And I noticed you didn't challenge my point about 'free' and 'premium' memberships :-) A point, actually, I don't mind that much… but will we wind up paying to keep our comics like they were before Wowio took over (meaning, like they are right now, and free)? Seems the plan is to downgrade everyone, then charge them money to get back to where they are right now. If you knew about the name change, you should know about this idea, too :-) So, tell us.
If that happens i'm off, there are other completely free sites that will do just as well. If I'm going to pay for something it will be my own site. There is a reason I don't use smackjeeves.
I wept delicious tears of joy when the pages took less a second to load for me. I really hope it stays that way! Good work on that.
Is it too early to criticize the forums though? Sections aren't separated well enough, the whole front page of the forums sort of blends together into one giant list. There should be a more defined separation of each subsection.
And when I enter a particular section, such as "General Discussion," the boxes separating the topics take up way too much space. Maybe I'm just used to the compact form the original forums had.
Not really seeing the ad issue that everyone has been complaining about. Hasn't looked any different than before.
And while I'm not master on site design, I would think the most important thing to attract a steady audience would be fast and reliable load times. Like I mentioned before, I've already seen a huge improvement in that area.
But idk i've always thought drunkduck was a retarded name and had nothing to do with webcomics. Not that 'the duck' is loads better, but it's not completely random sounding.
That explains why you like to smack The Jeeves!
—
No html access? I haven't looked at every free host, but is there another one with no html access?
My opinion is probably flawed, but personally, I fell in love with how things looked in the preview. I want to wait till it's fully ready to begin using it; since I hardly get technical with my work (simpler the better, I say), I think me and it are gonna get along reaaaal swell. :3
I kinda lol'd at the title name… in a good way. It represents a change from something old and into the new, y'know? It's the equivalent of Takuma Sakazaki's joke persona and his "serious business" one in SvC: Chaos, the game.
For the name: That is staying. We were told about that at the end of last year. It can't be negotiated. There are a number of considerations; mainly it's a branding issue.
I don't remember hearing about this and I would have remembered something like that. It's possible that someone brought this up at some point but if that is the case then I obviously missed it but since it's coming off as a surprise to everyone else, I'm going to assume that it was poorly covered.
And to make a point, even the preview pages that they've been posting for the past few months contain the original name.
Nothing on that page indicated a name change. If they wanted this to go over smoothly, they should have introduced the idea gradually. Possibly even gotten the community involved with finding a new name for the site.
Hell, we could have even made a comic about the duck going to a rehab and then moving to a new place for a fresh start or something.
@ Tim Wellman- Yes, I agree with you- it's the comic artists and their comics that MAKE this site, as well as the community. Everything possible must be done to accommodate this.
A premium version Vs non-premium version: I have no info on this at all. There are no plans for anything like that in the roll out. I can't say whether that'll be part of some future feature or not, but if it is it will still need to be decided what form it would take. ____________
The name of the site was only told to Skool and I and we hat to keep that under our berets. Yes, it probably would've been better to open that to the community for suggestions. But it wasn't- maybe because know one had any good ideas about that at that stage. But that's the past now. ____________
Errors and bug reports: Please report those using the feature provided! Those NEED to be fixed and addressed for the good of us all! It's not much use just listing them here.
A premium version Vs non-premium version: I have no info on this at all. There are no plans for anything like that in the roll out. I can't say whether that'll be part of some future feature or not, but if it is it will still need to be decided what form it would take.
I so hope they don't.
The name of the site was only told to Skool and I and we hat to keep that under our berets. Yes, it probably would've been better to open that to the community for suggestions. But it wasn't- maybe because know one had any good ideas about that at that stage. But that's the past now.
It's things like this that are going to upset people, they have asked for suggestion but seem to do their own thing anyway. What's the point of asking the community if they don't listen? I know this is old ground but the attitude to the name change just drives the point home.
To summerise my views
Name change… ropey but hardly a big issue.
colours are pretty bad, especially forums.
Taking HTML editing out, seriously stupid move. I fail to see how that makes sense to anyone and will drive people away very quickly. How many other webcomic hosting sites don't offer this? None I can think of.
The speed, so much better.
Front page has a lot of good stuff but looks too jumbled, better divides between section would help.
Site doesn't work for Firefox 3.6.16 on Win XP Professional Svc Pack 3 Just thought I'd add that to the list.
Opinion-
I'm not too sentimental about losing the "drunk" part myself. It would probably make it easier to share kid-friendly webcomics hosted here with kids that way.
I still don't like the overall color scheme used. If they can create an option for website color scheme display personalization post-login, (which someone suggested long ago), that'd be brilliant.
