Wow, the responses are for the most part pretty positive. :] I have to admit I was slightly worried. Oz and I got advance notice on this and the chance to raise issues and make suggestions, and we're more or less happy with the designs proposed, but you never know how the community will take a revamp. Keep posting your thoughts, input is good. :]

I hadn't seen the user control panel pages- they look nice! I like the ‘last updated’ column in the favorites management, too. Whenever I've cleaned out my favorites for not updating, I've always had to work between the two lists. It's nice to have that on the same page. You can tell a lot of thought has gone into these designs, placements, what to include, etc.

Kinh and his gang do plan to try and implement suggestions (even ones from way back, we sent him a big ‘want list’ with more important things highlighted, like a sent box for PQs) but yeah, I don't think anyone expects it will all happen at once.


I'm pretty sure at some point Kinh said that users would be able to change the default background color? Or was that just on comic pages?

usedbooks
This won't alter the comment system, though; will it? It would seriously suck to lose or change that too much. Comments are awesome.

No, the comments system will remain the same for now, and hopefully get some nice improvements in the very near future.

same
The “obligatory leave a 5 even if i dont like it just so i dont insult the artist” thing is now gonna be replaced with the “Obligatory like even if i dont just so i dont insult the artist” thing.

One of the big reasons we're replacing the rating system with a Like button is to minimize negativity on the site (not that it was a big problem anyways). I don't think anyone will be insulted if you don't hit the Like button on their update, because they have no way of knowing whether you even read the page yet or not.

Hippie Van
2. THERE IS NO DRUNK DUCK! :'(
3. The “Like” system instead of Quail's random seems like a really bad idea. Clearly it will just mirror the top ten comics.

2. We have a plan for that. ;)
3. We'll see how it goes, and can easily change up what the rows display depending on the response. The idea was that the current ratings system doesn't really mean anything, there's no way to see what a comic is “rated” overall, there's no way to sort on the site based on ratings, etc. It's basically not measured anywhere. This way the “Likes” will at least serve some sort of purpose, and give you a shot at showing up on the homepage.

elektro
How much of this redesign will affect the comics pages themselves? Will it redesign the whole format, or will the pages stay the same only with a few modifications (like the comments box and the top banner advertising the site)?

I deliberately held off on posting a preview of the comics page because we're still finalizing the design, and we want to make sure pages with custom html and such aren't messed up by any design changes before making any decisions.

DAJB
Also, is anything being done about the PQs? A “Sent” box is surely long overdue!

We will definitely be adding a Sent box to the PQs. Still iffy whether or not it makes it into the first redesign roll-out, but if not, it will definitely be part of the 2nd roll-out.

same
One thing id like to see is being able to edit or delete comments youve left on comics.

It's in the works! :)

Terminal
Hopefully, this new redesign is alot easier on older computers.

The site should run much faster once some back-end stuff gets re-jiggered. That's not necessarily tied to the new design, but to us, that will certainly be a major milestone that most people visiting the site won't even notice.

cool.

Thanks for the responses. You guys are awesome. :)

And thanks for the the opportunity to voice suggestions and concerns in advance. I'm sure there will be tons more once things get implemented. I can say I've been really missing the news on the front page ever since the last redesign. Oh, and I've missed color. The gray has been feeling very sterile and “default.” I think we're due for a change, and hopefully it doesn't create *too* many new bugs to fix in transition.

srhdt

same
One thing id like to see is being able to edit or delete comments youve left on comics.

It's in the works! :)

Yes O¬O just… yes.

Ahhh I can't wait!

It will be nice to get a new design at last. Looking forward to it.

Like everyone else I'm skeptical on the “like list” as it's bound to just mirror the top 10. The top 10 has the most readers, therefor they will have the most “likes”. Seems pretty obvious.

With this site tweaking, will you be able to correct some other common site problems like the new faulty page uploader and the non working trophies?

I'm joining the color band wagon and saying I'm not too fond of the neonish green (or whatever shade it is). It is a bit too bright. I personally think it would be ok if it were muted a little.

srhdt

Hippie Van
2. THERE IS NO DRUNK DUCK! :'(
3. The “Like” system instead of Quail's random seems like a really bad idea. Clearly it will just mirror the top ten comics.

2. We have a plan for that. ;)
3. We'll see how it goes, and can easily change up what the rows display depending on the response. The idea was that the current ratings system doesn't really mean anything, there's no way to see what a comic is “rated” overall, there's no way to sort on the site based on ratings, etc. It's basically not measured anywhere. This way the “Likes” will at least serve some sort of purpose, and give you a shot at showing up on the homepage.

Oh, good. I'll calm down now. Some sort of duck-drawing contest, perhaps?

But yeah, as skool said, being able to change the background colour would be a great idea…I'm on this site way too often for my poor eyes to deal with that neon green.

