Topic: "I don't like the theme." and how you can help.

Posted under General

bleph said:
Ok, but your average user is not going to read news and definitely never going to look at the forums. This is a website most people use for porn. Who's going to read website news on a porn site?

What do you expect the site to do then? If people can't be bothered to check the news because they're too interested in getting their rocks off, how would you give them the news in a way that doesn't generate complaints from interfering with their fap session?

watsit said:
What do you expect the site to do then? If people can't be bothered to check the news because they're too interested in getting their rocks off, how would you give them the news in a way that doesn't generate complaints from interfering with their fap session?

You know that splash page everyone starts off on before they removed it?

There ya go

watsit said:
What do you expect the site to do then? If people can't be bothered to check the news because they're too interested in getting their rocks off, how would you give them the news in a way that doesn't generate complaints from interfering with their fap session?

First off, I do not agree that the changes were needed at all. The site layout(and backend)could have, and in my opinion should have, literally have just been left how it was.

Secondly, once these complaints started rolling in the site should have been reverted back until this new version was actually ready instead of dealing with an inferior version of the website for who knows how long.

Thirdly, some sort of gradual rollout with an opt-out option instead of dumping a huge change with no way to revert on the whole site population would have been much better, and would have been a way to squeeze feedback out of users that normally would not provide it.

camkitty said:
You know that splash page everyone starts off on before they removed it?

There ya go

I'll be real with you, I think this is by far the least significant thing that's changed and people focusing on it are missing the forest for the trees, especially considering that they have already said they're bringing it back and it probably will not take long. The actual functionality of the website and presence of the public blacklist are much bigger deals.

bleph said:
Ok, but your average user is not going to read news and definitely never going to look at the forums. This is a website most people use for porn. Who's going to read website news on a porn site?

Incoming "This is not a porn site."

watsit said:
What do you expect the site to do then? If people can't be bothered to check the news because they're too interested in getting their rocks off, how would you give them the news in a way that doesn't generate complaints from interfering with their fap session?

The way I encountered the beta was like this: I checked it out very briefly, thought "Hey, that's good. Well, looks like people and regulars are working on this and giving feedback. Good luck." And then I left, because I'm not a specialised user or a developer. If it was to "get my rocks off" as you say, or to fix some tags, or to a different site altogether is irrelevant.

This is the problem with expecting (or even demanding and getting pissy about) feedback from users. Most users aren't UI designers. Most users don't care enough about development to get into it and give feedback unless things actually break down. This applies to any field, professional or community, but what the hell do you expect from porn site users in particular?

Also it's probably already on the list but I would like to add: my favorites list is essentially useless until I am able to search tags in it again.

bleph said:
Also it's probably already on the list but I would like to add: my favorites list is essentially useless until I am able to search tags in it again.

The favorites page is borked in more ways than one, but you can search for tags in your favorites on the posts page. i.e. fav:bleph

Sorry, but is E621 an open-source project? Because it if it's not I don't see a good reason to submit any coding changes to a commercial site I won't receive any credit or compensation for.

watsit said:
What do you expect the site to do then? If people can't be bothered to check the news because they're too interested in getting their rocks off, how would you give them the news in a way that doesn't generate complaints from interfering with their fap session?

Stop shaming people. Just stop typing.

camkitty said:
You know that splash page everyone starts off on before they removed it?

"Everyone"? No. I can say if they only placed the message on the front page, I would've never seen it because I don't go there. I've also seen people say they go right to their favorites to search for their favorite artists' stuff. But regardless, it was displayed there. The news banner shows up on the front page, doesn't it?

bleph said:
Secondly, once these complaints started rolling in the site should have been reverted back until this new version was actually ready instead of dealing with an inferior version of the website for who knows how long.

The new site would've never been able to roll out if they had to roll it back whenever someone complained. As long as it's not catastrophically broken, which it's not, it's sometimes better to just bite the bullet and stick with it, fixing the remaining problems live instead of undoing what's already been done (removing who knows how many posts and user actions that have been done since going live), making a few more tweaks, then going through it all again.

bleph said:
Thirdly, some sort of gradual rollout with an opt-out option instead of dumping a huge change with no way to revert on the whole site population would have been much better, and would have been a way to squeeze feedback out of users that normally would not provide it.

