The form is now CLOSED. All submitted answers have been added to the list.
If you think I missed your suggestion or misunderstood it, please let me know either in this thread or via PQ!

The newspost: http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2016/feb/11/fixing-dd-open-call-for-suggestions/

The survey: http://goo.gl/forms/K6vgUqAjmD

As most of you know, we have finally been able to make some changes on DD thanks to hiring a programmer (and thanks to your generous donations!). We have been gathering suggestions for further fixes/changes, and have put up a survey for this purpose (see above).

In this thread, I will gather all of the suggestions that have been made for general discussion. After a week, I will be putting up a new survey where you’ll be able to vote on which changes you would most like to see implemented. A small caveat: while we will do our darndest to follow community input on this, there may be ideas that are just not feasible at this point for various reasons.

DO NOT MAKE NEW SUGGESTIONS IN THIS THREAD WITHOUT ALSO SUBMITTING THEM VIA THE SURVEY
You are welcome to discuss any of the ideas submitted, of course, including your own. But it has been really difficult trying to keep track of every suggestion made here on the site, on Facebook, on G+, etc., and I want to make sure that nothing is getting lost in the shuffle.

BUGS TO BE FIXED:

A. Browsing the “comics” tab: The first page of comics is listed by rank, after which it inexplicably switches to alphabetical.

B. Numerous issues with pre-uploaded comics, including: they do not appear in the “recently updated” list, and sometimes have the wrong date.

C. The “post count” and “last post” portions of the forums don't work.

D. Image links have a bunch of crap after the .jpeg portion.

E. New comic images replace older images with the same file name. There should either be a warning message when this is about to happen, or it should automatically rename files so they don't overwrite each other.

F. Multiple page/bulk uploader sometimes ends up with pages out of order.

G. Remember settings for favorites list (or at least default to “latest upgraded”).

H. The profile pages should not wipe out all information when you update them, and the the trophies should be fixed.

I. When you log in to complete a comment, your comment text is lost.

J.If you are logged out and try to access an adult comic, logging in does not take you automatically to the comic.

K. New users are sometimes not able to change the birth date when registering.

L. Animated gifs don't work as comic pages.

M. Youtube embedding doesn't work in forums or author notes.

N. The “filter” buttons on the front page don't always work.

POSSIBLE NEW FEATURES/CHANGES:

1. Multiple pages for PQs

2. Allowing comic creators to have PW or Google Adsense ads on their own comic pages

3. Improving the comic search function: e.g. allow filtering by number of pages, allow sorting search results.

4. A spot on the front page for community projects to be highlighted.

5. Improve Quail's Random - only allow comics above a certain number of pages or ones that have been updated recently.

6. A feature that allows all comics to be flagged as “active,” “on hiatus,” and “complete,” with the “on hiatus” status happening automatically to inactive comics.

7. Re-introduce comic ranking for all comics.

8. Allow comics wider than 960 pixels.

9. An easier way to check recently updated comics, e.g. a “more” option that takes you to the day's updates in order or a side arrow similar to the featured comics section (an arrow could also be added to top ten and random).

10. An “update asterix” in the favourites dropdown. Hippie Van note: I assume this means some kind of marker that indicates a new update since you last checked the comic?

11. More options/more customization for page layout.

12. A comment management system in the comic editing features, which would show most recent comics and perhaps allow comments to be deleted as well as viewed.

13. Easier comic page organization; maybe a drag and drop system, or simply being able to enter a command to move a comic page several spaces at once.

14. Integrate DD with Facebook so that you can “like” newsposts, comic pages, etc.

15. Add a DD “like” button to everything: comments, forum posts, comic pages, etc.

16. Forum titles so we know who the admins or mods are, and custom titles for funky people.

17. Smilies in all comment areas.

18. Add a reply feature to comic comments.

19. All comments should be able to have basic formatting - links, images, and spaces.

20. The site should recognize different time zones.

21. “If you're hosting your own webcomic, like on your own url, with ComicPress or something like that, it'd be nice to be able to just use that as your Drunkduck site, like integrate your preexisting website with The Duck.”

