This we shall remember. Tapas IS listening.
Thank you all hardworking Tapas team
I'm not really happy with most of the changes (I actually don't see a single thing that really has improved reader or creator experience compared to the old design and functioning, besides maybe the cover size changes but they are not released yet X'D? But it's nice to see that the tapas staff is at least open to listen to all of the complaints and I gladly take a not that pretty site over one that's pretty but dysfunctional ...
One thing that I miss a lot is that on the original site I could click on any of my public episodes and directly go into editing mode of this specific upload with only clicking the pen icon next to it. Now there is no way to edit it directly, when I for example spot a mistake or wanna add an author's comment ... I have to remember which episode it was, go to my dashboard, go again to the series and then search for the episode, and click the editing option here.
That are like 3 more steps for a thing that worked perfectly fine 
(edit: okay I now saw you can also go to the story overview and edit episodes from there but that's still a bit more complicated than before)
Also I think the most important thing to bring back would be the infinite scroll. That is just like slicing up a movie into single youtube upoads for no apparent reason, when you could just watch the whole thing before and it really is just ... a worsening ?
Did the progress bar for the initial goal/ad revenue/ink support disappear since yesterday? It's always been before Balance and now there's nothing there. It's always been a nice confidence boost to see it slowly inch closer to a 100 subs :c
Are you talking about the progress bar towards milestones? Because I just checked my dashboard and I can still see mine
@michaelson Not to be a bother, but will the 'shelter in place' order issued for essentially the entire Bay Area affect Tapas' response time to bugs and other reports/needs? Unless you guys can handle everything in a 'work from home' situation, I think it'd be nice to notify people here if you foresee any delays.
I just don't want people chewing your heads off over something you can't control 
No, I don't think this will have a significant impact in terms of our response time. We have a pretty good system for WFH that we've been implementing throughout the years so hopefully this won't impede our workflow too much. Our Asia teams have been working from home for the majority of the last quarter due to the covid-19 situation in Asia, and our US offices have followed suit prior to the Bay Area mandates.
That being said, we hope that you are all safe and practicing necessary precautions during these turbulent times. Please do continue to tag us, and we will look into the issues. Thank you, and stay safe!
Look I don't know if this is relevant or already been said and all but here's my two cents.
I don't know what the traffic stats are, but I always felt that the website should be more creator designed while the app be for the readers.Because trying to mix the two isn't working, so I would simplify things or somehow add a "creator mode" and "reader mode" but I would imagine that would be more impractical.
Again I don't know the numbers but I would focus on smaller creators (Im talking about hundreds of subs so it doesn't affect me). It seems like a lot of big creators use tapas as a backup anyway using webtoons or thier own site for posting. So focusing in on what you're good at and not following a path already taken (webtoons) would seem logical to me. But I'm not running a site lol.
Again I don't know the numbers but would love to understand the justifications for decisions. Whats the rate of new creators of joining and dropping off over the last 5+ years? is there any actual impact on the creators due to site changes?
The app is terrible for me, the app keeps pushing and offering comics with genres that I have(and would) no interest in. I get that you're pushing the popular ones to be even more popular. But maybe use collected user data to try and filter out a more useful selection to appeal to me and others. Or maybe have a "interested and uninterested" function to genres so people can curate their experiences and comic feed. Like its just all bl!
anyway this will get buried, tldr maybe warn people before big updates and add a dark mode that's my only real expectations of you.
IDK if anyone noticed this, but when you go into an episode that has music, you can't find the title anywhere. Kinda sad because I liked knowing the title of the song I'm hearing : (
Will Tapas allow people to choose between Old and New "Design" or possibly go back to the old one, I find this new format very hard to read anything on
Hi can you email me at michaelson@tapasmedia.co with a link to the episode and any source files that you used to copy and paste from (if any) for our team to take a closer look at? Thank you!
Hello @michaelson! First off, I want to say a huge THANK YOU to you and the dev team for working so hard on listening to the users and constantly trying to improve Tapas! I know ever since the update it's been almost nonstop work to fix bugs and try to address outstanding issues. I have always believed in Tapas and I know that, given time and patience, the site constantly improves for the better. Some things take more time than others. I believe in your vision!
But I have to say, we are really missing the Popular section on the front page, which was based on user likes, comments, and interactions. Also it refreshed every 24 hours, so that other series had a chance to shine. I liked that if I clicked on it, it expanded, so I could scroll through pages of Popular series and see what people were reading. Not only did it bring us new subscribers, I myself found new comics and novels to read this way!
Now that it is gone, I have to say Trending is simply not the same 
I know I don't quite understand the algorithm of Trending, but it doesn't seem to reflect series that are actually trending. Some of the series are stuck there for a long time, even if it's been a while since the creator last updated. Some of them seem to be based on cumulative likes, which means longer series have a much greater advantage from the start compared to other works. In addition to that, as a reader, only a few series are displayed. If none of them are to my tastes, I can't expand the list to show more works.
From the creator side of things, ever since the update, I've seen the views, likes, and sub count growth on our series drop drastically, even though we have a not-insignificant follower count. Our regular fans continue to comment and interact, so it isn't a lack of viewer interaction. This leads me to believe perhaps it is a matter of discoverability. Making the front page has always given us a jump in new subscribers, or reminded our current subscribers that we had updated. It gave us motivation to perform well! It was always a point of pride, not only for us, but also our fellow creator friends, to make the front page based on viewer interaction.
