Page 959…
Happy Monday all!
So…some new things on the site over the weekend.
1) I moved the links up to the top bar.
2) Tyler gave us a nice ARCHIVE!
Click the link on the menu bar. And click the PICTURE to start reading that chapter.
OR (and here’s the cool part)
Click the TITLE of the chapter and see THUMBNAILS of EACH PAGE!
Personally I’d prefer it if there was EVERY thumbnail of each chapter on ONE page. But with some chapters reaching over 160 pages…it just doesn’t seem feasible.
3) We’re moving the JUKEBOX to the menubar as well. So you can click it. It’ll pop up as a seperate window…and you can listen while reading through the archive.
4) Advertising.
You may have noticed. I got rid of a couple ads. And added a few more.
We no longer have the top and bottom Project Wonderful ads.
I’ve replaced them with ads from our ad server.
BUT….
I’ve added button ads just below the comic. I think they’d be high visibility for people on a budget.
I need to add some Banners for anyone who wants ’em.
And we still have to work on a few more things.
But the site is almost complete with the overhaul.
Other than that…
What are your guys’ thoughts on the FORUM?
We’ve had it for a couple years. And it’s wonderful. But I get more comments a day on the site than I do on the Forum in a week.
So…should I still keep it? Or is the new comments section enough for you all?
And finally….
I’ve set up an OPENX account. So my ads are running through that.
If anyone has experience with running servers like ADSDAQ, Tribal Fusion, and such through OPENX and how that works…I’d love to ask some questions.
Thanks…and hope you enjoy this week!
Scott
Regarding the forum itself… I think it’s good to keep around even if only from a community aspect. Shortform conversations are great in the general comments but the more in depth conversations should have a home where they can live and where anyone can come in and pipe in on a subject well down the road. I love the new comments section, really. It’s just that in the form it’s in, by its nature, it’s a reactionary piece for the day to day comic posts.
As always, loving Dreamland. Good to see Nicole a little more open in the face of what’s happening.
personally I’m a lurker by nature, so you see me post even less often then you see me comment so I leave that to people it matters to.
One thing though. What happen to the voting button. I can’t seem to find it.
PLEASE keep the forum! It’s a better community option than the comments, allowing for more than just daily post/blog discussion. I just wish more people would use it…
Wow! The archive is pretty nice. I like it.
I say keep the forum, but get rid of the “Dreamland by Page” section. That subcategory always seemed awkward to me. Less than 10 people comment on any give page and their comments are similar to the reactionary posts from the main page.
my problem is i hate registering for 300 forums. if my 10 favorite webcomics all used a common forum website…well then i’d be on it a lot. but as is, not worth it because i work 2 jobs and have other involvements and it is too time consuming to log into so many various sites. so no forum for me, until the webcomic creators are truly on top of it, which they are not now. sorry to say, but this is sort of obvious and weird – dumbrella had almost resolved it but they were hesitant to let other comics in and snobby to newbies. this eventually killed it with no new blood coming in. maybe they didn’t care bc the central forum made no money but required work.
re: new website…as i’d mentioned before, the TWC button had been getting more and more lost in the design, its location ever more obscure. i’d spend so long hunting for it i could understand why others didn’t vote. but now it appears to be gone altogether. either that, or it is so obscure i truly cannot find it any more. this should be on the top nav bar, as it is for xylia tales. that is what makes people vote – not having to hunt for the twc button – that and updated vote incentives. it really boils down to those two things….
also thanks for getting the juke box back! LOVE your juke box!
looks like alex is making some progress…wonder if orion will notice?
Please keep the forums.
Although I tend to lurk more than I post I used to be moderately acive there, but somehow I got out of the habit. Still, it is nice to have a place to read longer ‘give and take’ discussions and ideas about the comic, as well as a place view fan art, (I have to scan and post some from my 9 year old daughter sometime.)
I say keep the forums(though too bad about the project wonderful ads, I picked up a couple of new webcomics to peruse because of them… heh, I’m becoming a webcomic junkie; Thanks a lot, Bob and George and 8-bit Theater!)