22. A mobile version of the site.

23. A new colour scheme for the site.

24. The ability to edit links without having to delete and re-add them.

25. Links larger than 150 pixels.

26. Remove the “miscellaneous” heading above link images.

27. A widget showing who is online in the forums.

28. A simple way to create and attatch additional pages to your comic would be fantastic.Hippie Van note: additional pages can already be created through the “subpages” heading. I'm not sure how easy attaching them to your comic is, though - I will have to play around with it.

29. Remove the top ten, possibly replace with a link to a list rather than having it visible on the front page.

30. Make the image file “egg-logo.png” easily acceptable by admin so it can be periodically changed.

31. Change the logo back to Drunk Duck.

32. Under User Profile, the author's comics should be listed by Most Recently Updated, not alphabetically.

33.The option to choose the hour that a comic updates when pre-uploading comics.

34.Show adult comic thumbnails even to users who are not logged in.

Another note: In some cases here I have quoted the suggestion verbatim, but I am in many cases combining similar ideas or paraphrasing ideas so they will make as much sense as possible to all users. If you feel that I haven't accurately presented your idea here, please let me know.

I submitted a whole bunch just now!

Bugs: fix profiles so they don't wipe when you update them and fix their trophies.

Features:
Add replies to comic comments.

Add DD “like” buttons to everything. (Comments, forum posts, comic pages etc)

Integrate DD with Facebook a bit more so you can comment or like stuff from there, Newsposts and Quackcasts would be easy for that.

Add formatting to comments on comics and Newsposts to include links, pictures, and line breaks.

Add drag and drop to comic page organiastion to make it easier to move pages around!

Fix the pre-upload / auto-update so it registers as a new update when it goes live. (I don't know if this has been addressed yet. I haven't trued pre-uploading anything since it stopped working ages ago.)

A recent comments list in the control panel showing the latest five or so comments on your comic with links to the page. Possibly something that can be implemented into the layout of comic pages.

More options for site designs / page layouts.

Thanks for the suggestions, guys! I am already overwhelmed by all the ideas, most of them really awesome. Keep 'em coming!

One of the suggestions received was this. Although I agree completely with 90% of what they're saying (although I'm not sure it's realistic that ads will never be larger than thumbnails), I think we have to put this in the “not feasible” category at this point. Unless maybe it could be broken down into smaller, more incremental changes to the front page? In any case, for post transparency and discussion, here is the suggestion in full:

A redesign of the main page is really in order. An overhaul of how images are presented on this site would really help people find new content and keep track of the comics they read. The collection of tiny thumbnails on the front page condensed down to save space (for some reason??) is just not ideal for comics which want to draw in audiences with their visuals. Too tiny to even present jokes if visuals aren't their strong point! It feels like too much effort to make sure everyone has equal face-time without actually giving anyone any benefit, and assumes that visitors won't scroll down if there are comic images beneath what they immediately see. Hosts like SpiderForest, Tapastic, Hiveworks, all have huge image previews for their content. I'm not suggesting we emulate these exactly, but I do think they present the content in a more pleasing manner. I even like Smackjeeve's banner-size presentation and multiple categories. (A newbie category would be amazing for people just joining the site.) Some shuffling will be in order, like perhaps moving the news feed to the side instead of underneath all the thumbnails. There's just a lot of dead space and all the content people came to see is sort of squashed into the top-center of it all.

In short: Make the main page more pleasing and focused on the comics that are hosted here! The ads on the side should never be larger than webcomic images being presented on the main page. It doesn't need to be fancy, it just needs to look better.

Here is another one received that I would love some input on:

The multiple page/bulk uploader needs a fix, artists posting their archives in bulk have had pages out of order or completely overwritten by the next set of pages.