That's not always practical. To be clear, the change in layout is a consequence of the backend changes, it wasn't done for its own sake (as has been said, if the old layout could've remained unchanged, it would've). And given how old and customized and hacked up the old backend code was, gradual changes weren't possible without things randomly breaking because of unnecessary or hidden interdependencies becoming broken in the interim. Sometimes it's better to just rip the band-aid off instead of slowly peeling it off one body hair at a time.

Navigating this site is a nightmare now.
The calm and subtle design of the front page has been replaced with an arrangement of thumbnails that are all crammed together without any space in between and absurdly small as well. It looks like that part of the newspaper where there's like a hundred different colorful ads all on one page. After I got out my magnifying glass to see what image I'm clicking on, I'm greeted by tags that have very large spaces between each other and an almost invisible upvote counter. Of course you gotta have two favorite buttons: One that is very well hidden within the options menu and a big white rectangle that looks like it came from a different website altogether. And why are the comments made up of ten more rectangles stacked on top each other?
So that was my little rant. e6 has been fun and all but if this design change stays then I'm out of here.

koder said:
I noticed the resize option is gone.

They put it below the image. which is not reasonable when you consider how big some images get.

helloanonmyoldfriend said:
The way I encountered the beta was like this: I checked it out very briefly, thought "Hey, that's good. Well, looks like people and regulars are working on this and giving feedback. Good luck." And then I left, because I'm not a specialised user or a developer.

That's exactly how I went with it too (though I am a developer, just not a web or UI/UX developer). But I also recognize that because I didn't put in the effort to test and give feedback, I have no right to complain about things I could've spotted being an issue. I can point out problems I see now, I can suggest changes for the issues I see now, but the fact that I didn't test or give feedback during beta is all on me, not the site or its staff.

helloanonmyoldfriend said:
This is the problem with expecting (or even demanding and getting pissy about) feedback from users. Most users aren't UI designers.

If they were demanding feedback, I would've expected much more obnoxious announcements and pleas for more people to look at and test the beta. If they were expecting more feedback, I would've expected the rollout to be constantly delayed awaiting more testing (flashbacks of FA's constantly delayed updates here). Instead, they made their announcements, worked on the site, worked with the feedback they got, and this is the initial result. They did their due diligence and worked with what they got. Now that it's live and they're getting more feedback, they're continuing to work on it and iron out more of the issues.

I'm also not seeing the staff get pissy about feedback. At best, I see a bit of annoyance that some of the feedback they're getting is already addressed in the very first post and making it harder to see things that they can actually do something about.

helloanonmyoldfriend said:
Most users don't care enough about development to get into it and give feedback unless things actually break down. This applies to any field, professional or community, but what the hell do you expect from porn site users in particular?

Exactly. If people want to use this site as a place to fap and leave, that's fine. They're not required to use this site in a particular way. But if they don't keep up on the news about it, they shouldn't be surprised that they didn't see the news about it.

watsit said:
That's exactly how I went with it too (though I am a developer, just not a web or UI/UX developer). But I also recognize that because I didn't put in the effort to test and give feedback, I have no right to complain about things I could've spotted being an issue. I can point out problems I see now, I can suggest changes for the issues I see now, but the fact that I didn't test or give feedback during beta is all on me, not the site or its staff.

If they were demanding feedback, I would've expected much more obnoxious announcements and pleas for more people to look at and test the beta. If they were expecting more feedback, I would've expected the rollout to be constantly delayed awaiting more testing (flashbacks of FA's constantly delayed updates here). Instead, they made their announcements, worked on the site, worked with the feedback they got, and this is the initial result. They did their due diligence and worked with what they got. Now that it's live and they're getting more feedback, they're continuing to work on it and iron out more of the issues.

