Hm… date of last login on profiles perhaps, so you know not to pq someone if they haven't been around for years to check their messages. It could also encourage comments under old comics if someone is not actively creating but you know they occasionally still check in to read comments.

I suppose listing comics read and personal ratings is an option each user could do via third party blogs, it's certainly not a priority but something I love in sites with databases of content. Maybe statistics based on pages marked read and displaying users with similar interests based on comparing likes and / or favorites? It'd make building out a friend and reader base pure joy, not to mention it'd give the “like” feature a useful function for those who click on it but it still wouldn't give away specifics, which I suppose is the aim of anonymous liking.

Unaware if there's a community blogging project as well, but a community blog, even separately and with high criteria for participating could spice things up. (Or maybe not if there were such attempts in the past and it was more of a pain than a reward).

ThrisbyDude wrote:
↑ There is a way to check whether or not someone is active.

On the top toolbar (where The Duck logo is) you can type up a member's username in the search bar, {press ENTER,} then click/tap on ‘switch to user search’; you can see on the right when a user was last active.
The date and time system here is {slightly } jitterly, in my opinion, but it'll still give you an idea when someone was last active.

Maybe adding “last active” on our bios could be a good start.

Thanks, you learn something every day.

Suggestions from Phil:

H
I was searching for other comics but there something missing I noticed from your advanced search, despite being called advanced, there should be a search comics by year besides searching comics by last month or last week. I want to see what old comics might have been on the site (if they are still there lmao). If you can add this feature then that would be very nice of you!

Other features I want to suggest are dark mode, getting notified for updates via private message or blinking tab, discord server, and maybe a feature for creating our own custom page for organizing and featuring our comics for our own profile pages? I think that would be great too!

Besides comics, I think there should be artwork and maybe games that should be accepted on the site if they are ok with it.

What if instead of a top ten we had something like 20 spaces and the chance that a comic would show up there was relative to it's popularity?

Not 1 to 1, but more of a percentage chance. Like if the comic is #1 in popularity it has 100% chance of showing up. If it's #2 it's 97% …. Then somewhere down the line around #20 there is a 10% chance. If it's #58 it's like 2% … Maybe there's a cut off around #100 where there's no chance it will show up.

I think this would be good for the comics that are always in the top 100 but never get to top 10. And it would make the site more interesting because it's would change every time you refresh the page.

I had no idea there was even a top 100.

Also, here's an idea too . . . suppose to keep space and bandwidth down, if a comic that have only one page, or even no pages at all, and doesn't appear to have been updated in ages, they get pruned unless the creator can prove they intend to start updating again? Because I've come across a number of comics here whose page count is under 5, and haven't been update since like 2009-2011.

J_Scarbrough wrote:
I had no idea there was even a top 100.

Also, here's an idea too . . . suppose to keep space and bandwidth down, if a comic that have only one page, or even no pages at all, and doesn't appear to have been updated in ages, they get pruned unless the creator can prove they intend to start updating again? Because I've come across a number of comics here whose page count is under 5, and haven't been update since like 2009-2011.

I disagree. There's some good stuff in there… Even just a few pages. Maybe don't put it on the front page but make it show up somewhere. I spent a lot of time looking at the random section.

plz for the love god…ADD A LITTLE YOUTUBE VIDEO NEAR THE COMIC SO you can read WITH MUSIC BACKGROUND!!!

THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING..THE IMMERSION IS INTENSE!

plz a way for use to add youtube links or music in a small junkbox (cant be static or pop up.

I just came back to Duck after years of hiatus and I'm baffled that there has been no changes to the website. I'm baffled anyone still uses this platform considering how unfriendly it is to mobile devices, but I guess that shows hwo my opinions may be out of touch.

Regardless, i think the number one thing you could do to improve the website is to have clicking the comic page load the next page. I mean, it's been typical for comic webhosts of the last 10 years to have a click box over 75% of the right side of the page to progress the comic and 25% of the left side to go back a page, but given how The Duck seems to outright oppose usability, I think this is the most modest ask with the most potential benefits.

I should really, rather than wasting energy stating the obvious here, just start an account on Comic Fury, but I guess I also struggle with moving on and improving my life.

SaturdayS wrote:
I just came back to Duck after years of hiatus and I'm baffled that there has been no changes to the website. I'm baffled anyone still uses this platform considering how unfriendly it is to mobile devices, but I guess that shows hwo my opinions may be out of touch.

Regardless, i think the number one thing you could do to improve the website is to have clicking the comic page load the next page. I mean, it's been typical for comic webhosts of the last 10 years to have a click box over 75% of the right side of the page to progress the comic and 25% of the left side to go back a page, but given how The Duck seems to outright oppose usability, I think this is the most modest ask with the most potential benefits.

I should really, rather than wasting energy stating the obvious here, just start an account on Comic Fury, but I guess I also struggle with moving on and improving my life.

100% agree. The UI of this site is outright hostile and it's been literal years since the redesign was even decided on, and we're coming up on a full year since we last got word on progress. It makes me wish I knew coding, I'd do it for free just to make this site usable. :/

The reader experience here is just bad. I'm constantly falling behind on my favorites because of how much clicking and fiddling it requires. If we had a reader portal that displayed our recently updated subscriptions by displaying thumbnails like the search does, it'd be a huge improvement. I hate that effing dropdown sooooo much.

