I only check the general section like once a month. Be in awe that I'm replying, plebians :o

I think the agreement we came to was to do away with the Official Tutorials and move everything to the section they belong in, and to give every thread in the tutorial section "tags" to make it easier for people to find what they needed with the search function. I did it all in like 6 hours of straight work and then from that point on there was nothing more to do except to edit the thread titles of new tutorials that show up once a month. Azure helped too, and that was great because it would have taken even longer without him.

As far as I know there's not really anything else being done there

Quote from Scarecrow

index, you probably have old posts hidden or something

i'm confused. am i supposed to be seeing more than just paperdick's thread?

No, because everything else had dead links or was spam. There's nothing else in Official Tutorials.

No that's the only thread left in there, Devoir moved all the tutorials to the other sub forum and official tutorials should really just not exist but only Jeff can do stuff like delete sections

Ninja'd

Another month another update. Previously I talked about the technology that will power the new SP and my plans moving forward for the database design.

I've switched gears now and started designing the proposed look of the new site as well as locking in feature ideas as I go. Design wise I'm going with a flat look mixed with the "artistic" features that SP's main site is known for. The flat look is intended as a compromise with featuring artwork, as flat design is super easy to make using just HTML and CSS and uses up less file size which means faster loading times. The more I can reduce the use of images, the faster things will load, so by not having many images as critical parts of the interface the content of the site can start loading faster.

Out of the box SP will support mobile, tablet and desktop views. I am making sure full touch support is there for those of us who find the additional input useful. The whole design is built around a progressive enhancement paradigm, where you are never restricted based on how you're accessing the site. The design just adapts to suit how you access the site, adding optional features (such as touch support) depending on what you have available. The only thing I obviously cannot help is the lack of Flash player on some browsers and mobile, but we're going to be offering video uploads with an HTML5 video player when we can for those users.

The portal is going to be for animations only. Some might expect games, music or art to be enabled, but those are a bit beyond the scope of this project at the moment and may be added down the line. We still offer sponsorships for really good games and so they will still be available for submission that way. I have not spent much time specifically on how the portal will work but you can expect something similar to what I've built in the past for FA and Hyun's Dojo. The focus for SP is more on content, so I'm taking care to make it easy to find something to watch or play.

We're also separating Sponsored and Portal content in certain ways to ensure that sponsored content which is paid for and curated is clearly labelled. Currently the plan is to take sponsored content out of portal ranking and keep it separate, as we want to feature content that we've sponsored but that will give it an unfair advantage if competing against non-sponsored content. This may change, there will be plenty of information available when we actually launch in order to understand how things work.

Sponsorships will be getting better as well. I know historically there has been problems getting and completing sponsorships, and we've been taking steps to fix this. That is why one of the planned features is for a more automated sponsorship process that makes it easy to submit and check the status of your sponsorship requests. This system will be curated heavily, as we know that it opens us up to swarms of people trying to submit anything to see what happens. We'll be taking steps to make sure abuses of this system do not happen, and it could very well change completely. This is the best method for you guys that we can think of right now, as it turns the hard part of submitting into just typing out the details of your content. We'll have more details on that closer to launch, but once it's submitted it will be reviewed and you'll be able to see updates on it right on SP with plenty of notifications.

I'm also putting in a lot of effort to make the ads work with the design. They will be out of the way as much as possible, fitting into the page as natural elements rather than slathered all over. We've also decided not to show ads on certain parts of the site such as the portal or the forums for the time being as a gesture towards the community, as we do not believe it's necessary to risk making community oriented features worse. As always you're free to use adblock as that's your choice to make, but I'm hoping that by making the ads more palatable and delivering a worthwhile experience I will be able to convince at least some adblock users to put us on their whitelist, as ads are what keep this site going especially for free.

I've also been designing how user accounts are going to work. We're at an impasse with the forums at the moment as this place has a long history, an established user base and many features used by members here that I don't personally use or think about. I am hesitant to touch the forums as such, because I could break anything by mistake. Developing a new forum would be a bit of an undertaking since I would need to ensure that all used features are brought over, and since I'm not 100% sure what everyone uses it feels like I'd just be remaking vBulletin. What's the point in that?