I'm also not seeing the staff get pissy about feedback. At best, I see a bit of annoyance that some of the feedback they're getting is already addressed in the very first post and making it harder to see things that they can actually do something about.

Exactly. If people want to use this site as a place to fap and leave, that's fine. They're not required to use this site in a particular way. But if they don't keep up on the news about it, they shouldn't be surprised that they didn't see the news about it.

Wanna be janitor/admin is cute.

/*try and make the post page navigation a little better*/
/*this will look a lot better if the first and last buttons are always present in the search navigation*/

/*readibility of purple on blue*/
.pool-category-series a, a.pool-category-series {
    color: #f6f; /*previously #a0a*/
}

/*improves the hitbox of the links, clicking them on mobile is a pita*/
/*consider removing this once fonts are normalized*/
#nav-links ul>li>a{
    display: inline-block;
    padding: 5px;
}


/*flexbox instead of absolute positioning for navigation*/
/*important tags should be removed once markup is restructured*/
#nav-links>div>ul>li{
    display: flex;
    padding: 0 !important;
}

#nav-links>div>ul>li a,
#nav-links>div>ul>li span
{
    /*clear old positioning*/
    position: relative !important;
    left: inherit !important;
    top: inherit !important;
    right: inherit !important;
    
    /*whitespace*/
    padding: 0 10px !important;
    
    /*consistent font weights in nav bar*/
    font-weight: bold;
}

/*only let the search and pool columns grow*/
#nav-links>div>ul>li span
{
    flex-grow: 2;
}

/*dont make the nav buttons too small*/
div#c-posts div#a-show #pool-nav li .prev,
div#c-posts div#a-show #search-seq-nav li .prev,
div#c-posts div#a-show #set-nav li .prev,
div#c-posts div#a-show #pool-nav li .next,
div#c-posts div#a-show #search-seq-nav li .next,
div#c-posts div#a-show #set-nav li .next{
    min-width: 70px;
}
div#c-posts div#a-show #pool-nav li .first,
div#c-posts div#a-show #search-seq-nav li .first,
div#c-posts div#a-show #set-nav li .first,
div#c-posts div#a-show #pool-nav li .last,
div#c-posts div#a-show #search-seq-nav li .last,
div#c-posts div#a-show #set-nav li .last
{
    min-width: 15px;
}


@media screen and (max-width: 800px) {
    /*clean up page nav on mobile*/
    #nav-links{
        border-radius: 0px !important;
        border: none;
    }
}

Changes to the post navigation present at the top of a post page. Mainly lightened the color of the purple to be more readable and improved the spacing between buttons so my fat thumbs don't keep skipping to the end of the pool. I'm not sure why first and last nav is missing on the page search nav, but if it were omnipresent this would look a lot better imo.

https://i.imgur.com/C8eJxIo.png

Edit: Not actually all that thrilled with the final outcome on this; the biggest thing here is that its no longer using that dark purple color, but I encourage someone else to take a pass at this.

Updated

If it's not broken, why try and fix it?
Is it me, or did a lot of functionality also got stripped away with this new theme?
Seems like navigating favorite pools with the convenience of using tags is a thing of the past.
The theme itself seems bare bones when compared to the old theme, but my main gripe is that now i can't navigate my bloated favorites page as easily as before.

And to this, i can only ask one thing...

Ok, but y tho

Hi. Their is a reason that bug testing stages exist. Please bug test and roll out major changes. Or else you get something like Anthem. Which didn't work and killed itself. Don't be Anthem. And don't say you can't revert cause if you can't revert. Then. Holy shit you really need a new technical team on your database.

e621 Redesign Fixes v.1.36

Hexagons 2: Electric Boogaloo
Getting yet another step closer to the original hexagonal theme.

Pastebin: https://pastebin.com/NJU6JhPj

Update highlights:
- Got the theme highlight working. Kind of. Slight issues with the forum, but other than that, looking good.
- Turned the news back on. The issue with the cookie hiding the news block not being set seems to have been resolved.
- Minor tweaks to the sidebar. Still trying to figure out where to put the various wiki links.
- General code cleanup.

