Website updates and collecting feedback

[michaelson]

(included in the parent post)

Thank you every one for providing us feedback. We'll be diligently working on addressing the concerns expressed by the creator community and hope to implement changes both big and small in a timely fashion. We appreciate your patience and cooperation during this time. Again, I'd like to reiterate our appreciation for the passion, criticism, and support of the community. We are dedicated to making necessary changes to ensure more readers and creators have a fun, engaging, rewarding, and unique experience whenever reading and creating stories on Tapas.

We apologize for any hurt we have caused with today's update, again, it's never our intention and we completely acknowledge our need for improvement. I hope you understand that we are trying our best to be as accommodating as possible and want to create a relationship with you all that reinforces our willingness to engage in healthy discussions and enact positive changes. We will always do our best to answer questions that arise and be candid in what we can and cannot do.

Thank you again for your continued support, we'll be continuing active correspondence in this topic, updating this parent post with additional changes, and keep you as up to date as possible.

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I'll be taking a break tonight but will be back to answer more questions and concerns tomorrow.

[Ajhaynes420]

Isn't that the truth, I was so hurt lol

[pkholcombe]

What rumors are swirling about Tapas's future? I'm a casual reader so I'm not as close to the business as creators might be.

It really looks like Tapas has become Smack Jeeves. The site looks almost exactly the same, just with a couple slight color changes. Its awful

[Cavechan]

Sorry but I don't want to spread rumors more since they are just that... rumors.

But something like this though...

What is preventing a rollback to the old design?

I can't comment on that currently.

Makes me concerned.

In the end, it's all about the money.

[PotatoJuice]

I'm gunna assume that the "hotfixes" haven't been implemented yet because, as far as I can tell, the infinite scrolling and the support button haven't been added yet.

Also a small bug I've noticed is that on the episode page it doesn't let you start scrolling until the page has fully loaded?

[sevenfivel]

My reaction was much the same. I read comics both here and on Webtoon. Used to be when the same comic was on both I would subscribe here because it was easier to use. In particular, when a comic updated, I could get to the latest page in a single click, instead of the three or four that Webtoon requires. Now? What's the difference? I plan to stick with Tapas, but I'm a little worried that the readers will start to do what so many authors have already done and move to Webtoon.

[OBC]

Yep, unfortunately it seems so. I literally cannot think of any reason to go the easy and preferred by just about everyone route of a rollback (which'll then developed upon for new features). Like, other than maybe somebody at Tapas HQ really dropped the ball and completely lost/deleted backups of the previous layout and all that made it work. But surely, that wouldn't be possible, right???

Well then again, this lemon of an redesign was clearly pushed out without any prior testing so...such failures aren't outside of the realm of possibility now, are they?

[Alrathi]

Thank you for your hard work!
I'm sure it's not easy to have to moderate a very upset forum.
You have earned an honorary NMS flavored Sean Murray stamp for facing the criticism head on lol.

Might I suggest an occasional voting poll when your team has new plans for the website?
I've seen these before from your team, but never very often, and not directly hosted on the site where it's a simple, one or two question, pop up poll that every reader and writer has a chance to answer. (Like Deviantart's site polls that pop up in your notifications)

Simple things like
- 'do you use this feature?' yes/no
- 'Would you use this planned new feature?' yes/no
- 'How would you rate your ability to navigate this version of the site/app?'
- 'Out of this feature list, which features would you like to see most on the site?'

Perhaps you could even have a link to a more specific survey about these features if people have time, with a small ink reward if people opt to take the longer survey!

And of course, beta testers!! More opinions on developing features is always useful, especially when they're free and volunteers. Whether they're chosen by you, or if there's just a site wide option to beta test, community beta testing is definitely something you guys should utilize.

[Dycantos]

This new interface is clumsy and awkward. There are quite a few comics that I read here just for the ease even though their available on other platforms, i guess I'll be reading those elsewhere till you fix it.

[CarltonIsaac]

Makes me concerned.

In the end, it's all about the money.

A possible shift in the majority of shareholders resulting in the push for this new direction, and will keep pushing for more changes in the future?

