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Mar 2020

This is pretty big and I forgot to add it on the form, yeah. It seems the pages just improperly go to previous pages even though you're on the newest one, too, because the reading reset and it thinks you're just starting. Maybe bringing back "read from the beginning" from the update should be a tad high on the list as well, just so that is its only purpose and next gives you, well, the next page. (and if there's no next one to simply show none, like when you've just read them all)

Whew... okay, I don't like the new design at all, sorry dear @michaelson x___x I am sure you all meant well, but... just nope.

I am totally with @blackdevil72 in some aspects. And @Alrathi has a pretty neat list of suggestions, too.

What I enjoyed when going to a new series was that I was RIGHT in it, I saw the latest comic page, I saw the artwork (not just some thumbs) and I knew right away if I liked the style of the comic pages.

Speaking of thumbnails: I am really, REALLY disappointed that the scroll down bar on the left side is gone, me, as well as many other artists, used the top to bottom list of episodes to make an artwork of continuing thumbs. 2 years of thumbnail uploads for the trashcan, it just looks like garbage now instead of a pleasant artwork in thumbs. Why did you change that? I mean, it was a feature I haven't seen on any other webcomic platform yet, it added so much personality and us creators were able to play around and make it more interesting for our readers!

Where's the continuous scrolling of pages? Why can't I just keep scrolling down instead of clicking a button with the mouse OR tap on the arrow keys on the desktop mode?

Where is the webcomic header? It might seem minor, but it is another important eyecatcher for the webcomic.

Why can't I support my fave creators from each page as easy as before? I know that the ink support button is SOMEWHERE to be found. But I really enjoyed the one-click support I had before.

Same goes with the external link, wasn't there some way to promote a link, e.g. to one's patreon? Still haven't found that...

The new design is - pardon - a cheap webtoons ripoff. Where's the tapas charm? Why should anyone feel welcome on a bleak, generic design like that?

Uuuugh, srsly, as much as I love tapas, the new design just won't work... T___T Please, please, PLEASE listen to your creators and go back to the old design... treating a desktop like a mobile just won't work and you made it unnecessarily user-unfriendly...

The 200x300 ish icon for any link of your choosing still appears for me, but only that. Regular banner and the Support banner that's even incentivized every Inksgiving are gone.

Unfortunately I can see neither of those, not even the 200x300 icon and I checked 3 comics I know for sure they had one... >.<"
Thanks for letting me know though =)

Is the update the reason why some of my series have re-locked pages I've already paid for?

That's really strange. Maybe it only shows up if the author has more than one series? Since mine pushed the "recommended series" tab to the bottom to show the portuguese version.

(i really need to update that icon...)

If that's really the case then all creators who focus on one series at a time are screwed... ^^"

Also I'd love to see it next to each page in the comic, so I can support my creators as uncomplicated as possible... it used to be so easy... XD; siiigh Good ol' days...

It shows on the series page, but is absent when you're reading episodes.
So the series page has the other works by the author plus their 200x300 banner. But these are absent and replaced by recommended titles when on an individual episode page.

I think I'll go cry x__x

I mean, as much as I love recommendations, the spotlight should be on the creator whose story you are reading atm... the recommendations after finishing a series was fine with me @_@

Oh well, I'll go to bed now and hopw that tomorrow everything will be back to normal...

Here's what I suggest to make Tapas better. Please consider my requests:
1: Add a dark mode
2:Add scrolling instead of clicking
3:Please bring back the banners

There was nothing wrong with the old site, and I know as moderators it is hard to change things once it is done, but I hope my suggestions for the better of the tapas community, will be heard.

Thanks so much for your time.

Thank you for being so open about the whole process. I submitted the feedback on the form too, but I think I can do a bit more here.

As you've probably heard, smaller creators, under this new layout, will have a harder time having their work viewed. This is mostly due to the constricting nature of the new format. This is mainly due to the home page having a fat bar at the top, drawing they eye to the "marketable" work (tapas originals/popular/commercial works). Whilst yes, this will certainly draw more people to your site and hook them on those works--as again, they are commercial which is not a bad thing--it means you're using page space for more instant clicks rather than encouraging the user to explore. Sadly, it doesn't exactly end on the bar at the top either, you also have staff picks followed by trending which take up even more space. Again, this is good for the site as it will bring new users to the more attractive and proven commercial material, however it also has the downside of very literally erasing quite a lot of attention to other works.

