Comic Dish Webcomics Hosting :: View topic - Just to show you that Dish 2.0 isn't dead...

Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 1:28 am

Hey all.

Just to show you that development of the Dish 2.0 system isn't dead, I've decided to upload the latest site layout mockup for your viewing pleasure.

Remember this?

Well, it has now become... THIS!

Note: Click the image to see a "full size preview".

I'm running a very early alpha build of the engine that will run ComicDish over at Lakewood, for any of you who want to help look for bugs. IF you find any, let me know at nprackley - at - gmail - dot - com.

Please note that the features shown are currently in concept only. However, features similar to these will be incorporated eventually into the working version of ComicDish.

Cheers!

-Doc

Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 1:29 am

Bravo! Looking good!

Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 1:46 am

Excellent. We thought you had vanished forever Droakir, but here you are, working to make this a better place.

So far, what you have there is a HUGE leap above what we have now. It'll be great to have comic images on the front page. But I have a few questions and/or comments:

- Why the focus on daily and weekly comics? Does the system know which comics are daily/weeky? And do they take precedence over comics that update on alternating days or sporadically?

- Those images are like an avatar image we choose for our comic, right?

- No link to MAX anywhere? Or are we an "affiliate"?

- The link to test your layout leads us to your comic. Was it supposed to lead to a facsimile of the front page instead?

- Should we be expecting Comic Dish 2.0 at about the same time we record The Dish #224? Smile

- I love the idea of showing links to recent forum posts.

Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 2:56 am

Hawk wrote:

The link to test your layout leads us to your comic. Was it supposed to lead to a facsimile of the front page instead?

I think it's more to show off the system that will be running our comics. Maybe. Question

Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 9:12 am

KillerSteak wrote:

Hawk wrote:

The link to test your layout leads us to your comic. Was it supposed to lead to a facsimile of the front page instead?

I think it's more to show off the system that will be running our comics. Maybe. Question

This. Yes.

Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 9:34 am

You just reminded me I need to go wrap up that Logo Contest of mine. :p

Anywho, I'm liking it. But it's pretty grey... a little too grey.

Also, I wouldn't rule out having only blue and grey in the site either.

Unless you consider that the ComicDish color code. :p

Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 9:40 am

I'm guessing there'll be a lot more color once the comics "avatar images" are inserted. Very Happy

I think I'd have liked a little more blue and less gray, but that's me. The layout looks good, though!

Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 6:24 pm

Those are all great and valid comments. I will address those that I can below.

Roo is correct as to why I've been leaning towards a "color neutral" design. This basic skin was created specifically because I assume that each comic logo will be colorful enough on it's own. And the whole point of the site is to bring attention to the comics themselves. That being said, I would love to do a mockup with a set of actual comic logos, so we can see what this would look like. Please note: Comic logos will be 125 x 125 pixels. This is the same size as a 125 x 125 square advertisement. Anyone and everyone who wishes to create a logo for the next version of the design and concept mockup is designed to do so.

And the link to Lakewood... this site is running the core engine that will operate behind ComicDish. It's more geared towards what people might expect for a basic version of their comic page after uploading their comics.

Affiliates is a placeholder for any sites related to ComicDish on a large scale. Currently, this is MAX in every sense of the word. Affiliate sites will be able to post news on the main site. This way, MAX can be hosted using the current system until we get a chance to reprogram it.

The comic listings was something that I really was wondering about, and I've been talking to other cartoonists and web site designers about how to handle them. As a default, you can see three listings. These are Weekly Comics, Daily Comics, and Random Comics. Because CD is about the comics and the authors, and not about making huge amounts of cash (though we would all like to), I've been trying to work on a model that allows everyone to fairly get representation on the main page.

Many comic sites have a "most popular" and a "most recently updated" listing. But I've noticed some flaws here. The super popular strips always tend to get the most hits. Why? Because they're already popular. The fact that they stay on the very top of the listing only means that they'll get more free advertising. But what happens to everyone else? The same goes with the "most recently updated" method. Unless you produce a frequent comic strip, you get pushed off the list (and stay off) for a week or more. Because of this, the first three "comic strips" as they'll be called during development, will host daily, weekly, and random comic strips.

Daily and weekly strips. Okay, so what defines a daily strip? An arbitrary assumption for the moment, is that a daily strip would be considered one that publishes at least three times a week. This would be the typical MWF updating scheme, or more often. In the ComicDish site, the author will simply list that his or her strip is either a 'daily' or a 'weekly' strip. Later on we might do something with statistics, but for now, this is the simplest option.

The "Comic of the Day" is actually going to be a selection by the site admins. Most typically this will be a well made, yet underrepresented comic strip, and will be hosted on the main page.

The "User Spotlight" is the brainchild of no other than our very own David Davis (HPKomic). It will link to periodic written interviews of cartoonists on ComicDish.

One question posed during the design mockup dealt with comics that are not hosted with ComicDish. Since some users desire super customization, due to security reasons we may not be able to provide all of these features. But not to worry! We're working on a way for you to create a comic account, but link it to an RSS feed for your strip, allowing it to update along with any of the other comic strips on the main page.

