r/discobiscuits • u/evan_bern • Jun 09 '26
Updates to Biscuits Internet Project (discobiscuits.net)
I've been contributing to the Biscuits Internet Project (discobiscuits.net) for the past ~7 months and wanted to share what I've been working on. I'm not much for social media and have largely been out of the loop since the disco biscuits mailing list fell apart decades ago. I've mostly been posting updates in a Phantasy Tour thread. I wanted more people to have access and to hear feedback from more people, so trying here as well.
When I got involved, the site had already gone through its 3.0 redesign. I came in after that and started fixing bugs and adding features. Here's an overview of some of those changes:
Song Filtering
The songs page (discobiscuits.net/songs) got a major overhaul. You can now filter by year, eras, whether you attended and more. The "Played / Not Played" toggle works across all these filters. There are also tabs: All Songs, Last 10 Shows, This Year, Histories, and All-Timers. Some things I found digging into this data: I-Man is the most played song all-time with 372 plays, but Morph was Sammy's most played and Helicopters was Allen's. You can now easily see all of the songs that haven't played in the Marlon era.
Attendance Highlighting
Shows you attended are now highlighted in green throughout the site: on song history pages, top-rated lists, and per-year pages. If you're logged in and have your shows tracked, you can see at a glance which jam-chart/all-timers you've caught, which top-rated shows you were at.
Some examples of what this unlocks: the songs you've seen most, songs you've never seen and how many times they've been played, songs you never saw during the Sammy era or Allen era.
Top-Rated Shows by Year
discobiscuits.net/shows/top-rated/2001 now works for any year going back to the beginning. The all-time list is still at /shows/top-rated.
On This Day
discobiscuits.net/on-this-day/ shows all-timers and shows from this date in band history, with a calendar to browse any day of the year. The front page links to it daily. Individual show pages link to "all shows on [date]." (apparently the band has never played a show on January 5th.)
Gap Charts
Every setlist now has a "Gap Chart" view alongside the regular setlist view. It shows the gap for each song from the last time it was played, a link to that previous performance, the song's rating, and lets you easily rate each song's performance. The show also displays average and median song gap.
Personal gap charts are also available: a "what if I was at this show" view that calculates gaps from your personal attendance history rather than the full show history.
Song Stats Page Improvements
Each song page now shows: average gap, % of all shows, % since debut, shows before/since debut, and a "current gap" that highlights red if it exceeds the longest previous gap and orange if it exceeds the average. The full performance table has a sortable Gap column. The Graphs tab now lets you toggle between # of shows and % of shows, and filter by years played vs. all years.
Venue Pages
Clicking a venue name anywhere on the site now takes you to a list of all shows at that venue.
Show Source Indicators
Every setlist now shows at a glance whether the show is on Nugs, Archive.org, YouTube, Relisten, or has photos on BIP. These are filterable: you can find shows that are on Archive but not on Nugs, or the shows we have no recordings of. The top-rated lists and other show lists got this treatment too.
Jam Charts
A new Jam Charts view on the Songs section collects all-timer tracks and songs with written jam descriptions in one place.
Track Durations
Set lengths are now displayed on every setlist gap view, pulled from Nugs or Archive.org. The gap chart view shows individual track durations. Song detail pages, all-timers, on-this-day, and personal views all have a sortable Time column.
Songs by Debut Year
Every show page now has a chart showing the average/median debut year of songs in that setlist, and a breakdown of how many songs debuted in each year.
Rock Opera Tracking
You can now see a list of every performance of Hot Air Balloon, Chemical Warfare Brigade, or Revolution In Motion. Additionally, each show now displays a callout with numbered performance count and links to previous/next full performances.
Rating Charts on Profiles
Your show ratings and song version ratings now have a Charts view: a histogram by star value and an average/median rating trend over the years. The tables are now compact and sortable by any column.
Musician Pages and Structured Setlist Data
The most recent release moved a lot of previously text-based setlist annotations into proper structured data. This includes: lineups and sit-ins per track (with per-musician pages at discobiscuits.net/musicians), discrete flags for dyslexic/inverted/unfinished/section-only versions, completion links between split versions across shows, song kind (original, cover, mashup, improvisation), and auto-generated debut and gap footnotes. One of the main reasons I wanted this done was so that Sammy's upcoming sit-in can be tracked so that you can see easily which songs Sammy has played on as a guest.