Installation:
- Open https://pastebin.com/raw/NJU6JhPj, copy everything.
- On e621, go to Account > Settings > Advanced Settings > Custom CSS
- Paste the stylesheet there, then save.

Updated

Hello, not sure where to post this;
I went to try and upload something and noticed everything looked different (think i liked the old uploader better), but with the new one; i couldn't even notice i had "pressed" the different buttons since the "pressed button" color was almost the very same as the "not pressed button" and it took me some bunches of clicking and glaring intensely at my screen to notice; there was a difference.

-Could you change the color of the clicked button to be more obvious when clicking it?
or just make it some 2-3 times darker when clicked so it's easier to tell.

peegus said:
... stuff ...

Personally, I kind of hate the purple color used for the pools, so in my version, I changed to something with better contrast - beige.
IMHO, simply changing the spacing on the buttons won't do it. The buttons themselves need to be bigger, while the "go to the first page" and "go to the last page" are completely unnecessary and could be removed.

konani said:
-Could you change the color of the clicked button to be more obvious when clicking it?

e621 Redesign Fixes (post right above yours) fixes that, among many other things.

/*fewer dropshadows*/
blockquote{
    box-shadow: none;
    border-left: 4px solid #ffffff60;
    background: #ffffff20;
}

/*improve comments on mobile*/
@media screen and (max-width: 800px) {
    /*clean up page nav on mobile*/
    #nav-links{
        border-radius: 0px !important;
        border: none;
    }
    div.comments-for-post div.list-of-comments article.comment{
        flex-flow: row wrap;
    }
    div.comments-for-post div.list-of-comments article.comment div.author{
        flex-basis: 100%;
        display: flex;
        flex-shrink: inherit;
        padding: 0;
    }
    div.comments-for-post div.list-of-comments article.comment .author .post-thumbnail a img{
        max-height: 75px;
        width: auto;
    }
    div.comments-for-post div.list-of-comments article.comment .author .author-info{
        padding-left: 10px;
    }
    div.comments-for-post div.list-of-comments article.comment .author .author-info h1{
        margin-top: 10px;
    }
}

Some improvements to the comments area. Mostly targeting mobile again, and the large amount of space a two column comment takes up.

https://i.imgur.com/sc3Udmp.png

Updated

watsit said:
What do you expect the site to do then? If people can't be bothered to check the news because they're too interested in getting their rocks off, how would you give them the news in a way that doesn't generate complaints from interfering with their fap session?

Horrible strawman lol.

The backlash over the update is well deserved given how ridiculously uninformed the users have been. Posting one thread on a forum of a site where the site’s main purpose and use does not require the use of the forums WHATSOEVER is completely insufficient to β€œannounce” an update as large and buggy as this. Please reroll the site ffs and fix this @admin if you absolutely insist on pushing this new downgrade of a layout on us.

brother_nikolai said:
Utility does trump aesthetics, but the old site had utility AND aesthetics.
This has..... What exactly?

You used to only be able to have 5 tags in a search, now you can have up to 40. There's probably optimization that's isn't obvious as well.

I'm still unhappy about it but it's disingenuous to pretend there is no benefit.

bleph said:
You used to only be able to have 5 tags in a search, now you can have up to 40. There's probably optimization that's isn't obvious as well.

There's also auto-completion of tags when uploading and editing.

racist said:
I think my biggest issues is the scale of everything, it's way different than before. I also can't say I'm a fan of the way user pages look now. I usually don't like to complain about things changing when it doesn't matter all that much, but it seems like almost everything is different

Update: Looked on mobile, and the mobile mode really isn't good. The desktop site, however, looks great on mobile. On desktop the site still looks too zoomed in with buttons too small and that blend in. Also R.I.P. themes.