That's not to say that I hate the new site, or that there's no merit because there's flaws. I honestly love the new reading mode, it's far more immersive and I find it much nicer to read on, which is massive for the site (especially for the novels side)!

Some changes I think would assist the site's homepage would be to essentially either remove the bar at the top with the scrolling work, or remove the staff and trending pages that are literally half a seconds scroll beneath it. You don't need that much space dedicated to large work, I'd honestly think moving it to the bottom would be a massive help. Fill the middle with the old catagories you used new, trending, I forgot the others. In doing this you're bringing back the space for smaller creators who are honestly quite in need of having their work viewed and read. You are sacrificing a little bit of commerciality and it might not work best for mobile platforms (that I imagine are most of your readerbase currently), but you can optimise on that later and experiment with the aesthetic (we all love a good bit of aesthetic).

Another criticism I've seen is that people think it looks a lot like Webtoon. This isn't unfounded, it does look a little like webtoon, however, that's not surprising as most reading platforms on the internet follow that look as it is incredibly good at getting clicks and having early site retention. At the end of the day, you're a business, and as a business, user retention is incredibly important, however with this new layout I think you risk having a lot of the smaller users who make up a lot of your readership and authorship, feeling a little off about the whole thing.

I really am looking forward to the aesthetic and the changes. Again, there's a lot of merit in what's around right now! And remember, these are all just suggestions from an avid reader on your site who only recently got an account (I guess I was a bit of a lurker!).

I mean not like my comment will be seen perhaps. But if you are going to work on changing the site again, You can take into consideration of making it easier for smaller creators to get noticed?

I noticed on the side of my comics page list it shows the "Trending list" maybe change that to the Fresh list instead so smaller and bigger creators get noticed so its more fair? If Im going to be losing readers to other comics I rather them be lost to folks who need it more than I do.

I already submitted the form. Thank you for your understanding.

One thing I like about the old layout was the multiple ways a creator can publish a new episode.

I enjoyed clicking on the sidebar to edit the series and add an episode that way.
But now I have to go an extra click to the series landing page and then the episode list.

Also I've never liked doing it via the dashboard as it takes an un-godly amount of time to load—which it seems to take even longer now.
(is it because I have so many series? If that's the case I wish that could be optimized some how.)

The feature that allows me to see where I left off in a series (sort of grayed out in that was in the sidebar) is gone and now I'm a little lost :sweat_smile:

Also, the staff picks for novels being removed from the front page of the site makes me a bit sad. I appreciated that Tapas made more efforts to give more attention to novels on the front page. Especially, non-premium creators.

I'm always an advocate for more novels on the front page :heart_eyes:

Edit: Dark mode would be AMAZING

BUT on a positive note, and I do want to stress this even if it was mentioned earlier, I LOVE that readers can now switch between two fonts and adjust the size and leading when reading novels!

Let's hear it for whoever worked on that :clap:

Can there be an option for those that have stayed on here for a long time to have the site like previous. Like Deviantart has for their website. Still have the update version for those that prefer that but also has a switch to make Deviantart to look like how it did before the update for those that don't want to change.

I personally don't like the new layout and feels like it is trying to be a Webtoons rip off. This website is so amazing and I loved how unique it was to Webtoons. I came to this website before joining Webtoons and I preferred the old layout compared to Webtoons. I don't want this to end up like Jack Jeeved did where I mostly abandon the website and only check for those that didn't transfer to here. I really don't want to. I love this website and what is in it so much

So I'm going to put on the face of disappointed father now cause we're at that point where I have to talk to you like were part of a store, and as the store manager I hate to say it @michaelson but ya'll done fucked up a bit. Theres a long list of things to get through so i Apologize if I miss something or if its already been repeated about 30 times- these things tend to happen when you make drastic choices!

So lets first chat about all the UI stuff- these complaints are coming from both creators and readers. SOME of which are programmers so i feel like their knowledge is helpful. First off the staff picks "see all" is broken, it just takes you to the front page rather then anywhere else. You've added "free to read" and "pay to read" columns which is useful to people who just want to read without a pay wall- However it seems you've done away with the idea of looking for comics by GENRE! Which is incredibly backwards. Why even have Genre tags if we cant search through FRESH/POPULAR/TENDING with them?? People have particular things they want to read- Some people want to read romance, some action, some drama- taking AWAY UI is a horrific idea- How the actual hell are people supposed to get their fix if they can find it?? This problem is doubled by the fact you TOOK AWAY fresh! Which is the MAIN way readers FOUND NEW COMICS.