As far as the rest of the design for the site, I’m probably gonna peruse the features and see whether I like the new stuff or not, though the juke box is out of the question thanks to dial-up(thank god for libraries and their high speed internet, though!). Finally, as far as the story, Nicole, just tell Felicity you’re doing good, and and that you miss her. It worked for Alex, and he got a kiss from his elf now-girlfriend, so now it’s a life saved instead of a romance rekindled.
The top web comics button went byebye, I take it? 🙂
Hmm… I was wondering about the archive… you’d have to write it more clearly that if you click on the thumbnail you start a new chapter and of you click on the text to see thumbnails of all the pages. Otherwise people just don’t know that these two things don’t do the same thing. I know you probably think that people normally try out both – but usually they actually don’t. So it would be good to give this additional information somehow.
Have Nicole’s lips always been that purple? o.O
Personally? I prefer the comments page. I agree with Michelle in that forums can often be a huge time sink and as fun as they can be I just don’t have the time. The comments page suits me fine, but there are probably enough people who enjoy the forum that it wouldn’t be fair to them to take it down. 😀
And didn’t Nicole already say she didn’t know what she should write?? Don’t think we’ve ever seen her this indecisive. lol! Poor Nicole.
1> I don’t like forums in general. I DO like being able to comment or chime in on the page itself, as I don’t need to register or log on just to do so. I’m already on the page, and can read or chime in on what others think and say.
2> As a couple others have also noticed.. TWC button has gone AWOL. 🙁
As always, excellent work Scott! ^.^
~Prince Demitri
Haven’t decided if I’m going to keep the vote buttons.
Still thinking about it…
The vote button is gone.
I’m considering if that’s permanent or not.
Not enough people were voting to really make it worth keeping it on the site.
5% to be exact. Even when I posted the big banners on the page and updated daily.
I’ll consider bringing it back. And if it makes sense…I’ll do it.
For now…yes.
Yes. Actually I’d like to see if Tyler could make it so that if you just click on ANYTHING…it goes to the thumbnails.
Morning all!
Thanks for the feedback.
I’ll try to respond as best as I can.
Hope you have a great day!
Scott,
I understand that space on a web site must serve some useful function, but Nancy has had a fretful weekend, unable to vote for your site. She is so fearful that you will close down the site if she can’t vote for it.
Please understand that we didn’t vote for the gifts you gave us (although Dreamland is the desktop on every computer in the house except for my work laptop – a mom has to be firm sometime) we voted to acknowledge the gift you have.
Best regards,
bobbi & nancy
Can you please move the comic navigation buttons (forward, back etc.) to the top of the page as well? Thanks.
Hey Dample…
There’s a back button on the top right of the menu(next to search).
And clicking the page advances the pages.
Hey guys…
I’m not going to close down the site.
I promise.
Topwebcomics brings in a very small amount of traffic. Which is why I don’t really know if I’m going to be bringing the button back.
It’s all good. I’m here to stay.
🙂
The TWC vote buttons? That sure got the group excited, even if they’re SLACKING OFF right now and letting us slide into 14th. (seriously, 14th? you’re not even trying, lol) It was kinda exciting seeing how high in the rank we could stay (til other sites who shall remain nameless started getting 500-600 votes every couple hours) . Maybe just toss that link in your comment every couple’a days if you don’t put it up there permanent? Good community thing, I thinks.
Pink lipstick in the dark? Or she had a grape Slurpee® while Alex slept?
I like the Reply option in comments, it’s excellent, but every day it moves with that days update further down the ‘pile’ of updates. The forum, if it’s being used, is better for long term conversations. Like the ones I’ll be involved in, now that I know we have a forum.
I know, sometimes I’m so busy looking at the pretty colors in front of (and sometimes behind) my eyes that I miss stuff like that.
