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
Thanks for the feedback.
We are actively working on bringing back the Popular section with a few tweaks and also making adjustments to the Trending section. One of the difficulties is making sure that the sections are working as intended - in the past, the sections tended to be dominated by a handful of creators and we wanted to bring forth more opportunities for newer creators to be discovered. While we admit that the current iteration of Trending is no where near where we want it to be, we are still trying to give it more time to adjust.
We are exploring a few ideas for the Popular section - i.e. bringing back an older algorithm and potentially introducing a cycle of different algorithms that take effect at different points in the day to generate a greater variety of opportunities and even the playing field. Some algorithms will weigh newer creators more favorably, while others will operate purely through like-comment-subscriber ratios.
Hope that clarifies a few things and I apologize for any negative repercussions that our changes have taken.
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!)
Is the change to rectangle series icons for everyone still going forward on the original timeline? Or has that been pushed back?
It's just delayed, from the looks of it. Most likely the overall site update's bugs pushing things back, considering scheduled episodes randomly glitched this week and they had to hurry and prioritize that.
ink and support gone
Just noticed on my novel's side/edge that there is no banner image to support someone. I have ink unlocked since I took part in the last Inksgiving, so I have the ability to have that support banner beside my series. It is not present when reading a chapter. In fact there is NO link at all to support via ink.
I just made a banner for people to see to know that I'm opening up another thing for support
And it's entirely pointless if #1 it does not appear and #2 there is no button to click to give me ink. @michaelson
I belive you can't see ink on your own series if you are logged in. Becuse you can not give ink to yourself. Log into another account and check
The support banner and support messages feed is showing up for my account (while logged into my own account, the support button itself is not there since I can't self-tip)
But yes, check if it's visible on other people's pages @nostalgicroxas so you know if it's just a glitch for your own account or not.
Currently the only way to find the support link is the go to a series' page > details > scroll down
That stuff I can see, but on other's episodes and my own, there is no Ink Support banner to appear or Ink icon like there used to be on the individual episodes.
Of note by that "Description" page you linked @joannekwan the banner listed there is not the Ink Support banner. that banner is the general artist banner that links to whatever exterior page you have set up.
The current set-up has literally made it harder for me to give ink to people I enjoy, or to receive ink, and there's no way they can see the banner. (As you can see, that banner pictured is not the one I uploaded to the Ink Support page so it literally is. not. visible.)