I like how they just called down from on high, like God to Moses… 'it's called The Duck now'… no discussion, no warning… your son Johnny… oh yeah, his name is Steven now.
I just breezed through the forums… 1/2 page width for forums, 1/2 for ads.
Let's face it, Wowio bought this site to squeeze every nickel out of it that they can… the comics (the reason people actually visit here) are just an annoyance to them, but a necessary advertising tool… but no one comes here to see the ads, they come to read OUR comics… WE'RE the ONLY reason Drunk Duck exists… Wowio will push us all to the corner and beyond… but, everyone, all you artists… WE actually control the future of this website. We need to make some stands, to throw our clout around if needed. A site full of ads with no webcomics isn't going to get many visitors.
I feel they're starting to push us around a bit, making enormous changes without our feedback (they post these 'previews' but don't change anything we don't like), and we need to stop that immediately. Wowio owns a bit of barren webspace without us artists, we need to let them know that in no uncertain terms.
Wowio has the same issue Platinum did. They don't give a single shit about user feedback, and if they actually do they certainly don't show it. When the first thread went up they genuinely made changes to the template, but after some time told us all to politely cram it. I can see the reasoning, having a ton of people saying "no, this should be like this, and this should be this color" comes off as nit-picky and personal bias. They didn't comprehend that why we did that in such frequency was because we were displeased with the job they were doing.
To make this perfectly clear: free service is not a valid excuse for shitty service. The users control the content, Wowio controls the channel, and people will refrain from providing content if the channel becomes a cumbersome mess.
edit: if you seriously think the colors are the only thing wrong about the design and layout of the new site, you're hilariously wrong at best.
edit: anyway I'm done. good luck with the latest disaster, guys!
I'm also one of the few who doesn't care all that much about the name change. URL change though might've bugged me, but it's good to hear the Drunkduck urls will still work.
Yes there are issues with the layout, like the people have said, it's mainly the colors. The rest I personally think is fine. It also DOESN'T work on Firefox which is bad. VERY BAD. There are lots of Firefox users and I'm one of them.
But yes, must the colors be so obnoxious just because it's called the Duck? That seems to be a curse with DD layouts, it's either too plain or too much (too childish?). The forums especially are hurting my eyes. The yellow and green, guhh. And this is just a little nitpick on my part but the greenish background/pattern? It looks…like a badly compressed jpeg.
Also, aaghhh the layout I made for Cwen's Quest is completely ruined! XO What the heck happened?!
Also, I know you guys put that gray line/bar at the top of the comic pages to let there be more of the user's layout visible…but I almost prefer it being full up there. That just looks like some sort of awkward glitch to me. =/ I guess I'll get used to it, but I don't know…it seems like there could be something done with that to make it look better. A color changer for that would be nice at least.
The name of the site was only told to Skool and I and we hat to keep that under our berets. Yes, it probably would've been better to open that to the community for suggestions. But it wasn't- maybe because know one had any good ideas about that at that stage. But that's the past now.
I especially understand that it might lead people astray but that doesn't mean I like it.
@fukujinzuke and SarahN - what doesn't work about the site in Firefox? Please use the feedback system to make reports on that.
I've found that the site works ok on exactly that version of Firefox on that same version of Windows XP, as well as Vista. And it works the same in Firefox 4 in Vista and Widows 7. And in IE9 and IE8 in XP, Vista and Windows 7. Where I've found most errors so far have been because of strange browser settings like font settings in Firefox and having compatibility view set to on in Internet explorer.
Was anyone able to register a new account at the preview site? Since my account was not recreated I tried getting a new one with no success. I tried with Opera, Firefox 4 and IE7. It doesn't give me any errors or anything, it just reloads the same "sign up" page and does nothing. I don't get any emails after that (I tried a few hours ago too).
Thumbs down to Wowio for the handling of this. My scorn is not for them making changes/decisions without feedback or even doing so without prior announcement. I understand that sometimes decisions have to be made definitively and have to be kept confidential. My scorn is for making the announcement and changes without giving any rhyme or reason behind it. Frankly, it is an insult to members' intelligence to be told "By the way, this is how it is now" without a simple "and this is why." It's leadership 101. We don't need to have input in every decision or change, but respect us enough to tell us the purpose.
Anyway, I think Ozone handled that end of things. But it would have saved an awful lot of wtf if srhdt had done that in the first place.
~~~~~~
Oh, and I was unable to register. I filled out the form and hit the button, and the page simply reloaded. I received no email. The password I put in doesn't let me sign in either. So, I can't check out any of the comic creator features – which are the things that matter most to me. :P
I think my Firefox problem had nothing to do with DD. My NoScript was blocking certain parts of it, it seems. It was kind of odd I had to allow individual parts of the page to see everything, I've never had to do it that way before, but that's not DD's problem either.