And one person came to my site from here the other day! Increased my traffic by 10%, lol! Thanks Scott!
the archive is awesome~!!! =D the thumbnails for each chapter is scaled funny.. but it’s not a big deal. Having thumbnails for each page is an awesome idea =) Really makes it a lot easier to find things =) Thanks!
Scott,
I always thought the purpose of TWC was letting potential new readers know about TDC. Unless it costs money, is there harm in keeping it? As far as it being a time sink, you coul just update the wallpaper every month from a series of 12 you already have available.
For the forum, there are topics that can be covered there that probably aren’t appropriate for the strip comments. For example, I’m trying to trade a Kiwi figure for a different figure right now (sorry for the self-serving example).
Don’t you just hate it when you want desperately to say something and nothing seems to come to mind? Lol!
I know I don’t post on the forum much, but I think you should still keep it. The comments section is great for fast feedback, but the forum gives an even more sense of belonging to the community of the comic. It stands to reason that it would get fewer posts, but maybe that is to its credit.
Yes. She seems to like purple lipstick or something…
Maybe Nicole is indecisive because this is important, and she has to use her feelings–which she has avoided doing for how many years now?–rather than her thinking and science. Alex can help her here: he’s struggling to express himself to Nastajia, and cares about Felicity, Kiwi, Paddington…
About the page: You included tags (and the handy note under the box, thank you!) for titles and bold and italic–but apparently not the tags to turn off bold, italic, and maybe others. How can we just bold or italic one word?
please! Please!! PLEASE!!!! Keep the vote button!!!!!
As far as what Nicole should write, how about:
“Is this real life
Is this fantasy?”
then wait for Felicity’s response. For an explanation, search digg for “This is why I love Digg… (PIC)”
If this can bring back Wayne Campbell’s “partied out” friend back from unresponsiveness, it should work on Catgirls too!
Jakesdad? That makes no sense. That wouldn’t help Felicity too much. I would tell her that I was OK and that she doesn’t deserve to die.
Scott –
I like the forums. I don’t always poke around in there, but it’s a good resource to have. Besides, the way I run on sometimes, it makes sense to have place where I can do that when the mood strikes. And, you never know when new readers will dive in there and be amazed by what they find. The section by page may be getting a bit bulky these days, and the new comments feature out here seems to take care of it pretty well, so you could probably bury it a little deeper in the forums. It’d be a shame to lose some of the comments in there though.
And, you never know when they’ll make good blackmail material 😉
As for today’s strip, I’m having a vision.
If Nicole can’t think of anything to write, I see a graveyard. I see Alex, Nastajia, Kiwi, Paddington, the centaurs….
I see a freshly filled grave and a headstone….
The epitaph reads:
“Here lies Felicity, who died from Writer’s Block”
That works as well, of course. 🙂
Whups sorry! Had a hectic week followed by a three-day weekend so I wasn’t able to get online to vote -_- Could we have the vote button for just one more week? if it doesn’t get back up then we’ll understand if you want to put it away permanently.
I kept click on the thumbnail and going to the first page of the chapter. It was driving me nuts!! Thanks for pointing out this problem.
I’m no expert on this, but I think the tags here work like regular HTML tags: you start with the listed tag to turn on a feature, then use the same tag with a forward slash “/” in front of it (within the angle braces) to turn it off.
So, for example, to make one word in italics, you would use (without the extra spaces) to turn on italics in front of the word, and (without spaces) to turn italics back off after the word. (I used this example because italics is the only tag I’ve figured out, so it’s the only one I ever use … )
italics
😉
Argh! Even with the extra spaces, it tried to format my examples as tags!
Okay, let’s try this again. In the following example, replace the curly braces (“{“) with angle braces (“<") for the actual tags:
{i} = start italics
{/i} = end italics
I really hope you come back someday to see this …
😉
CARP!!
All of this was supposed to be in reply to bmonk’s post, two down (as of now) from here …
:\
*SNORT*
Ow.
*begins cleaning snorted coffee from laptop*
😆
The Poem! Send The Poem!!!
That’s where my passing grade for COMS100 is buried, and for the same reason.