Can anyone confirm that the bulk uploader is overwriting pages in a bug that is SEPARATE from the bug that causes images with shared file names to be overwritten? I haven't heard about this one before.

Each suggestion now has a number or a letter in the main post. They are in no particular order, this is just to make discussion easier.

1. “C” under bugs seems to contain two different bugs.

2. Should we be flagging the \qoute thing or has that already been picked up elsewhere?

3. re: redesigning the homepage to have larger thumbnails etc, I suspect half the problem would go away if the homepage was smarter about recognising different screen sizes. My homepage looks like the below:



Almost half the space is dedicated to empty sidebars. If those were gone, my screen could support thumbnails double the size without even changing the layout.

With modern html it should be fairly easy to have the layout adjust itself depending on the viewer's screensize is using and adjust the number of thumbnails accordingly.

irrevenant wrote:
1. “C” under bugs seems to contain two different bugs.

Whoops, thanks! I was a little overwhelmed trying to sort through the first batch of suggestions. :)

2. Should we be flagging the \qoute thing or has that already been picked up elsewhere?

It's been passed along already! :)

3. re: redesigning the homepage to have larger thumbnails etc, I suspect half the problem would go away if the homepage was smarter about recognising different screen sizes. My homepage looks like the below:



Almost half the space is dedicated to empty sidebars. If those were gone, my screen could support thumbnails double the size without even changing the layout.

With modern html it should be fairly easy to have the layout adjust itself depending on the viewer's screensize is using and adjust the number of thumbnails accordingly.

Wouldn't adjusting the number of thumbnails be weird for the “top ten” category though?

Some others that I would like to address:

Adding links under the Links tab always gives me an error.

Adding links has been fixed. If this is still not working for you, please let one of us know.

I would love to see working stats.

This has also been fixed, hoorah! Go to my comics>edit>stats.

Maybe it's already there and I'm too lazy to find it, but shouldn't you be able to filter out types of comics you don't want to see? Like, if I don't want to see any Adult or CGI comics or pixel comics or Photo comics? There should be a way for me to filter that stuff out.

Both the search function and the front page have options to filter for various things, so I'm not sure what this is asking for.

It'd be nice to be able to include TopWebcomics banners and stuff like that on my comic. Or if I want a Patreon link. In fact, it'd be cool if you had tools to streamline the process for adding Patreon and Topwebcomics links. I'm so drunk.

These kinds of things can be added through the “links” tab now! Go to my comics>edit>links.

Well done on this Hippie!
I hope we get some more suggestions. :D

I'm just gonna keep this simple & short for now.

Is, at the VERY, VERY least, displaying our thumbnails at full size on the main page instead of almost 50% smaller (80x100 down to 55 x 70) REALLY too much to ask?! They could easily fit even at the current layout with 100 or so pixels of unused blue space on the sides. I don't think anyone is so in love with that weird blue-green halftone that they'll cry if it gets covered up a little to accommodate, y'know, the hard work on display? ╮(─▽─)╭

Agreed. All the thumbnails should be bigger. The featured comic should be more prominent too.

The featured comic should be more prominent too.

Absolutely, I thought that went without saying but I shoulda said it! :P I mean all the thumbnails, including the featured, which are being shrunk to the same degree. Platinum displayed them at full size, so what gives? I know the comics were being displayed vertically, but come on, look at all the empty space we have.

Wow, I hadn't realised that the already small thumbnails were being further reduced. O_o Yeah, totally agree those should be full sized.

BTW, I hesitate to raise this because the current status quote is actually serving HA rather well. xD But now we have stats is the top ten going to become dynamic again?

I hope so, but I'd rather they just get rid of the Top Ten altogether, the only thing it's ever done is generate resentment.

Amelius wrote:
I hope so, but I'd rather they just get rid of the Top Ten altogether, the only thing it's ever done is generate resentment.