Oh Look, somebody else that prefers the original layout. How original
But seriously, the old layout was inviting for a lack of a better word. It encouraged exploration on my own terms, with all of the information I wanted or needed in a natural layout. The new layout is honestly pretty trash. If I like an image with thousands of comments, I could just look over and fav it pretty quickly. Hell, I could open a few tags to explore similar stuff. Now, it feels buried under comments, making exploration more of a pain. And I'm not saying have the tags before the comments, as many posts have hundreds of tags (especially comics or animations).
So what can be done?
Bring back a similar UI to the one used before. Also, make it so that the Favorites section can be organized in more ways than when the image was uploaded. I prefer when it was organized based on the order I fav'ed rather than the upload date.

quetz said:
Bring back a similar UI to the one used before.

That's being worked on. It's not the highest priority right now, but the theme/UI will become more like it used to as things get worked on. In the mean time, you can use the custom CSS here which does help improve it.

quetz said:
Also, make it so that the Favorites section can be organized in more ways than when the image was uploaded. I prefer when it was organized based on the order I fav'ed rather than the upload date.

It should be the case that your favorites are ordered according to fav order instead of upload date. That was fixed earlier.

I DONT LIKE CHANGE

I DONT LIKE NEW THINGS

But joking aside, this all took me by surprise the moment I decided to hop on the site. While it looks more, idk, neater? it would be great if the site allowed a feature to go back to the original look, like what FA does.

I'm personally hoping for a rollback, I like the idea, but like mentioned, I don't think it was executed well.

peegus said:
Some improvements to the comments area. Mostly targeting mobile again, and the large amount of space a two column comment takes up.

https://i.imgur.com/sc3Udmp.png

This can also work with the comment index by adding a few selectors.

div.comments-for-post div.list-of-comments article.comment,
div#c-comments div#a-index div#p-index-by-post div.post-preview {
  flex-flow: row wrap;
}

div.comments-for-post div.list-of-comments article.comment .author .post-thumbnail a img,
div#c-comments div#a-index div.preview a img {
  max-height: 75px;
  width: auto;
}

I'm appalled at the lack of feedback from the devs/admin. If they're scared of interacting with the userbase right now because of the widespread dissatisfaction, hopefully that should tell them something. The admins might not have the technical skill to make much of a difference, maybe all of these complaints are falling on deaf ears because the needs of the community sure aren't being addressed.

Also, silly excuses like it being here to stay or the previous theme being inherently incompatible are silly, considering the state of the technology and backups being prevelant. The admins don't need to be so proud as to ghost and not apologize that their service has been degraded. If they haven't gotten the point yet, this simply cannot be drabble or whining on the community's part. A lot of the major issues people have been having seem to be all take and no give, not even a "We'll consider it." Just straight up ignorance on the admin's side for what i've been reading are the majority of the issues. The lack of information and education regarding the transition isn't helping their cause either.

inkugator said:
I'm appalled at the lack of feedback from the devs/admin. If they're scared of interacting with the userbase right now because of the widespread dissatisfaction, hopefully that should tell them something. The admins might not have the technical skill to make much of a difference, maybe all of these complaints are falling on deaf ears because the needs of the community sure aren't being addressed.

Also, silly excuses like it being here to stay or the previous theme being inherently incompatible are silly, considering the state of the technology and backups being prevelant. The admins don't need to be so proud as to ghost and not apologize that their service has been degraded. If they haven't gotten the point yet, this simply cannot be drabble or whining on the community's part. A lot of the major issues people have been having seem to be all take and no give, not even a "We'll consider it." Just straight up ignorance on the admin's side for what i've been reading are the majority of the issues. The lack of information and education regarding the transition isn't helping their cause either.

The admins are most certainly interacting with the userbase right now. Your post reeks of ignorance.

fieldset{ min-width: 0 ;} /*keep the inputs from extending off the screen*/

#edit-options .active { color: #ffe380 !important; } /*changed from #000*/

select, input{ font-size: inherit !important; } /*dont bump font on mobile*/

body.resp form.simple_form div.input input[type="email"], 
body.resp form.simple_form div.input input[type="number"], 
body.resp form.simple_form div.input input[type="password"], 
body.resp form.simple_form div.input input[type="text"], 
body.resp form.simple_form div.input textarea
{ 
    /*keep the inputs from extending off the screen*/
    width: calc(100% - 5px);
    max-width: 500px;
}

Makes the user settings page a little nicer to look at. A lot of these are very broadly scoped, so I'll likely have to revisit something as I continue to look at the rest of the site.