Like seriously, I'm sure some of the aversion to mobile friendly version is some app store shenanigans regarding the adult content, but it'd be nice if some thought was put into making it easier for like the huge percentage of audience that reads exclusively on their phones these days.

There's so much that needs fixing around here it's not just the bad reader experience the archive management is pretty busted too. Can't even move things in bulk, what a headache.

We're still updating the site slowly on extremely limited funds :)
Even when people donate most of the money for updates comes out of my personal funds so it means we have to go glacially.

Alexey is still working on updating the site to Em's design. The design will be a responsive site so that it conforms to whatever size screen you're using rather that crappy mobile only sites where 60% of the functionality is either missing or takes a totally different form and isn't updated at the same time as the rest of the site.


Here it is here:

https://next.theduckwebcomics.com/

This is not fully functional but it shows our progress.

What kind of donation do I need to make to get an admin to go into the html and wrap the comic page in a href that duplicates the next page link? The next design doesn't appear to have this feature either.

Just imagine where we'd be if the webcomics part of The Duck Webcomics had as much developmental attention as Quackcast.

Just but lots of ads :)

The Quackcast hasn't had much development, we just had to change things to keep up with the requirements of the Podcast host we use.

The site has had heaps of upgrades behind the scenes, unfortunately all the coding stuff isn't readily apparent. But while it looks like nothing much is happening on the surface there are always backend coding changes happening and security and other fixes and stuff that need to be done because google requires it and that often drains our funds.


Can you explain this please?
“wrap the comic page in a href that duplicates the next page link?”
I don't understand what you mean.
If it's simple then I can get Alexey to get on and add it, jumping the queue of other updates he's working on.

It's good to get an update on this Oz, sorry to be kinda grouchy about it but I've been feeling frustrated when I see several lists mentioning alternatives to Webtoons and DD is never on them, but webcomics sites I never even heard of are. I don't like this site falling into obscurity.
The times I've tried to assure people there's improvements on the horizon they kinda give me the “sure, whatever”. I think some reassurance is in order perhaps?

Very sympathetic to the fact that it's the funding slowing things down, and hosting costs. I really think you ought to put more things like this in newsposts to make people aware of what's the sitch, might motivate more people to donate to the Patreon campaign if they knew the things they want for improvement are a little more contingent on being able to afford it.

I don't want to seem ungrateful for the stability and background improvements but I think we all get a little anxious when we don't hear word on these things for a while. It's hard to appreciate things going on in the background even if it's super important stuff– because we don't know what we don't know.

But yeah their suggestion seems like a good one here. Especially because some comics I know hosted their navigation img on photobucket and therefore it's all busted because photobucket is craaaaap. Clicking the image would help.

I care about this site getting a better image and thriving again so yeah, sorry if I came off a little aggro (there's been a lot going on its anxiety)

“Can you explain this please?
“wrap the comic page in a href that duplicates the next page link?”

It means: put a link on the comic page image that links to the next page.
If there is no next page (because we are already at the last page) then do not put the link on the image, the same way the ”next“ button doesn't appear if you are already on the last page.

This way, people on smartphones caqn go forward without having to enlarge the page to find the small ”forward" button below.

Amelius wrote:
It's good to get an update on this Oz, sorry to be kinda grouchy about it but I've been feeling frustrated when I see several lists mentioning alternatives to Webtoons and DD is never on them, but webcomics sites I never even heard of are. I don't like this site falling into obscurity.
The times I've tried to assure people there's improvements on the horizon they kinda give me the “sure, whatever”. I think some reassurance is in order perhaps?

Very sympathetic to the fact that it's the funding slowing things down, and hosting costs. I really think you ought to put more things like this in newsposts to make people aware of what's the sitch, might motivate more people to donate to the Patreon campaign if they knew the things they want for improvement are a little more contingent on being able to afford it.

I don't want to seem ungrateful for the stability and background improvements but I think we all get a little anxious when we don't hear word on these things for a while. It's hard to appreciate things going on in the background even if it's super important stuff– because we don't know what we don't know.

But yeah their suggestion seems like a good one here. Especially because some comics I know hosted their navigation img on photobucket and therefore it's all busted because photobucket is craaaaap. Clicking the image would help.

I care about this site getting a better image and thriving again so yeah, sorry if I came off a little aggro (there's been a lot going on its anxiety)

I know you only get grumpy because you care :)

marcorossi wrote:
“Can you explain this please?
“wrap the comic page in a href that duplicates the next page link?”

It means: put a link on the comic page image that links to the next page.
If there is no next page (because we are already at the last page) then do not put the link on the image, the same way the ”next“ button doesn't appear if you are already on the last page.

This way, people on smartphones caqn go forward without having to enlarge the page to find the small ”forward" button below.

Ahhhhh. OK. That sort of thing is an Ooooooold technique lol!
The way he was talking I though it was something new and unique.
It's just a standard navigation design choice.

I can ask Alexey to add that.

Thank you so much, and for letting me vent.