Coming from the person at #1 that's saying something! o_O

I feel like I've said this before somewhere, but could we make all the categories (Most popular*, Most recent, Random) work like the featured comics UI? ie. Each category shows the first X number of thumbnails and you can just click on the arrow to see the next X? I don't suggest getting rid of the ‘Filter’ link if you take this route, BTW. Being able to ‘drill down’ to a specific category type is still useful.

I think having the three different methods of finding comics (four if you count ‘Featured’, five if a community slot is added) is very useful and we should keep that. I've found some absolute gems through the ‘random’ group that I wouldn't have found any other way. :)

* = I only just noticed HippieVan's comment that changing the number of thumbnails would be a bit weird for the ‘Top Ten’ section. Renaming it to ‘Most popular’ would fix that, and making it open-ended hopefully addresses Amelius's concerns about the Top Ten being its own separate category.

BTW, I don't know if it was already captured or not, but #8 is a bigger issue than it sounds. Enabling an image width of greater than 960 also means changing the page styles to have the flexibility support that.

Going forward, is there any chance of something like a bugzilla page where the bugs are listed, we can lodge new ones and we can see how they're progressing? At the moment it's a little bit hard to tell the specifics of exactly what's been reported and is being addressed.

I feel like I've said this before somewhere, but could we make all the categories (Most popular*, Most recent, Random) work like the featured comics UI? ie. Each category shows the first X number of thumbnails and you can just click on the arrow to see the next X?

I'm on the same page with you on this, I made a mock-up of some possible ideas on this front but the response to my suggestion makes me hesitant to finish it. Getting told no right out the gate on something I think is a major issue with this site was pretty disheartening…

*edit* I forgot to mention though! It could be
“Latest updated, New comics, Quail's recommended (featured)(and have quail's random be in the search area, not the main page…)and popular today” which it could cycle through just like that.

A randomizer is not bad, but people do not associate “random” with positive things. And by that I mean people coming in fresh, not people who have been on this site so long that they got used to the smell.◔‿◔

Coming from the person at #1 that's saying something! o_O

Actually I'm #2, but yeah, let's just say I have some very personal experiences here. People have dedicated entire comics (and temper tantrums) to the top ten.

I think it would be kinda neat to make combined version of random and recently updated. Like, a random selection of comics updated within the last day (or week).

Personally, I never found the “random” useful since there are so many dead comics.

Just to be extra clear, I'll be reading through everything here but this thread is for discussing the specifics of already-submitted suggestions or suggestions that you are thinking about submitting but want to hammer out a bit first. I will not be including suggestions that are discussed but not submitted.

Amelius wrote:

I feel like I've said this before somewhere, but could we make all the categories (Most popular*, Most recent, Random) work like the featured comics UI? ie. Each category shows the first X number of thumbnails and you can just click on the arrow to see the next X?

I'm on the same page with you on this, I made a mock-up of some possible ideas on this front but the response to my suggestion makes me hesitant to finish it. Getting told no right out the gate on something I think is a major issue with this site was pretty disheartening…

Was your suggestion the one to re-design the front page? (Responses are anonymous so I have no way of knowing.) I really didn't mean to be dismissive or discouraging, so I'm very sorry if it came across that way! :(

What I meant was that with the small amount of money we have to put towards fixes right now I didn't think it was realistic to do a complete overhaul, although I completely agree that it would be the ideal thing to do. I didn't want to get people's hopes up and have everyone start discussing what a completely new front page would look like, only to have to tell everyone that it can't really happen. But if we could boil down what we would really want out a redesign into a few key points that are more do-able, that would be awesome.

Edit: I would also love to see any mock-ups! Even if it's not something that we can do right away, things like that could be super helpful next time we're in a position to do more. I'm still hanging on to a mock-up that irrevenant made for how a community spotlight could be fit in. :)

irrevenant wrote:

Amelius wrote:
I hope so, but I'd rather they just get rid of the Top Ten altogether, the only thing it's ever done is generate resentment.