Updated

  • Unread forum thread titles aren't bolded anymore, which makes it a lot harder to see at a glance which ones have unread posts. Yes, there's a little red tag to the left of the title, but the overall readability is much lower than a bolded title.
  • Alternating forum posts (inside a thread) are alternately colored, which is unnecessary given the visual separation between posts.
  • Usernames should be above their avatar, not below, as it's the most important piece of information in the comment/post sidebar.
  • The forum index has borders between threads as well as alternating row colors, which makes it extremely visually noisy. The difference in contrast between alternating rows is also a little high, adding to the noise. My suggestion is this:
table.striped tbody tr, table.table tbody tr {
	border-bottom:0;
}

table.striped tr:nth-child(2n) {
	background-color:#1f3c67;
}
  • Titles of posts have annoying "Drawn by" or character names before the artist name or post ID, which makes differentiating them when your tabs aren't full size (and often when they are) impossible because they all just say "Drawn by..."
  • The above also happens to a lesser extent with forum threads as all forum titles start with "Forum - "
  • The ::after widget in linked text in DText is unnecessary in my opinion, as it's already clear what text is and isn't a link. If it must be kept, then it should be styled differently than the link text because it blends in and reduces readability of the link as a whole:
.styled-dtext a.dtext-external-link::after {
    color:gold;
}

Updated

I thought it was annoying that post thumbnails are top-aligned since this causes their info bars to be misaligned from each other. I've changed it so that the thumbnails are now bottom-aligned.

div#c-posts div#a-index section#content div#posts article.post-preview {
  vertical-align: text-bottom;
}

Before After

peegus said:
The admins are most certainly interacting with the userbase right now. Your post reeks of ignorance.

Right now as in twelve hours ago in this particular thread, assuming admins have golden names. Several other threads about issues i was concerned about have been locked with no response.

Also pardon me for being ignorant when i literally had to make an account yesterday to access content. I wouldn't be here if I didn't have a reason to be.

e621 Redesign Fixes v.1.38

There is way too much flaming going on in this thread. Detailed updates on the stylesheet will now be posted in this thread

Pastebin: https://pastebin.com/NJU6JhPj

Here are the highlights:
- Redesigned the pool controls to be a bit more touch-friendly
- Made the settings page a bit nice to look at, by Peegus
- Improved the way comments look on mobile, by Peegus
- Extended similar improvements to the comments index, by JAKXXX3
- Removed the redundant searchbox on mobile
- Streamlined the mobile searchbox. Removed the submit button.
- Bugfix: mobile design no longer breaks at exactly 800px width
- Bugfix: fixed the padding on the searchbar and mode view
- Bugfix: minor color tweaks

Installation:
- Open https://pastebin.com/raw/NJU6JhPj, copy everything.
- On e621, go to Account > Settings > Advanced Settings > Custom CSS
- Paste the stylesheet there, then save.

Updated

inkugator said:
Right now as in twelve hours ago in this particular thread, assuming admins have golden names. Several other threads about issues i was concerned about have been locked with no response.

Also pardon me for being ignorant when i literally had to make an account yesterday to access content. I wouldn't be here if I didn't have a reason to be.

You could also join the Discord server if you require help or would like to discuss anything. There's also a link to near the top of the page, next to the Forum link.

watsit said:
As long as it's not catastrophically broken, which it's not, it's sometimes better to just bite the bullet and stick with it, fixing the remaining problems live instead of undoing what's already been done (removing who knows how many posts and user actions that have been done since going live), making a few more tweaks, then going through it all again.

So...wouldn't the fact that waiting will make reverting harder be a reason to revert ASAP rather than letting it ride? By not choosing prompt action, they're only creating a bigger issue for themselves. An issue that was caused by the devs and admins, not its users.