[FireCrossDraws]

how dare you take away our banners! I want my banner back T_T (I lost all my files on the labtop and now you deleted it xD its funny cause life sucks, but still, its sad cause I really liked that one). I like the changes but some are inconvenient, the next/previous arrows dont look cool where you put them.
the number of notifications or updates dont show.
when you click a comment that someone replied to, it doesn't automatically take you to the comment. (in the notification bell)
when you enter a comic it doesn't show what episodes you've seen so far and what episodes you didn't.
the continue thingy is cool but sometimes you just wanna see how many episodes you haven't seen or something.
also the continue button takes you to the last page, but sometimes it takes you to the last page that you already seen and not the new update that you haven't yet seen.
the comic front page is plastic has no soul and looks like a cut out cardboard of a 12 year old, professional and talented 12 year old, but not an artist.
I suggest the episode list becomes shorter with a slider and pages, and putting everything in one layout and not hiding the description and stuff under "details".
I can't stress how much I really truly like and want a banner image (it doesn't have to be visible on every page of the comic even on the comic page alone would be enough even though seeing it everywhere would be really nice, plz dont pull the webtoon crap where featured artists get to have banners and others dont, that's just mean) and even an other corner or square or something to put extras and pretty stuff to make the comic page more of the artist style to make it feel as if you're entering a different home (or house) each time and not just jumping from ditch to ditch. (sort of a mini gallery or slide show that'd be really cool)

[FireCrossDraws]

I tried putting a banner in webtoon, i think only contracted artists get to have one, which makes me think that webtoon bought tapas or something along with tons of other similarities, tapas is the new baby webtoon.

[ella190831]

I'm sad now. I just uploaded a new chapter from one of my novels, and i wanted to check something.

Usually when i was uploading, the new chapter was shoring in the section of nobels at fresh new uploads, but now no

Which means, nobody will see and might want to check... now
this new update is a lose for me, as a small writer here [well cant say either before much happen,but i did gather few as i updating new chapters]

other thing i hate, is how the covers now look at the comic/novels section

and yes i had a banner too but good is saved :))))

in rest i do not mind the changes but the 2 above are unsettling me

[TSSL]

In case this is the better thread for noting issues, here's the bug or feature loss I mentioned from the other thread:

Website update changes

It looks like it's no longer possible to hover over comments' likes and see who liked them. I especially liked being able to see if the author liked a comment. I haven't seen anyone mention this, so that's something else to check on. I'm not sure if this was just a bug, but it's best not to lose features that were previously available

I spotted another bug: On an episodes page, when sorted from oldest to newest, if there is a scheduled comic, it displays just like all the other comics, aside from having a future date and zero views. If you click on it, it just takes you back to the episodes page. (I noticed this on the comic Jamie.)

[jensrichard77]

Sorry Tapas but i did try.
That popup menu is getting on my nerves. I really tried to get used to is... But it is just ignoring. On mobile web and desktop

[akemikae]

Just go back to the old design, and add the things you've been wanting to add that were good in the new update. Less work on your hands, isn't it?

[invayne]

We continually promote series within the staff picks to help bring more awareness to a diverse range of stories - we've featured over 100 series with less than 100 subs in this section this year alone. We also have the New & Noteworthy section which updates at a more rapid rate. Please relax with this narrative - we are and have always been supporters of up and coming creators.

@michaelson You could add 2 dailyupdates sections on the front page for novels and comics. This will give exposure to novels and comics who update daily. They will get promoted once or twice a month or every two months. these two sections would get refreshed after 24 hours with a new batch of novels and comics. Coming from Webnovel as an author that has many contracts with them this helped alot with exposure to lesser known novels. I also suggest a tab on the search for both comics and novels as well for recently updated novels and comics. it would get updated once someone updates their novel or comic. this will fix exposure issues for all lesser known novels and allow for authors and artist to get more views on their novel it self. while still keeping the other major sections that give better exposure for more popular novels and commics. It would be a win win for both creators and staff in this way.

Also you should not hide the subscribe button that is a killer to every one. it should be more visible.

[TSSL]

Oh, here's another change, which I don't remember anyone mentioning. When you do bring up the sidebar with the list of episodes (which I really would prefer be visible by default, as before), it doesn't give the date anymore, just the episode number and title. Even for a scheduled comic, it doesn't say when it's scheduled for. This was useful and should be back too.

[eleoza]

I'm also going to express my worries for completed comics. Are they going to dissapear in the void since searching genres by subs and likes is now gone?

[jensrichard77]

Here is a mobile user experience.

The popup menu on the mobile web is a dark color and it flashes in and out.

The same size popup menu on the mobile app is white and smoothly rolls in and out.

Somehow I feel the screen on mobile web smaller because of the dark color frame. And I feel the menu gets in my face because of the hard way it flashes in and out.

I prefer the mobile app over the mobile web.

And about color. The withe menu works better on mobile. I’m not talking about the desktop.

Edit. Somehow when I scroll quick up on on app. I get the menu. This seems logical to me because when I typically need to scroll up is because I'm looking for the menu. I don't get that on mobile web