Oh nooooooooooooo

The snapshots look cool, but a lot of us have not recovered from the major site “upgrade” that Comicspace forced upon us. It was just… ugly. Please, please do adequate beta testing before you make the changes to get the bugs worked out in advance and try to remember that it takes some of us longer than others to become familiar with the interface. Please learn from Comicspace's bad example. Please. I've really been getting into the DD site lately and if the changes are too sweeping you'll reset me back to ground zero the way comicspace did.

srhdt

Hippie Van
The “Like” system instead of Quail's random seems like a really bad idea. Clearly it will just mirror the top ten comics.

We'll see how it goes, and can easily change up what the rows display depending on the response. The idea was that the current ratings system doesn't really mean anything This way the “Likes” will at least serve some sort of purpose, and give you a shot at showing up on the homepage.

No one disagrees that the current rating system is pointless and a “likes” system is fine, in and of itself. It'll just replace the current practice of giving 5's so I'm sure no one will have a problem with that.

The logic for a Top 10 based on “Likes” however is flawed. For a comic not already in the Top 10, even the current “broken” random list would give it a better chance of appearing on the front page!

If it really is easy to change as you say then, rather than “seeing how it goes” (which is likely to mean it'll never get changed!), why not implement something useful from the beginning? As I suggested earlier, a random system which excludes dormant comics could really benefit comics lower down the rankings.

Cool. A new DD.

I'd have to agree with the comments doubting the effectiveness of the Most Liked column, I personally can't really see any outcome other than it replicating the top comics. I mean it makes sense: the comics that get the most hits will get the most likes. I AM, though, excited for what it's trying to do, and that it's replacing the Random comics. I can't count how many times I saw a promising-looking thumbnail promoted in the Random column, only to click on it and find that it hadn't updated since 2007. I can't really see how the Like column will effect anyone but the top comics, but that's probably because the feature hasn't been implemented yet.

Other than that, I'm actually really stoked for it! :) The design looks great; I actually don't mind the green colour. I can see how it might be discerning, though, but it's bright, catchy, it looks fun, just what you'd want from a site that hosts webcomics.

Also glad that the news is moving back to the front page! I tend to miss posts with where it is now haha, but that's a fault of mine, not the site's.

Can't wait for it to be implemented!

DAJB
The one thing that seems a huge mistake to me at this stage is the Top 10 “Liked” comics. I can foresee this being almost identical to the current Top 10 since any comic which is already in the Top 10 is almost certain to have more fans to “like” it than others. It will also continue to favour comics which update daily as opposed to, say, weekly. If there are to be rankings for “liked” comics I'd have thought these should replace the current Top 10, not simply duplicate it.

Personally, I'd have preferred it if - instead of duplicating the Top 10 - some thought had been spent on making the “random picks” more useful. The introduction of the “random picks” should have been a great way of introducing people to comics outside the Top 10. It failed, I think, because it was always cluttered up with too many dormant comics. A simple line of code to exclude comics which haven't updated for, say, six months, would have been far more useful than two identical Top 10s.

This is exactly what I thought when I saw this. I like everything else, but the current proposition strikes me as redundant bad idea. I recommend revamping it entirely or just keep the random spot.

I agree with just about everyone that the site is in dire need of a redesign, so thanks for your efforts. I especially think it's a good idea, that the News section becomes more prominent on the main site. I'm a bit uneasy whether the new design with this real-time thingy will run properly with a slow internet-connection like mine, but I'm confident that this won't be much of a problem.

However, there are a few things that bother me a bit:

Someone
we're replacing the Quail's Random section with a Most Liked of the Week, which incorporates the new “Like” system of voting.

This is a grave mistake, if you ask me. I've always enjoyed to look into this “random”-section, as this is a great way to find comics that aren't known to a lot of users . It is true that there will always be a certain amount of dormant or abandoned comics in there and an even larger amount of complete rubbish, but you still find the occasional gem that has just escaped the readers' attention so far. I would rather look for a way to exclude the comics that haven't updated for, say, three months or something.
On the other hand, this “most liked” list will only contain comics already known to a lot of readers, even if it doesn't more or less mirror the “top ten” - which I doubt.
There are some all-time favourites of mine, that I found in “Quail's Random” and that's why I think this decision should be seriously reconsidered at the very least.

At least the “this just in” box seems to stay. I think this is vitally important as well. I would even suggest to extend it somehow while you're at it, like with some kind of archive-page, where you can see all the comics that updated during a given time, like e.g. the last 24 hours. If that's technically possible in any way, that is. This would give those comics a chance that have been pre-uploaded. As of now, if there is a bulk of more than ten pre-uploaded comics that of course automatically update all at once, still only the last ten have a chance of getting noticed by anyone who doesn't already know them anyway.

Someone
We're replacing the 1-5 scale of voting the site currently employs with a simple “Like” button. If you like a comic update, click “Like”. If you don't like the update, simply move on. The comics with the most “Likes” over the past 7 days will appear on the homepage in that section.