Please understand that this is the exact reason why people think you dont actually care about non premium comics when you've gotten rid of FRESH and replaced with your premium new releases :wink: great effort, but swing an a miss when it comes to making us small creators feel like you give any shits about us. Trending is nice but youve taken away genre searching and if im going to be completely honest- your algorithm tends to make "trending" a different kind of "popular" without the genre search. People who get a spike of veiws will be on tending for maybe an hour before they are Completely removed from the bar- which might i add got a lot smaller!

I think enough people have already pointed out you've taken away the side bar so you can see where you are unless your WAY at the top or WAY at the bottom. people have pointed out the hidden sub bar, the lack of a banner which means lack of a personality for each individual comic making you even MORE of a copy of Webtoons while also making everyone's comic very similar and less personal. broken text for novels. so on and so forth.

Now. There's nothing inherently wrong with your UI at first glance by the untrained eye- infact- its pretty great! Looks clean and pristine! However, I have absolutely no idea who the hell your looking to get an audience from with this UI. IF your looking to loose some readers who liked Tapas for being... you know... NOT webtoons- and trading them out for Webtoon readers- im sorry to tell you I cant imagine this working out for you in the long run, the UI in webtoons is simply better then your copy pasta you made- and im sorry if this hurts your feelings- but you copied it. thats it, please dont try to gaslight us on this. You have copied webtoons UI and made it WORSE. So i can only imagine Webtoon users looking at Tapas from afar and shrugging when they say "oh hey look Tapas is discount Webtoons now... neeeeat." and then continuing on there marry way on Webtoons. All i can really see happing here is you're either gonna loose people to webtoons cause the UI is better or your gonna loose people to some other new and hopeful comic website. Cause the only people who are impressed with this are people who hever NEVER SEEN WEBTOONS. sorry not sorry, this is an unfortunate reality.

On that note im also really upset with the idea that you think DESKTOPS and IPHONES should ever have the same UI setting. People who sit at there desktop have a diffrent screen, diffrent hardware, and a completely diffrent reason to sit down and read at a desktop then their phone. People at a desktop wanna sit down in their chair and stare at there screen with their keyboard and mouse in hand ready to do some work. You dont WORK at your phone- you're leisurely doing things- relaxing- playing a phone game. When we sit down at our desktop we want things to be optimal and we want to be making the least amount of clicks and the most of our time when we're working. People make keyboard shortcuts in photoshop for a reason. Id LOVE to see your raw data of why people want to do away with Desktop UI for EVERYTHING to be phone UI cause its always fun to hear people say "data shows" without showing any data, cause guess what?

I can hack this up to tell you only 7% of your user base is satisfied with this choice you made.

Honestly it just feels like your making excuses and gaslighting us that this is totally fine and we're definetly getting what we've been needing/asked for, even tho the things we HAVE been asking for are never done such as night mode, two genres and being more clear about how the INK system works with our audience.

I honestly Cant imagine how you can be confused that people are upset and dont want to do the job of BETA testing your sight for you when you've made mistakes that (from what my programmers have told me) is an easy to find and easy to fix mistakes such as missing italics and bold- which really THAT should never get to us as users. You want free beta testers? thats chill, im all for that- but at least try to make a mirror site first so that we can test it while still using the VERY usable and actually still good older site without forcing both us and our readers to deal with things breaking.

I hope you dont take my words too hard because im honestly just upset for everyone here- People are upset and you're not the only ones who could suffer for this. creators can suffer for this because readers who liked you because you where TAPAS and not WEBTOONS. could leave, and as many new Readers have stated before hand- it REALLY SUCKS when they're the last ones to hear about ANYTHING going on with the website that they should really be the first ones to know about- because THEY are the ones who are giving both you guys and us creators the ability to keep going.

I don't think we need to got back to the old site and stay there but maybe we need to go back till things are fix and we can do some actual beta testing? cause this is pretty bad for the PR from what a lot of readers have been explaining to me. I honestly think the new look could be a really good new beginning but its A. WAY too much like Webtoons and B. already showing a lot of problems taking AWAY intractability such as looking for genres, having some separation between desktop and phone, and taking away really simple and spice of life things like knowing who liked your comment and having a freaking FRESH section. We had more in the old site then we do now- we LOST a lot, and youve given us no choice to go back- So its very upsetting when you pikachu face at us.

The one positive thing i have to say tho is that the readers can FINALLY see the fourms- see what we see and interact with us like they are finally people and not a number :innocent: so like... super happy about that! Good job with that one :heart_02: