[CVRPG News] - The Annual Website Redesign

[Darkmoon]

Now, by this point most of you must have realized I'm quite the website perfectionist, and even when I'm happy with a layout, I eventually notice there are things that can be changed, or rearranged, and I wonder if the systems I have in place are the way other people use the site. So I'm curious...

How do you use CVRPG? Do you often troll through the archives, and if you do, which ways do you do it? Do you care about plotline tracking, or do you usually just hit the chapters index? Do the chapters even matter to you? Do you care about the past archives or do you just troll around through the recent strips (backwards) to find the comics you missed and read from there (or read backwards? I know some people do that on comic sites).

Do you read the rest of the articles on the site? Are they organized a way that makes sense to you, or do you think there could be a better way? How? Why?

Are there any features missing from the site? Is there anything you'd like added to? Are there features of the site right now that you think could just go away? Do you care about the news (for instance)?

Throw your ideas at me. I'm really thinking of refreshing a lot of the site (although I'll probably leave the colors mostly intact, since I don't want to freak everyone out too much). I need ideas, I need comments. Give me input.

[Mao]

All of this *talk* of change is freaking me out.

Honestly, I'm not a big supporter of change for change's sake, particularly with a frequency of less than a year.

[Darkmoon]

It's not for changes sake, really. I just like to refine, take what's on a site and upgrade. I want to make sure the user gets the best, more efficient and friendly experience they can.

Which is why I'm doing this little impromptu survey.

[Gabi]

I usually read the latest strip (and any recent strips I have missed by clicking on 'previous' as many times as I have to). I've only just noticed the "updates" link, so I may start using that instead (a calendar feature with links to the strip for each day would be nice and more visible, but it's not really necessary).

Then I do the same for each of the side stories, by clicking on the buttons for each of them on the main page.

When I decide to spell-check DSWC, I go to the archive, pick a chapter and start from there.

Sometimes I use the archives for stories other than DSWC if I'm trying to find a particular detail, but it's not something I do very often. However, when I read a comic for the first time and the comic has been going on for a while, I go straight to the archive and read from there. That's what I did with CVRPG and DSWC back in the day. I've also checked the bonus archives a few times.

I occasionally look back along a CVRPG plotline. I don't recall having done that for any of the other comics, but I've checked the ones from CVRPG more than once.

[Gabi]

I've just noticed something weird. When I logged in today, I ended up on a page whose URL was: http://access.cvrpg.com/villains/2012/01/index.php

That page had the comment for Villains #318 but no comic. Additionally, that comment has a typo: "an dead man"=>"a dead man", but I think I've just read a spoiler.

[Darkmoon]

Weird error. I haven't managed to reproduce it, although I will mention that it is possible to access the pages for comics that haven't officially published yet. That's one of the things we're fixing with the refresh -- an update to the database.

Will fix the typo.

[Gabi]

Thanks. And that's strange... it may have been because the last page I had open was the latest Villains strip, then I was automatically logged out and, when I opened my browser again, it tried to get that page again, redirected me to the login screen and then somehow jumped to index.php instead of 09, which was the last page I had viewed. (Assuming 2012/01 is a folder, if the login page redirects to index.php, then it would make sense for it to load the index page within the current folder).