* = I only just noticed HippieVan's comment that changing the number of thumbnails would be a bit weird for the ‘Top Ten’ section. Renaming it to ‘Most popular’ would fix that, and making it open-ended hopefully addresses Amelius's concerns about the Top Ten being its own separate category.

Oh, that's quite a clever solution! I also kind of feel like “most popular” might be less conflict-causing, although that's complete speculation.

Going forward, is there any chance of something like a bugzilla page where the bugs are listed, we can lodge new ones and we can see how they're progressing? At the moment it's a little bit hard to tell the specifics of exactly what's been reported and is being addressed.

Full disclosure here, I'm trying to balance collecting all these bug reports/suggestions with my classes, work, other duties on the site, and (perhaps most importantly) a very limited knowledge of all things computer-y. I definitely wouldn't say no if someone else volunteered to do something like this, but I think it might be beyond my capabilities/free time allotted.

In the meantime, everything that has been reported is in the first post of this thread here, which I am updating periodically to include new survey responses. For issues that have already been fixed, I've been marking most of these down in my Grand List of Bugs.

One minor detail I haven't seen anyone mention yet for a bug that should be fixed is that the filter thing on the most recently updated comics doesn't work.

awsome owl 98 wrote:
One minor detail I haven't seen anyone mention yet for a bug that should be fixed is that the filter thing on the most recently updated comics doesn't work.

!!!
I swear this used to work, so I wonder when it stopped. Odd. I tried it just now and it worked the first time but took ages, and then when I tried it on Quail's Random as well it didn't work at all. *sigh* Thanks!

I do have a rather simple request. Is it at all possible to make the duck web comics accept GIF files for pages? Some of us want to do sub animated pages like Comicfury. Would that be possible? I think it would not only step up the game of artist but give pages some web dynamics you can't get from jpg. I do have an animated version of one of my comics. I just can't show it here.

This one's been added! I wasn't entirely sure whether it fits under “bugs” or “new features,” but I designated it as a bug for now because according to our help page .gif files should be allowed.

Ahaaa, yes that was my long-winded post! Hey it's fine, I'm just really uh, passionate about seeing this site improve (and I won't lie, I'm bad at communicating a LOT of the time) and have felt that the main page has been a weak spot for a while. I'd definitely say another round of fundraising or something would be great, because nothing says “we fixed stuff” like a visual change. :D I want to make clear that I agree, the bugs are absolutely important to take care of first!

Oh goody, glad to hear you would like to see some mockups! I did a quick one but I need to find it (there's 3 drives I need to search on and I forgot what I named it!) Nick helped me with it, he has 10 years of experience working as a tech analyst and works with stuff like this all the time, usability, presentation and all that.

Oh and no worries, I guess I got a bit sensitive about the issue haha, you've done good work here and I totally understand having a lot of work and things going on and balancing that.

Thank you so much for explaining though, I appreciate that!

Make sure if you implement smileys that you also implement a way to disable smileys for those of us who dislike them =)

Amelius wrote:

I feel like I've said this before somewhere, but could we make all the categories (Most popular*, Most recent, Random) work like the featured comics UI? ie. Each category shows the first X number of thumbnails and you can just click on the arrow to see the next X?

I'm on the same page with you on this, I made a mock-up of some possible ideas on this front but the response to my suggestion makes me hesitant to finish it. Getting told no right out the gate on something I think is a major issue with this site was pretty disheartening…

I think I remember that discussion - I think I threw in a mockup too? From what I recall of it, I don't think it was so much a matter of ‘no’ as ‘we just don’t have the resources to implement that at the moment'.

That said, I think the current homepage is doing an awful lot right and I wouldn't want to see that lost. It makes much better use of its space than the homepages for ComicFury, Smackjeeves, Keenspot or Comic Genesis.

