I had a dream where I was trapped in some kind of bright, new, shiny place that had the same color scheme as the new site.

It was funny though I didn't like the color scheme because it reminded me of lemon, pistachio, peach Italian ice.

ozoneocean
We should all post self pics of ourselves with Sunglasses in the self pic thread in homage to DD's future! B)

My god man, THAT'S A BRILLIANT IDEA.

I SHALL FISH OUT MY SUNGLASSES.

I've been seeing the new site in my dreams. not good.

ozoneocean
We should all post self pics of ourselves with Sunglasses in the self pic thread in homage to DD's future! B)

hmmm…

I don't own sunglasses! :(

But I searched for and found a Firefox add-on that changes the colors of websites.

semiflex
a Firefox add-on that changes the colors of websites.

why this is Bigger than the discovery of sliced bread!! It's THE better mousetrap!!

you must share and make the need for indoor shades obsolete!!!

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/color-that-site/

Works with FF 5.0, and it seems to work with the Duck preview site :D

edit

I can't seem to figure out how to change colors individually… not sure if you can. But you can change the whole palettes of foreground and background separately until you get something that doesn't cause eye aches.

That would be great if not for the fact I don't use firefox.

Whoa! Great find! I'm going to play around with that a bit!!! :o

@Genejoke – aka The_Amazing_Mass_O_Pecs

if you like, I could use that image for the radio talents . . .

semiflex
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/color-that-site/

Works with FF 5.0, and it seems to work with the Duck preview site :D

edit

I can't seem to figure out how to change colors individually… not sure if you can. But you can change the whole palettes of foreground and background separately until you get something that doesn't cause eye aches.

I was playing with it on the preview site when I found it after I saw it reccomended on another site I'm at regularly which just changed it's color scheme.

It might have been a glitch of timing, but it stripped out most background art on the comic pages.

DaWaterRat
I was playing with it on the preview site when I found it after I saw it reccomended on another site I'm at regularly which just changed it's color scheme.

It might have been a glitch of timing, but it stripped out most background art on the comic pages.

Yeah, I can definitely see it doing that. It turned the little BG pattern on the homepage into a solid color matching the color scheme changes. (Or wait, do you mean the actual art in the comic page, or just the background art of the layout?)

I think there's a way to stop it from attempting to change images. Or either way, there might be a way to set it up so it only changes the homepage and forums, and not comic pages. I'm gonna go mess with it some more and see if I can figure that out.

edit

While changing the colors of a page, in the settings tab there's a FOLDER option– if you use that option and save it for the forums it'll only change the forums and nothing else. No option I've tried on the homepage preserves the comic pages, but that may just be the way the preview site is set up right now.

So at the very least the place where you'll spend most of your time can be edited without harming comic layouts.


Also there's a Chrome extension called Stylebot that seems to let you change color schemes, for the Google users.

In the last stretch now. So what can we expect?

I keep waiting for them to do this announcement… maybe they're waiting to see if the data migration will be done on time, that's always taken longer than they expected before.

Anyway the main things will be:
If you have side pages (where you've uploaded the HTML file yourself), make sure you have a copy of that html code. You'll be able to remake it on the new site with some copy/pasting, but for whatever reason it won't carry itself over. Also, expect to have to rebuild your custom comic page HTML on the new site (and probably with only limited capability, whatever's there on the preview site now). Everything else is more or less functional and should carry over. They'll lock down the old site (viewing only, no ability to log in or make any changes) over the weekend and at some point early next week the preview site will take over the main URL and the old site will be temporarily moved to a subdomain (but I think you still won't be able to log into it).

skoolmunkee
I keep waiting for them to do this announcement… maybe they're waiting to see if the data migration will be done on time, that's always taken longer than they expected before.

Anyway the main things will be:
If you have side pages (where you've uploaded the HTML file yourself), make sure you have a copy of that html code. You'll be able to remake it on the new site with some copy/pasting, but for whatever reason it won't carry itself over. Also, expect to have to rebuild your custom comic page HTML on the new site (and probably with only limited capability, whatever's there on the preview site now). Everything else is more or less functional and should carry over. They'll lock down the old site (viewing only, no ability to log in or make any changes) over the weekend and at some point early next week the preview site will take over the main URL and the old site will be temporarily moved to a subdomain (but I think you still won't be able to log into it).

That's how you do it?

…argh…

But you might want to have them make a big button about that as people don't really pay attention to the news…

Someone
If you have side pages (where you've uploaded the HTML file yourself), make sure you have a copy of that html code. You'll be able to remake it on the new site with some copy/pasting, but for whatever reason it won't carry itself over. Also, expect to have to rebuild your custom comic page HTML on the new site (and probably with only limited capability, whatever's there on the preview site now).

Reading the post it sounds like that (copying the html code) would be a pointless exercise as there will be no way to use html but only the customization tools provided. The phases that tools are provided doesn't bother me but it seems they are going back on things they assured people of not too long ago. Please correct me if I read it wrong but it sounds as though it's going to piss a lot of people off.