Well, this is practical thinking, as most people seem to rate 5 or say nothing. Still, I think, that there should also be a “Don't Like” button as well, even if it (hopefully) won't be used even remotely as often. By giving people that option, not commenting cannot be accidentally taken as negative criticism - and face it: there are a lot more reasons not to comment than not liking the page, like when a regular reader only visits once a month or stuff, which happens very frequently.
I think you should either keep that option open for the sake of clarification, or abandon the rating system altogether. In my humble experience, the latter version works pretty well with other webcomic sites.

Oh, and the site would certainly loose a lot of its charm without the Duck and the Quail, so I hope you'll still include them in the final version of the new design. They'd also make this horrible shade of green more bearable (while I admit that it's already an improvement over the current gruesome grayish blue).

Sounds like I'm only complaining, but I'm actually happy to see that someone cares for this site and puts some effort into upgrading it. Thank you very much.

Damn, Christmas comes earlier every year, I swear!

Is there a possibility of adding a feature that sends an email to you every time some one leaves a comment on one of your comics… to kinda go alongside the update emails?

Blue: oh wow!! great design choices! i love the new look and feel… that lime green might get annoying after a while (just in contrast to the usual white and grey colour scheme) i think adding an option to change the over all colour would be cool… just cuz the whole lime and my retinas not getting along :P

Nice! I'm really happy to see people putting the love and thought into the Duck that it deserves BEHIND the scenes ^.^ Kudos to you. Looking forward to the redesign!

Regarding the concerns from a few of you about the new “Most Liked” row on the homepage and the removal of Quail's Random, the plan is to eventually have every single row customizable by the individual user. Meaning that you'll be able to click on Top Ten and change it to Random, or click on Most Liked and change it to Top Ten, etc.

We'll come up with a list with a handful of useful options and allow the user to have free reign on what they want displayed on each of those 3 rows. This functionality may not be available on the first roll-out, but it'll be added to the list of features to bring out later.

The design looks smooth to me; not much to add besides what's been said. But I'm going to have to repeat some of the sentiments about the color. Green is fine to me, but that is really, really bright o_o

I think it looks great- especially putting the news back on the front page, although I'm going to parrot what a lot of people have already said in that I think we should keep some form of the Quail's Random system. I do like DAJB's idea about implementing a random section with code to exclude comics that haven't updated for some pre-determined amount of time. Even with the broken system we have now, I found a good deal of comics that I enjoyed (that were still updating) that I doubt I would have found otherwise, and I would hate to see that go away. There are some sleepers out there that are great, but just don't update regularly enough to get noticed otherwise.

Overall I'm really excited for the redesign, I think the site will be a lot more usable and flow better, but I do have a few questions and concerns.

Many people have already stated this but, the colors are too bright to look at after a while, and the ‘Most liked’ more than likely will reflect the ‘Top Ten.’

And I agree with what usedbooks said.

usedbooks
I am a little concerned about featured comics. They seem somehow even less noticeable at the top like that. I think people are used to seeing ad banners frame a site on top, and to put the featured comics above that sort of pushes them into the background, imo.

Lastly, are users going to be able to know how many people have favorited their comic like the duck alerter used to do?

I was kinda scared when I saw in the news a redesign was coming, not that Drunkduck doesn't need one, but that redesigns often makes thing more complicated. I actually like most of the new changes. I like the green, although it might be tiresome after a while. Most of the new options seem to be pretty good updates.

Like it has been said before, I'm not sure the featured comic are really more noticeable this way.

srhdt
We'll come up with a list with a handful of useful options and allow the user to have free reign on what they want displayed on each of those 3 rows.

Nice.

Like many, I hope these changes will happen without creating too much bugs.

While the design it seems good, I do not like that retina-burning lime green at all. There really has to be a better color.

The coloration is absolutely terrible, almost in an offensive way. Cooler colors will be less stressful on the eye and keep a reader on your landing page much longer (cha-ching). But the layout itself is good. Its a lot better than the disorganized crap we have going on now.

For catching newer comics within the 24 hour period it'd be nice if this was one of the features the editing of columns could allow :)

Like setting it to only display comics from within a 24 hour period, a week, a month, 6 months, etc?

I'm really liking the redesign! I am so glad DD is getting positive attention and cannot stress how much I hope you stay on top and follow up with fixing bugs! The last “redesign” was one of the worst things that ever hit DD in recent years XD

I want to double what Used Books said on the feature as well. They seem less “featur-ey” :P

I like the new look a lot, except for the colour, it is a bit bright. Some sites I have seen have the ability to change the colour pallet when your logged in. Perhaps that may be an idea?

I would also like to reinforce that it is a good idea to be able to customize site's color. I'm worried that the top liked will just be the top ten. Maybe if it was the likes over just 1 day, to mix it up more? I don't know. A lot of cool stuff here, though!

Does it have to be bright green? Could you possibly have the option to change the colors?

I have to agree with people voicing concern over the “like” system.
I cant see how it wont just replicate the top ten.
I don't have as many readers as a top ten comic, so I will never get as many liked as they do.
Do the top ten need MORE advantages? They already have permanent advertising on the front page in the top ten list.