For me areas of improvement are more along the lines of formatting the information dynamically across a wide variety of screen sizes as well as supporting mobile technologies. For example, I think the amount and variety of thumbnails the Duck throws at you right now is great. But the information about the comic in the thumbnail is conveyed by mouseover. That works really well on PC but is incredibly awkward on a mobile phone. We should be using a stylesheet that makes that information available in some other way for people on mobiles (a twistie, maybe?).

HippieVan wrote:
What I meant was that with the small amount of money we have to put towards fixes right now I didn't think it was realistic to do a complete overhaul, although I completely agree that it would be the ideal thing to do. I didn't want to get people's hopes up and have everyone start discussing what a completely new front page would look like, only to have to tell everyone that it can't really happen. But if we could boil down what we would really want out a redesign into a few key points that are more do-able, that would be awesome.

I don't know what the Duck is like under the hood so I'm not sure exactly what you mean by ‘a complete overhaul’. It seems like a lot of the issues people have raised like mobile support and changing the UI of the homepage should be achievable just by modifying CSS files.

Identifying key points is an awesome idea. I'm not sure if a lot of it is actually going to be fixable independent of a redesign.

BTW, if you do another fundraiser at some point, even if you don't use Kickstarter, one idea well worth stealing from Kickstarter is that of ‘stretch goals’. If there's a clear delineation between the ‘must haves’ and ‘nice-to-have’ goals (and the Indiegogo page suggests that's the case) then stretch goals are a good way to structure that, and they tend to add motivation for supporters.

Amelius wrote:
*edit* I forgot to mention though! It could be
“Latest updated, New comics, Quail's recommended (featured)(and have quail's random be in the search area, not the main page…)and popular today” which it could cycle through just like that.

A randomizer is not bad, but people do not associate “random” with positive things. And by that I mean people coming in fresh, not people who have been on this site so long that they got used to the smell.◔‿◔

Gonna dig in my heels on this one, ‘cos I think having the randomiser on the home page is really, really useful both for old timers and newbies.

People who don’t associate ‘random’ with positive things can always look in the ‘popular’, ‘recommended’ or ‘recent’ section. But I like that the home page includes some wildcards. It's put me onto some great comics that may never have been on the homepage otherwise - especially ones that are no longer updating but are still awesome.

One of the concerns about a top ten is that it's a feedback loop: Top ten comics get more eyeballs so they're more inclined to be read by more people which means they're likelier to be in the top ten.

That the Duck gives us thumbnails that were sampled using four different methods gives people a wider and more representative sampling to choose from. If a comic has an interesting looking thumbnail and synopsis then it has a chance to shine, even if it's not currently popular.

BTW, Charby is the #1 comic for me, assuming that furthest to the left = #1.

As a semi-aside, is it still useful to have the ‘Tutorials’ link at the top? The Tutorials section is looking pretty sad nowadays.

irrevenant
BTW, Charby is the #1 comic for me, assuming that furthest to the left = #1.

The list is currently based on “likes” but filters out all the raunchy adult rated comics. Technically “Death P0rn” is #1 but is not displayed. Looking now there are actually 6 (!!!) adult comics in the REAL top 10. Woah!

Being cheated out of the Top 10 is a little bitter, sure, but I can understand not wanting the frontpage to be a semi-porn page. :)

Anyway, I submitted this suggestion to the survey:

Make the image file “egg-logo.png” easily accessible by admin so it can be periodically changed. For events/holidays or users that make their custom Duck/quail logo. Also, change the logo back to DRUNK duck. It's time.

could add in a true top ten…

in relation to the overhaul… it doesn't need that, but a new lick of paint might be nice.

VERY good suggestions!

Funnily enough with the current top ten- even though it excludes adult comics and is based on likes and managed by Hippie Van, they STILL have the highest number of hits and are actually listed in order of that number, with Charby at the most and every comic with less after that.
So Hippie worked out a pretty accurate system.