Things are a little confused: Is the site being disabled today (June 30th) or tomorrow (July 1st)?

There is no June 31st :/

on the 1st. :)

Genejoke
Please correct me if I read it wrong but it sounds as though it's going to piss a lot of people off.

Oh yeah. I'm already PO'ed with it. Supremely.

But it's not flakiness, back-flipping or prevarication- It's basically Lawrence giving an estimate of what he thought he was capable of at the time, but as the dates have gotten closer he's had to revise things. He's tried and tried, but that's what we're left with.

Nicotine
There is no June 31st :/

Or is there?

It's a conspiracy, I tells ya. They want us all to work extra days without pay, so they're sneaking extra days at the end of the month … just wait for February the 30th, it's coming, it's coming soon.

The Duck is part of the conspiracy, man. The sobered him up and now he's all like, stone-cold awake and helping THE MAN run the world.

End days people. The end days are here and The Duck is in control. It's all happening now, man … there's nothing you can do but wait!

Genejoke

Someone
If you have side pages (where you've uploaded the HTML file yourself), make sure you have a copy of that html code. You'll be able to remake it on the new site with some copy/pasting, but for whatever reason it won't carry itself over. Also, expect to have to rebuild your custom comic page HTML on the new site (and probably with only limited capability, whatever's there on the preview site now).

Reading the post it sounds like that (copying the html code) would be a pointless exercise as there will be no way to use html but only the customization tools provided. The phases that tools are provided doesn't bother me but it seems they are going back on things they assured people of not too long ago. Please correct me if I read it wrong but it sounds as though it's going to piss a lot of people off.

Your main comic page with the comic images on = have to be rebuilt using the in-house tool with no custom HTML
Your side pages like Characters or whatever = have to be remade but you will be able to copy/paste in html code for them

okay thanks for clearing that up. That means PW and analytics code will be lost and can't be put back in.

Genejoke
okay thanks for clearing that up. That means PW and analytics code will be lost and can't be put back in.

No. Only temporarily. You save that stuff and put it in again with Lawrence and Dan finish adding that functionality after launch.


Initially DD should hopefully be a much smoother site, but way better for very amateur, beginner level people to start with.
Advanced users like you and I will be disappointed and stifled. This should change as things go on.
-Though without full HTML, it'll never be fully to our tastes, but then again if you're really advanced, but not lazy (like me) then you self host anyway ^_^

Me advanced, HAH! I struggle with html but being able to use PW is important. And thanks to quackcasts I started using analytics too and finding that informative.

Yeah, although we don't know how long “temporarily” will be, we want them to try and prioritize those little add-in things over whatever other improvements they want to make. People losing their tracking and vote-button add ins and stuff is gonna be a big deal for some people. It's actually unfortunate that we did that stats quackcast now, since when we did it we were working under the idea that the html would transfer over so people should get stats before the changeover. And now they're going to lose them. >:I

Yeah, I don't think they quite understand that the potential for complete customization is what makes people really move in and feel at home at a site like this–take that away and you really *do* start to ask “okay why am I here with a pretty generic layout when I could just go make my own site where I can do anything?–or go to some other hosting site that doesn't have these restrictions?”

Yes, people stick around these community sites for the community, but when everyone's pages look too much alike, there's just a huge loss of personality and creativity everywhere. Many people here (not me, mind you) have invested an incredible amount of time and effort into getting their pages looking just how they wanted them. What's going to be the big incentive to stay after having all that work, and even the functional possibility of replicating it, taken away? (Not to mention, having some of your large comics forcibly resized?) Will the real movers and shakers at DD–those that are left–stick around when reduced to increasingly generic pages?

I worked in the MMORPG industry, and the key lessen to learn there is never, ever to take anything away from your customers: it almost invariably causes your population to drop. I can't help but think that the same will apply here.

(By the way, I've really been enjoying the Quackcasts lately, they're getting better and better. : )

smbhax
Many people here (not me, mind you) have invested an incredible amount of time and effort into getting their pages looking just how they wanted them. What's going to be the big incentive to stay after having all that work, and even the functional possibility of replicating it, taken away? (Not to mention, having some of your large comics forcibly resized?)

Yup, That's me to a tee- even with a giant, intentionally huge page that I made to use an “infinite canvas” effect. Exactly these concerns.
I appreciate Lawrence work on rebuilding the site, but removing HTML editing wasn't necessary and could've avoided a lot of work for him an Dan if they'd kept it in. They made a mountain of extra work for themselves.

I will not be able to replicate my template on the DD system as it'll be on changeover. I'll be able to get closer to it on the future version of the template editor, which is much better, but never the full control I have right now.
It may be time to fire up the self hosting for real again and create a much slimmed down, simplified template here on what'll become my DD mirror site.

smbhax
By the way, I've really been enjoying the Quackcasts lately, they're getting better and better. : )

Thank you very much!