Honestly, I love Tapas as a site.
I was just looking at Webtoons' format YESTERDAY and thinking 'wow Tapas is so much easier to navigate and find things on'. Only to refresh the Tapastic page last night and suddenly I was back on Webtoons lol.
Humor aside, the website layout now is very difficult to navigate.
Simply put, the improvements made on mobile sites do not automatically translate to desktop sites. We have keyboards and mice and bigger screens. Big, mobile layouts on a desktop site look huge and bulky.
I have a lot to cover, so I'll try to be brief with bullet points, if that's okay.
Missing features:
(This has always been one of the best features on Tapas, especially for shorter comic formats. Coupled with longer loading times, the lack of scrolling from episode to episode is crippling the flow of reading through comics, especially story comics.)
- Full lists of comic genres by sub/view/like count and alphabetically
(this allowed you full access to EVERY comic on Tapastic. Without that feature, all we can do is rely on the algorithm to hopefully suggest content. Listing comics in order of popularity also gives people the ability to set goals for themselves and their work. Ergo; 'I want to make it to the top 15 pages of this genre)
- Direct access to the dashboard on mobile devices
(currently, the dashboard button does not show up on desktop displaying mobile devices, for those of us who use tablets or phones for content management)
Creators can no longer access their scheduled episodes to view them. Previews don't seem to be working either.
The personalized creator ad
(it only shows up on the series main page now, which is a huge loss along with the description only being on this page as well. Author promotion for their patreon, merch and other items now NEEDS to be in the space limited episode description or directly in the comic, otherwise it will not be seen)
Site issues
Comics are loading far too slowly. It seems to be delayed based on the ads and reccomended comics needing to be loaded in.
Recommended comics under/on series are either staff picks or already INSANELY popular comics.
(They should probably be staff picks and/or related by tags. It may also be worth while to exclude comics that are already in a person's sub list. I get recommended to comics I'm already subbed to really often.)
Also two side notes
- The mobile app really could use some creator tools. It currently has none I can find.
- LONGER SERIES ON TAPAS NEED FOLDERS FOR SEASONS/CHAPTERS. It would help so much with scrolling and organization.
(sorry for the edits, I posted it early by accident lol)
As a final comment, I really appreciate what you guys do at Tapastic. Out of all the webcomic sites I've seen, you guys are THE BEST in my opinion. I would really like to see you guys stay that way.