There's also talk about how it's impossible to keep the front-end the same with so many back-end changes? Which. Doesn't make sense to me since a front-end is essentially arbitrary?

It could be literally anything. You can make the whole site 50x50 pixels and have each pixel be it's own page element if you wanted. The user facing interface is HTML and CSS; maybe some Javascript if it's feeling adventurous. Heck, the fact that the devs are asking for CSS tweaks to make the site look like the old one shows how little the site's appearance matters to back-end functionality.

If the code was--by some black magik curse--spaghetti enough that front-end changes did matter, then that's just more reason to keep the Beta in the oven for a bit longer. If we're trying to catch up to the functionality of something that looks as Web 1.0 as FA, then yes, forcing it to be everyone's default can and will feel like something has been taken away. Because there has. And forcing the entire userbase to essentially test the Beta a horrible way to go about making the users warm up to it.

celadonsissy said:
So...wouldn't the fact that waiting will make reverting harder be a reason to revert ASAP rather than letting it ride?

It depends if there's any issues severe enough that requires a revert. The current site is far from perfect, but it's hardly unusable for the majority of users, regardless of how negatively some people are reacting. Reverting for a few more tweaks then relaunching it will put more work on them (since they have to do the revert and relaunch on top of the code changes), potentially reigniting the negativity and putting it in for another revert+tweak+relaunch, and just make things take even longer, instead of just doing the changes live.

celadonsissy said:
There's also talk about how it's impossible to keep the front-end the same with so many back-end changes? Which. Doesn't make sense to me since a front-end is essentially arbitrary?

How the frontend looks is largely irrelevant to the backend, yes, but the frontend has to communicate with or "fit" the backend. The code for the old site's frontend doesn't fit the new site's backend, so it can't work as-is without being remade. The current layout is a basic port/remake of that old theme for the new site. It will continue to be improved and look more and more like it used to, but there's more pressing matters at the moment so changes to it will be slow.

I've never posted with this account before but I will do so just to provide feedback of some sort for this.

Beforehand though, this entire change was not needed. Whatever you think might have been a good reason to replace the entire site and throw it upon us wasn't good enough.
Now, I, and multiple other people, would have been okay with all of this if you had provided proper notice of this all. You have the news headlines, why not make use of it before the update and keep it around for a while just to make sure people know? There was a complete lack of thought around this, and simply put, it should not have been pushed out of beta without being shown to *everyone* rather than the group of people that actually uses the forums. Next time, make use of the tools you *do* have to get things shown to the public.

As for the actual design of this site it really could have been miles better. This is merely all examples of what's wrong with web development the past few years. Simplifying everything, removing spacing or altering it incorrectly (like removing borders or cramping more details into one box), solid colors all over the place, no background or proper theme, and complete unorganization is all that web developers seem to do now. The old site's design was great and such a drastic change to total simplification is wrong. Just because other developers do it uncontrollably, it doesn't mean you should do it too.

The homepage needs to come back. There is no way around it, just bring it back. It was a key element of e621, and the mascots were all unique to look at. I know this might already be in your sights for an update so I'll let it slide, but it's just another reminder that this overhaul was not finished.

There's plenty of small issues that thankfully bitWolfy went out of their way to fix with the custom CSS script feature, all in *two* days. Surely if you had them helping with the overhaul's development it all could have gone better but you could have gotten the attention of devs like them had the update been notified properly. I'm glad that bitwoly managed to bring back part of the theme which already makes everything a lot less painful, but it absolutely doesn't excuse the entire issue and all of this specially doesn't warrant the attitude the staff is giving to the community, no matter the backlash. Accept that things went horribly wrong, and be more thoughtful of the community.

So... why was the upload page changed too? What was so bad about dumping everything into one box instead of several that have me confused about what goes where? Given that the relationship tags are next to the "Characters" section (and it's definitely not inclusive), should I add them there? Do x_penetrating_x tags also go under there? How could I know what is and isn't "Contentious Content" (isn't that the point of blacklists, given people's personal preferences)? Why in god's name do I have to read a list of said content every single time I want to upload something? Would it even make a difference if I threw everything into the "Other Tags" section?