So it seems to be working okay for me now but my version's 3.6.16. However I can't log in or anything either.
Yeah, new account registration seems to be broken. I've submitted some bug reports about that so hopefully it will be fixed soon.
I'm afraid I don't have the energy right now to add much to what Oz has said already, maybe tomorrow morning. :] The long and short of it is that some things were up for negotiation and some weren't, we did have opportunity to feed back to them about some things (which they variously implemented or not), and some things we just didn't know about.
It seems to be their trend that they want a few days to see what responses come in and then respond to those together, so we'll see what they have to say. I do think they could have explained a little more at the outset- I'm never sure how much we're allowed to say, and I'm not always comfortable explaining things on their behalf (besides not being an official response, I may be uninformed about current information, etc.)
Please just keep in mind that this is an incomplete preview, and some changes which are deemed necessary (like, a majority of people are suggesting the same change) or simple to do may still happen. Functionality will be added and bugs will be ironed out.
The practicality remains however that Drunk Duck is a very expensive site to run and probably has not actually paid for itself, ever. That's completely unsustainable and has killed smaller sites than this. From a business perspective, Wowio has to get something out of DD even if it's just the ability to pay for itself. As much as people hate ads, for some reason they are still the best way to make money off a site and Wowio has to work around that- which has affected some of the design and branding decisions. Some of the functionality changes are practical decisions as well. I think that DD has been very lucky to have all the abilities and customizations it has historically had, but the price for that has apparently been an unsustainable site.
As far as the HTML goes, they've told us that they'd like to ensure that users can still do all the things they want to do on their pages, but using some method which doesn't involve directly coding html.
I think that the css and button customization that's there now will take care of a large majority of the site's users, and is something we've been sorely missing since the big crash several years ago which wiped that out.
For everyone else I think it may be more productive to focus on what it is they like to DO which requires custom html, and communicate that to the programmers, so they can work on a solution for that. I am imagining they intend to make customizable modules you can drop into a page and reposition or something, maybe.
What kinds of things to users customize their html for? - customize "presentation" elements like color, bordering of image, etc - nonstandard navigation elements like prev and next placed to the side of the comic image, rather than below - rearranging page elements to maximize avialable space (like, above the fold) - add extra pages (characters, fan art, etc) - add menus (in various positions on the page) - link/banner exchanges - advertising (own - like deviantart pages, kablam stores, etc) - advertising (for revenue, like project wonderful) - web comic toplists and voting sites - trackers or metrics drop-ins - twitter, facebook, etc buttons - twitter feeds, shoutboxes, and other advanced integrated elements
Sorry for the double reply, but I've found that the new user registration does work so long as you are filling out all fields (not skipping zip code, for example). It could possibly also be something to do with the country or state fields.
It wasn't working for me when I was putting in "United Kingdom, N/A, 12345" (because the field won't accept letters currently), but did work when I put in a valid US/state/zip combo. I don't know which of those elements was the key. I'd have created more accounts to test it, but currently you can only use an e-mail address once (something we've raised with them).
I've submitted a bunch of bug stuff on that signup page though, it's not the greatest functionality-wise.
Edit: Registering a new account should be fixed, previously it was requiring both a state and a zip code.
Edit2: emails will only be able to be used once. I guess this is an anti-spam thing.
I'm not clear about the best way to report bugs. Not in this thread? In another the "I've found a bug" forum? or by selecting the side "feedback" on the preview site? do those post anywhere?
Also, the two items I found are probably not bugs at all, they're either there and I can't find them or they're functions that haven't been added yet: (a) how to upload files other than comic pages and avatars (b) comic hits and rating
Is there any place where Wowio can list what is going to be added and when, so we don't waste time looking for something that won't ever be there, or is just scheduled for a week down the road or so?
—
I HATE the egg. I really HATE THE EGG.
between the color scheme and the Egg it's like Peter Max does Easter in Tim Burton's wonderland
Obviously it doesn't matter what I think about the missing drunk, but replacing it with the Egg? THAT's more – professional? polished? clever? WHAT?
—EDIT—
I'm willing to put up with changes, losing the "Drunk", maybe even having a compromised web comic with not being able to customize html, but there is a very easily identifiable deal-breaker for me.
The day either Oz or skool quits, I'm GONE. Both of them have guided this community with great heart and intelligence, and I thoroughly trust that they continually advocate for us.
Advertise with us
DDComics is community owned.
The following patrons help keep the lights on. You can support DDComics on Patreon.
