hotpress.com why how what

What is hotpress.com?
Hotpress.com is Ireland's most spectacular website. While we have a particular emphasis on music - Irish and International - we also deal with all manner of pop culture and politics.

What do all the buttons mean?
Aha, good question. The buttons take you to specific places in hotpress.com
Accross the top you'll notice HOME, MUSIC, POLITICS, WHAT'S ON, MAIN EVENT, FEATURES, ARCHIVE and INDUSTRY.
These don't need much explanation but
"Politics" is where all hotpress' political journalism goes - that runs from the always thought provoking and controversial "Whole Hog" to interviews with celebrated campaigners like Naomi Klein.
"Main Event" is where we collect some of Hot Press' coolest recent cover stories.
"Features" is the home of our Film, Comedy & Sport coverage. It also acts as a magnet for the more general lifestyle features that we do.
"Archive" is hotpress.com's very own history. Hot Press magazine has been around 25 years; it's covered a hell of a lot of stuff - here's where you can find it. Currently the archive represents about the last 4 years of Hot Press magazine in full; and the previous 21 on a staggered basis. As you can imagine, building such a massive bank of knowledge takes time, but we're going to keep at it so that hotpress.com is the ultimate resource for studying music, Irish social and poltical development, and all the other great names and causes that have impacted us.
"Industry" is hotpress.com's focus on the Irish Music Industry. It includes a full directory of all the business involved, complete with a who's who of the main players and much more.

What about audio and video stuff? That's all covered by the section called BROADCAST - you can see the button for that on the left hand side. You'll also see a banner ad for it. BROADCAST is Video Interviews, Pop Videos and Audio Tracks by streaming, Super cool microsites and lots of hot competitions.

What do we use for streaming? We use Microsoft's Windows Media Player. Yes it works on Macs too (hotpress.com central is almost totally macified!). If you don't have it, download it now! Windows Media Player

Microsites? On our microsites we tend to use Flash by Macromedia. It's a really quick download if you don't have it installed so don't hesitate. http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash
Macromedia Flash
Competitions? Kim Porcelli, hotpress.com's content editor has assembled a wonderful selection of prizes for our first month of operation - go to the broadcast section to find them.

What about all those websites that have gone out of business? The internet has had a rough six months. It became clear to us that the 'free everything' model wasn't going to work. The reality is this, hotpress.com spends a lot of money developing content, building the archive and providing services for you the users. Therefore, come 2nd April 2002 we'll be charging 20 Euros for a years membership. That's about the price of a CD by the way. However, until then membership is free on a trial basis!