Website updates and collecting feedback

[heterodont]

Honestly, I'm probably gonna parrot a number of other users as well but I am not a big fan of the sudden minimalist change to the website layout. As you've acknowledged, the previous layout had personality to it and helped it stand out compared to other comic websites - now it just looks exactly like webtoons save for minor differences here and there. I don't even use webtoons at ALL and when I loaded tapas I was immediately struck by the similarity. I do think some sort of design needs to be implemented to help tapas stand out as its own website.

And smaller thing, I don't like that to read a comic I have to click on two different buttons. It's somewhat insignificant honestly but when I click on a thumbnail, I sort of expect to be taken to the first/last page? I might be biased because of portfolio sites and taking people Directly to your content to minimize any potential of error but I did honestly prefer the previous incarnation of it. I doonn't like the details separation because I frankly feel like that should be the FIRST thing people land on so they can get an understanding of what your comic is about and whether or not they want to read into it.

I feel like the top banner? of comics is a little confusing too, I feel like if you're going to have more than one comic showcased they should all be clickable in some manner, and not require me to click an arrow to get to the comic that catches my interest.

Though positives, I do like the change in the comment section. And the inclusion of more than one genre for community comics as well as the LGBT tag. Though I do definitely want to see where y'all are going with this regardless.

[michaelson]

The differences between the mobile app and the website were good, they made each version optimal for the platform of the user. This version tries to hard to make them similar and it makes the website in particular much more difficult to use.

Hm, the difficulty is that the web version was growing more and more behind the more we updated the apps. There are certain features that are app only that would be incredibly helpful but difficult to translate to the web version with the previous user interface. Comparatively, there aren't that many platforms that have a bifurcated web and mobile experience - they tend to aim for as much parity as possible.

There really wasn't any need to change anything. The site worked very well like it was and perhaps only small tweaks were needed.

Again, there was a definite need to change things with the website - like I mentioned the disparity between the reader experiences for the web and mobile were getting wider. If you were to visit the Tapas web and download the app, the functionality was becoming less and less aligned to the point where we needed to close that gap.

First priority really should be fixing the novel section bugs, as entire sections of missing text (italics) and no breaks between paragraphs are rendering many novels completely unreadable.

Yes - this is a high priority item for us and we're working on fixing that issue right now.

Not really a major bug concerning the novels section: but I just noticed with the new formatting, it gets rid of the automatic breaks between paragraphs.

Yes - all formatting bugs for novels are being worked on and are a top priority.

I get those are popular and they worth the reading but I'd like some variation? Maybe, find something I didn't know yet.

These recommendations will evolve over time.

Everything is really hard to find, and for some reason the "dashboard" button loads so slowly I had to give up after over a minute of waiting and go via my profile -> my series -> edit my series -> add episode, and publish that way.

We're looking into the load times for the dashboard right now.

By everything being hard to find, I mean finding comics. I can't figure out how to sort by views, likes or subscribers, if that's even possible.

That's good feedback, we'll try to figure out a way to re-integrate this level of granularity back into the search.

one huge disappointment for me with this update is the loss of the customised button that we creators can use to send people to websites or in my case the place where i sell my comics

This still exists on the series landing page but definitely agree that we should re-prioritize it's visibility on the episode page.

Could someone please tell me how to access my dashboard? The button doesn't exist that I can find

If you're logged in, it's on the upper right hand corner.

Ah, there's a scaling issue, in that case. It only appears when I have my browser in full-screen mode, which I never do. Thanks for letting me know, though

Thanks for bringing this to our attention! We'll address this in a future build.

It glitches when I'm trying to see all comics, it only goes down part way and then in the bottom left corner, it shows multiple thumbnails overlapping eachother.

We'll look into this bug - we're currently categorizing and prioritizing all bug reports related to the new website.

Direct access to the dashboard on mobile devices

We'll look into a way to address this since we retired the "Full Site" option.

Creators can no longer access their scheduled episodes to view them. Previews don't seem to be working either.