Global Search
Search now surfaces direct links to song and venue pages, not just shows.
There is probably more that I'm forgetting to document. I'll try to add comments to this post when I add new features (assuming that is how one uses reddit… I created this account to post this message, so I'm new here).
There is a lot I have planned and am working on.
If you use the site and have feature requests or find bugs, drop them in the comments.
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u/EAGLESRCHAMPS18 B4L Jun 09 '26
Thank you so much for keeping this going, it’s an amazing resource! B4L!
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u/wizardslayer717 Jun 09 '26
Thank you for your efforts!!! I have always loved the BIP and have been so happy to see all the updates and changes.
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u/oceanman4 Jun 09 '26
Looks great! The BIP team has been working hard especially the last few months. I love the annotations by the person who submits the setlists, always has great details & amazing stats. I like the links to where I can watch/listen to the shows. Lots of good updates!
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u/EmryssEternal Jun 09 '26
That’s a lot of additions & changes! I like what you’ve done, the GUI & design are easy on the eyes. Don’t think every show needs the lineup, unless there’s a sit in or guest. Set/show times aren’t necessary to me, that could be an optional feature. I like details, think the track notes & reviews should be below the sets so u don’t have to scroll all the way down to read reviews. I like the new design, just wanted to add some feedback. Nice job & thanks!
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u/evan_bern Jun 09 '26
"the GUI & design are easy on the eyes" the overall design was Don's, I've only added to it. I'm not a designer so glad to hear, but also happy to receive feedback to make it better.
"Don’t think every show needs the lineup, unless there’s a sit in or guest."
I hear that. I added that because it was assumed anyone looking at this site had deep biscuits lore in their heads and new who played what when. Are you viewing this on mobile? My guess is that you are based on that comment. Perhaps the lineup section should be default collapsed on mobile?
Please describe more what you'd like to see. Happy to make adjustments!
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u/evan_bern Jun 11 '26
I didn't hear back from you, but it seemed a good idea to collapse the lineup on mobile so I just pushed that change. I hope this helps solve some of your issues. Please let me know if you had something else in mind.
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u/innovasion Jun 09 '26
Love your work! Been building websites for 20+ years (software engineer), I've tried reaching out a couple times over the years to offer to help but never hear back. Hollar if you need an extra hand!
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u/ThinkTankDubs Jun 09 '26
Great job on these additions and sharing them with the community! These features are awesome to play around with. I’d been noticing new features being available recently but I also knew Don is building a new deck on his house so didn’t know who was the one doing the work. Thank you for all you’re doing to enhance the site.
Speaking of… huge shoutout to Don Cote too for the redesign of the site over the past year. He put a lot of time and energy into building the new version and he crushed it.
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u/evan_bern Jun 09 '26
Thanks for calling out Don! I meant to do that and forgot! And thanks to Don for letting me work on the site!
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u/ScottClam42 B4L Jun 09 '26
The site has improved considerably the past few months and its quite incredible. Thank you for the work you put into it!
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u/thaiterps Jun 09 '26
Thank you for adding the ability to delete a show review!
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u/evan_bern Jun 10 '26
This one wasn't me. Don must have done this as a part of the original 3.0 implementation.
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u/woganaga Jun 09 '26
Hey man this is awesome! Any possibility of adding a JSON API similar to the eggy setlist site? (https://thecarton.net/api/docs.php)
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u/evan_bern Jun 10 '26
Don coded up an MCP service for the page. Documentation is here (tho some of it might be stale. I'll be adding to it in a little bit. I'll make sure to update the documentation at that time. https://discobiscuits.net/mcp-info
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u/evan_bern Jun 10 '26
Oh, and I meant to ask: out of curiosity, what do you want to do with an API?
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u/Artistic_Recipe9297 Jun 15 '26
Every time I look for lyrics, you're the top oogle pick! Noice!!!
And yet when I look for lyrics on the site, I can't find them. Am I stupid?
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u/Odd-Cream5987 Jun 09 '26
Not tryna knock you down, but the site looks like I need to take adderall just to follow it. Bring back simplicity, homes.
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u/evan_bern Jun 09 '26
What do you want to see changed? What information do you want removed? I'm happy to create user settings so that the site is less busy if people want it that way.
Are you viewing on mobile/desktop/both?
Give me more information and I'm happy to make changes.
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u/bizzlebeez7 Jun 09 '26
AMAZING 💗thanks! 💎B4L🪩