At the same time it's not easy to develop a modern experience with legacy PHP code. It would be hugely beneficial to just that: remake vBulletin. We still don't know for sure what we're doing but the forums will be getting an upgrade either way, even if it's just visually to fit in with the site. You will not have to remake your accounts. I will not do anything to jeopardize existing data on the server. If we do make our own forum software or use another forum software, all user data will be brought over. I will personally ensure it. You will be able to log in to the new site with the same account you always have.

User accounts will be very personalized. We plan to have user subscriptions so you can keep up to date with your favorite authors, a reliable chat system that works on any device, notifications that have useful actions in them, a reading list to act as a bookmarker of sorts for the tutorial section and additional literature on the site, messages for a more traditional messaging system, and some other features we're toying with but cannot announce yet. All of these features will be available in real time without needing to refresh the page as part of my efforts to keep things fast.

Feels like there's so much more to talk about but I'm going to cut it short here and maybe do another update halfway through the month when I've started designing other features. I post screenshots and gif previews in IRC occasionally so if you're interested in the development and giving input feel free to lurk around #stickpage on irc.adelais.net, I'm usually around from 10 AM - 5 PM Moutain Time, Monday to Friday. I'm not always actively chatting since I'm working on SP during that time, but feel free to say hi or ask a question if you need to talk to me.

I'm curious about the Portal, and specifically, I'm wondering if it'll be possible to submit things into the "Sponsored" category, bypassing the need to contact stone or CRAZY JAY to get the sponsorship. Of course, this would likely put into play a sort of way to categorize submissions so prices don't have to be negotiated to such length, and I don't think anyone would have any real issues with it.

I wrote a whole paragraph on that.

Quote from Jeff

I wrote a whole paragraph on that.

I noticed, but I suppose I'm misinterpreting some aspects about it. Is it all around sponsorships for just anything, or is it specifically for animations outside of competitions? I suppose as is, it seems like it was more targeting sponsored events, which is where I noticed the complaints more.

Quote from Azure

I noticed, but I suppose I'm misinterpreting some aspects about it. Is it all around sponsorships for just anything, or is it specifically for animations outside of competitions? I suppose as is, it seems like it was more targeting sponsored events, which is where I noticed the complaints more.

General sponsorships. Events will probably have a different system. The system I am referring to is specifically to get a game or an animation sponsored, we don't sponsor anything else. Hopefully that answers your question, I am a bit confused by what you need clarification on if I'm honest. You just seemed to be asking questions that I address directly. Sponsorships aren't part of the portal at all, that's what I was getting at by saying they would be separated in certain ways. It's not a category it's a different method for submitting to the site completely. The content you submit for sponsorship isn't immediately visible to anyone, it undergoes a review process and if accepted it will be released on a schedule.

My questions got answered. Thanks, I know they seemed a bit strange.

Please make the mobile version opt in and not mandatory like hyunsdojos

Quote from Drone

Please make the mobile version opt in and not mandatory like hyunsdojos

Why? It will conform to a request for the "desktop version" if the page is requested by the browser, but it doesn't make sense to offer something that wasn't meant for smart phones. I would understand if it wasn't a complete experience or had bugs like theirs, but as I said the SP one is going to be functionally identical. Getting the desktop version is an option but that's what should be opt-in, not the other way around.

Quote from Jeff

Why? It will conform to a request for the "desktop version" if the page is requested by the browser, but it doesn't make sense to offer something that wasn't meant for smart phones. I would understand if it wasn't a complete experience or had bugs like theirs, but as I said the SP one is going to be functionally identical. Getting the desktop version is an option but that's what should be opt-in, not the other way around.

No I mean like on HD "request desktop version" doesn't work at all, I'd like it to

Oh yeah I understand that, you said the mobile version should be "opt-in" though which means by default it shows the desktop version unless you ask for the mobile version. The "request desktop version" is basically an "opt-out" for mobile, which makes more sense. If that's your concern then yes it will be opt-out using that feature. It already responds that way in the prototype so worry not!