We'll look into this asap.

The mobile app really could use some creator tools. It currently has none I can find.

This is probably the only area where the app and web are going to remain bifurcated in terms of functionality - the creator tools will largely remain a web only feature and experience.

[Pan]

Perhaps an unpopular opinion:

Formatting issues and navigability aside, I like how it looks

[UzukiCheverie]

wait

no

nonononono

are you shitting me

@michaelson do you know how many hours I spent reformatting all 330k words of Time Gate: Reaper's novelized version for y'alls website? I kid you not, it took two weeks to get it all ready to upload and I still haven't finished uploading all the episodes. I'm just thankful that I have 300+ thousand words already uploaded which people aren't gonna fly through. No one reads it anyway.

That aside, you know why I spent two weeks reformatting it?

Because y'alls novel platform doesn't have any formatting tools whatsoever. No right/left/center align. So all the sentences that I had to forcefully shove to the right side using the space bar are now closer to the center and I'm sure the episodes with text meant for the center are now god knows where else on the page. If y'all are gonna change visual aspects like the maximum width on text then you need those tools that make the text static in its position no matter what. Literally web formatting basics 101.

Not that I can check because it won't let me scroll the full list of episodes without hitting the stupid Continue button where it asks me to subscribe (ON MY OWN SERIES). Which doesn't work on mobile btw because it keeps sending me to the episode at the bottom of the list instead. So I have to manually click through episodes at the bottom of the page and it's 2020 and this shouldn't even be an issue.

I'm not going back and fixing it. Screw it. I already had to sacrifice a lot of Time Gate's novelized formatting for the bugs and lack of real writing tools beyond Bold and Italics. If anyone gives a shit they can download the PDF copy which I'm also offering for free. At least that one is downloadable and won't unexpectedly change its appearance without prior feedback.

[Random_Guy]

The parity is distinctly a problem.

While I understand needing to keep both the website and the app on about equal footing in terms of updates and the like, making the website this similar to the app was clearly a mistake.

[zccoffee]

Hello!
Do I understand it right that NSFW comics are not going to show up in any category like Trending, Genres etc?

[Iris-Grimoire]

They shouldn't show up in app mode, but should in desktop mode. If not submit an email to see if that's not another glitch.

[zccoffee]

No, I'm talking about desktop mode. For example, if you select BL genre.
Sorry, my English is very bad.

[PixelEnchanter]

Mature (NSFW) has its own tab, doesn't it?

Mature | Tapas

[zccoffee]

Only premium comics in that category.

[nozorries]

Thanks for the note. Appearance and layout are mere aesthetics; I look forward to the restoration of the former desktop navigation functionality; the need to click 4-5 times to read the latest episode of a library entry is a strong incentive to read elsewhere.

[joannekwan]

I'm still seeing them on desktop.

Did you check your mature filter? Sometimes that setting resets.

[zccoffee]

Mature filter is off.
I see it in profiles, but i don't see it in genres, popular, trending etc.

[joannekwan]

Really? Hm, because right now when I go to the popular tab these show up and the ones circled in red for sure have mature episodes that I've found from just a quick click-through.

[zccoffee]

Two of them are premium comic, apathetic boyfriends does not contain really NSFW scenes, and EYES ON ME is visible in "popular", but does not visible in BL genre for example.

[joannekwan]

Eyes on Me is categorized under romance and appears normally

[zccoffee]

Ok, sorry. However, many of NSFW comics just disappeared from genres and other category.
To be honest, I just want to see answer from tapas team.

[carloswebcomic]

@michaelson - The visibility for non-premium and Smaller comics keep shrinking.
How long are you guys going to keep this up?
If you don't want other comics on your site, why don't you just tell everyone else to go away?

[zccoffee]

@michaelson Do I understand it right that NSFW comics are not going to show up in any category like Trending, Genres etc?

[UzukiCheverie]

because Tapas is a business and they don't want us to know that the entry level readers and creators who work for free are the currency ¯\(ツ)/¯