creating content for each category, we can now use these metrics to add value and create content that aligns with our audience's interests. If you think your style deserves representation, sign up to become a contributor and help us create content in your favorite dance style or category.

Video is a Major Part of Where to Dance's Future:

We have stabilized the live video channels, and they should be more reliable than ever. Simply watching the live video channel helps guide our platform in the right direction. Your actions matter. Not only will the way you interact with the live video channel help boost your category, but it also lets us know that we need to add more videos for your category. Don't forget that you can also submit your own videos to be included on our website.

Interactive Dance Articles:

We have also updated the article component to gather metrics and identify our most popular posts. This information can be used to help us and our contributors create the kind of content that you, our audience, are looking for.

Vision Now and Moving Forward:

This is just the first step. Moving forward, we have a clear vision for Where to Dance. Imagine the platform as a large, interactive, ever-changing object. You, the user and the community, decide the direction of the Where to Dance platform. We envision that Where to Dance will not be a simple website where you can get some information; it will respond to the community and its users. It won't be a static website but a living, breathing entity that responds to the dance community. No one will have the same experience on our platform. We envision that Where to Dance will be a platform where every single user will have a different experience. The information you seek and the interactions you desire will not only respond to the community but also to you, the user. Every action, no matter how small, will shape how it responds to you. We envision a future where you, the user, can make information work for you.

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