I know we are not the only high volume Premium creator whose series performance has been affected. Which is unfortunate, since you know many Premium creators do rely on the income from their unlocks. Also, if this is our experience, I can only imagine how difficult it is for creators who are trying to build their audiences.
There was a lot of careful thought and decision-making behind the new design, so I'll try to offer some possible suggestions for change. Perhaps Trending could have a 24 hr time limit, such as Popular did, to cycle out the series? Maybe it could be based more on the old Popular algorithm, to take into account likes, comments, and interaction, so that it would actually reflect what was trending on the site. It might also be more fair to be able to expand the list, so readers had the option to see more than just a handful of series that people were interested in!
I do want to reiterate that we love working with Tapas and the whole team has always been so dedicated in serving its userbase. The work you have done in listening to feedback and fielding user questions does not go unnoticed! I hope that you can take this suggestion into consideration and we will see some changes soon!
Thank you so much!
Wow @vvbg we all could learn so much from this way of communications. My respect
Hi, I'm a creator and one thing I really loved doing on the website was setting one song on about four episodes so the same song can play through the whole scene. While you scroll the music will just continue where it left off on previous pages. I love setting background music for my comics but the new website update kind of made it impossible? If I set the same song for four pages now, every page restarts the song I was wondering if anything can be done for this please?
I am a little confused, it sounds like an algorithm that favors new creators would be more suitable for its own section (usually categorized on sites as "hot" or "new and upcoming", "rising stars"... stuff like that. You can make up your own name if you want to be different as long as people understand what the section contains!) whereas popular usually focuses on active content that has high stats. Then there's often also the ability to search by most popular across all time and that will bring you content that is active and content that was finished or stopped posting, alongside each other in an order that takes stats into account.
An algorithm that jumps around and switches within a single section can be confusing both for creators and readers. I understand the intention of bringing more variety and visibility, but I feel like that's what trending was always for? If you change Popular to something that isn't what people expect, they can start to form wonky theories about why the algorithm is like that (there are enough conspiracy theories everytime this site updates already :'D) and also feel cheated. I personally believe it would be better to keep the section and its function clear, but it's up to you.
If there's one algorithm I think is missing, it is one that would close up what a friend of mine on the site often referred to as the "donut hole". That is, when a series gets stuck because they are too old/have too many subs for Trending, but are not big enough to slide in on Popular. Many creators get stuck here if they don't maintain enough growth speed to get past it fast enough. If you get stuck in the donut hole, it renders your comic invisible on the site and means you purely rely on word of mouth and possibly advertisements to get past it.
As the site grows, the biggest series will almost always grow with it making it harder for those in the "donut hole" to be seen. This creates bigger differences between big and small creators and makes it hard for people in the middle to utilize the site's growing userbase. The middle also slowly becomes "just the upper part of the lower tier" by comparison to the big series. A separate category that helps the people in the middle will in most cases not bring them up to popular numbers on its own (who makes that leap or not will depend on content and how long and consistently they keep going) but it can make sure that how many subs the mid tier creators get on average grows together with the site instead of remaining stagnant. Basically... it would benefit the entire site and raise the amount of people who could make their comic a part time job.
Hey Michael!
One area your team may want to put their attention towards if you're actively trying to fix the site constantly promoting the same comics over and over again is the 'more like this' section that shows up under comics. (the 'what to read next' section seems to function the same as before, changing out occasionally with new staff picks and fresh comics!)
On every series, this section only promotes the top performing comics from that same genre. It has had the exact same comics (give or take one switching out with another, similarly titanic sized comic) since you have introduced this section! I've attatched two pictures from two genres to show this. Seriously, they haven't changed in two weeks.
It seems like a huge wasted opportunity to have this spot not only be the top of the chain, but also be incredibly static.
Readers see this area on EVERY single episode, which is a huge chance to promote new, trending material-- not items everyone has either already read or seen.
My suggestion is to change this spot to randomly pick comics off of popular or trending! Maybe even both! The most ideal situation would be for this new area to operate based on similar series tags added by the author (since genre tags are so broad), but I'm sure that will take a lot of time to impliment. Also, unless you implement the tag feature, this section probably shouldn't be called 'more like this'. Rarely, if ever, do trending/popular comics in your genre lists have ANYTHING in common. Except the genre tag. Which is insanely broad lol.
I also want to bump @LordVincent's post from today about the 'donut hole'! Story heavy comics in the long scroll format you guys prefer on site are hit particularly hard by this problem, since it takes them sometimes MONTHS to make a decent chapter, and yet they only get promoted for maybe a day or two, assuming they even make trending.
The best solution I can think of to the problem is still author added tags for the comics, along with reccomendations based on those tags. Seriously, people will tell you what they want to read if you give them a way to do so! (I know you guys have the 'favorite genres' option on the app too, but it's still app exclusive and genre alone is still far too broad.)
(On a high note btw, the fixes so far are working great! View count numbers are beginning to steady out, along with comment engagement. The 'all comics' being sorted by sub count is also back!! YAY. Although, I'd still reccomend making such a huge pile of comics sort by pages, not infinite scroll. You guys have a loooot of content. Thank you for your hard work!)