I don't want to make any promises that I cannot keep. There are many very, very desirable features. However, we need to get at least some sort of features together in order to produce a functional and worthwhile site. Any features you like currently or would want in the future system are more than welcome.

Stay tuned... later on we'll have prototypes of what the internals of the web site will look like.

Cheers!

-Doc

Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 9:52 pm

Roo wrote:

I'm guessing there'll be a lot more color once the comics "avatar images" are inserted. Very Happy

I think I'd have liked a little more blue and less gray, but that's me. The layout looks good, though!

Yeah thats the only thing I think needs changing

it looks great but there should be more blue and less grey

Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 10:37 pm

pacmansays wrote:

Roo wrote:

I'm guessing there'll be a lot more color once the comics "avatar images" are inserted. Very Happy

I think I'd have liked a little more blue and less gray, but that's me. The layout looks good, though!

Yeah thats the only thing I think needs changing

it looks great but there should be more blue and less grey

or at least a blue tint. Blue-greys seem to look better than straight greys.

Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 10:39 pm

Thanks for the detailed explanation, Droakir. It sounds like there is some good rationale behind your decisions.

I'm still a bit confused/concerned about a few things, though.

- Now that I see your definition of "daily" and "weekly", I see that it can be implemented without shortchanging any comics that don't conform to the more rigid definitions. But I still don't understand why they're divided as such, or displayed as such. Are the comics in those categories chosen randomly to be displayed on their respective strips? Or shown when they update? Or do they show up on that strip the day they allegedly update?

Maybe there's a better set of descriptors we can choose for those categories, because there are still sporadic comics, or those that update by chapter. Is having them choose "Weekly" the best approach?

- I don't mind there being a "Most recently updated" portion on display, because I think it's a good incentive for people to update their comic. Even those who don't update often get that little bit of reward on the day they do. But your reasoning for not having it there is just as valid, so I'm fine with your decision.

- I'm a bit worried about both the featured comic part and the featured user part. First of all, because it's subjective, but also because it depends on a constantly growing amount of worthwhile comics and worthwhile users. We have a good pool to choose from now, but will there come a time when we struggle to find things worth featuring?

My last problem with it is that it's entirely volitional. And I've noticed this over on Drunk Duck where I have a certain amount of say in what comics get featured. Finding good comics takes time and effort, and it has come to points where DD admins have had trouble finding the time to ferret out those good-but-underappreciated comics, despite DD's huge pool. The fact that they have a new one daily isn't helping them. It will be even harder for use to choose comics daily.

I wouldn't be surprised to see us have plenty of comics/users to feature for a good while, and then reach the point where finding good comics is hard, and we've featured all of our forum buddies and then some. Then, I suspect we'll find ourselves distracted and featured comics/users will end up on the front page for long durations, waiting for somebody to get around to finding new ones. This could give site users the impression that there's nobody at the steering wheel, despite it not being true.

You know, I just want to say that I really like the layout, despite my careful scrutiny of its individual elements. I really can't wait to see it in action and I hope we can perfect its little details.

Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2009 2:57 am

Hawk, not to worry! This is why I show the mockup before we begin the actual coding - that way we can set priorities to different features!

I'll explain a couple of the actual "features" that we are tentatively planning for ComicDish.

Anyways, the "Comic of the Day" might not have to be for a day. It could be the "Comic of the Week" if we wanted it to. Actually, the plans are that once this gets programmed, we will have an automatically cycling list of comics. Once a comic has been featured for a day, all other comics selected for the feature will be displayed and then we will begin featuring old comics again. In this way, all the Admins have to do is "flag" a comic as being included in the Comic of the Day feature, and it will automatically appear when it appears.

Also, I will explain a little bit more about the "Comic Strip" widgets. These are intended to (eventually) be customizable by each user to display those comics that he or she wants.

The Comic Strip widgets show a strip of the five most recently uploaded comics in a given category. These categories will include (but are not limited to):

-All Comics
-Daily Comics
-Weekly Comics
-Newest Created
-Comic Format (Book/Strip)
-Friends (We hope to have a Friend feature that shows the latest comics posted by any 'friended' authors)
-Genre (Fantasy, Sci Fi, etc.)
-RSS (Have a comic you read that's not on ComicDish? This one's for you!)

These "Comic Strips" can be in one of two modes. Either they are in "Most Recently Updated" mode, showing the five latest (the "browse" button to the right taking you to a page with links to older updates) and "random" modes for the given groupings.

As far as concerns about the colors, please remember that this is a preliminary mockup for layout purposes. Colors and the like can be tweaked to our heart's content. However, to show a bit of a more "blue" theme, I put together a version with "comic logos" as filler to give everyone an idea of how the final site will look...

Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2009 3:13 am

I think the site looks much better with the comic logos added. The blue sidebar looks better than the grey, too. Can't wait to see it in action.

What about a section (in the sidebar or something) showing the most recent posts from the Comic Dish Twitter feed? The main things that get posted there now are Dish updates and other news which might already appear on the front page, but its uses may be expanded in the future.

Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2009 3:25 am

Twitter is definitely an option! Oh - please email all widget suggestions to nprackley - at - gmail - dot -com so that I can add them to the list and have a hard copy record. I will create another thread with this list later on.

Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2009 8:17 am

Those thumbnails don't have enough big breasted women in them..