It's not even streamlining anything, if I want to upload two parent/child posts, now I need to be aware of exactly what goes where and shuffle everything neat and properly. Yeah, it's hardly the end of the world, but it's just unnecessary tedium.

strikerman said:
So... why was the upload page changed too? What was so bad about dumping everything into one box instead of several that have me confused about what goes where? Given that the relationship tags are next to the "Characters" section (and it's definitely not inclusive), should I add them there? Do x_penetrating_x tags also go under there? How could I know what is and isn't "Contentious Content" (isn't that the point of blacklists, given people's personal preferences)?

AFAIK, the click boxes and separate input boxes are just visual dressing to help uploaders remember to add common relevant tags. I believe (someone please correct me if I'm wrong), you can still simply throw all your tags into the Other Tags box and it will work normally.

umbreon5 said:
I, and multiple other people, would have been okay with all of this if you had provided proper notice of this all. You have the news headlines, why not make use of it before the update and keep it around for a while just to make sure people know? There was a complete lack of thought around this

This was done.

There were two news items in addition to the two forum topics.

It's clearly not the case that there was a complete lack of thought. As it turned out, maybe throwing a big notification on the landing screen as well, would have helped. Maybe being super rude and intrusive with obligatory popups in /post/index would have helped (not so sure about that one). But a reasonable effort clearly was made.

This isn't intended personally. I'm just getting tired of people coming in, and making this claim (probably also not reading the thread, since this claim has already been addressed a few times in this thread IIRC).

The new layout is not a simplification, BTW. That is, they didn't take the old UI and pare it down; they took vanilla Danbooru and built it up. I think this should be mentioned because there seems to be a perception from some people that devs actively removed stuff from the UI, and AFAIK that is false.

Agreed on the landing screen. I think it *is* planned to restore that.

watsit said:
(someone please correct me if I'm wrong)

That's kinda the problem, isn't it? They rolled this out without updating the upload guidelines.

strikerman said:
That's kinda the problem, isn't it? They rolled this out without updating the upload guidelines.

What I suggested is clearly not the expected way to handle it, the click boxes and separate input boxes are to help ensure proper tags get added (I like to think I'm pretty good at tagging, but I still miss obvious ones at times, which this should help with). If what I said works, it's obviously not intended to be how most people should do it, just perhaps something for power users.

watsit said:
What do you expect the site to do then? If people can't be bothered to check the news because they're too interested in getting their rocks off, how would you give them the news in a way that doesn't generate complaints from interfering with their fap session?

Do people need news? Does the site NEED to change? Was there some kinda bug in the code that prevented us, the users, from looking at porn? No? then WHY did it need to be 'updated', 'changed', or absolutely 'Fucked with!'.

There is an old saying. If it isn't broken, don't fix it. 24 hours ago nothing was broken. Yet the Mods decided to 'Fix' the site. Look at what the fuck happened cause of it! I now need to constantly log in every 5 minutes just to look at porn, cause I don't like keeping cookies and have a plugin to auto delete them every few minutes off untrusted sites, and this is a porn site and thus untrusted. Heck, I rarely ever used an account and it was mainly when I want to mass download a lot of Pics and wanted them at 100% resolution when I right clicked and saved them.

I've never even been on the forums, and didn't know they even existed nor cared, till this new changed that fucked over not just me but now my friends who use the site without accounts and can no longer use it cause most of what they use the site for is now locked behind having an account, which they don't want to create just to look at porn pics, especially when 24 hours ago it wasn't needed.

jirodyne said:
Does the site NEED to change? Was there some kinda bug in the code that prevented us, the users, from looking at porn?

Prevented - no, caused problems in the future - yes.
Was this update done perfectly? Absolutely not. Was it necessary, in the grand scheme of things? Yes.

You don't need an account to look at porn. You need an account to look at very specific kind of porn.
And if you want to look at that very specific kind of porn - be it scat, gore, or cub, you will need to be logged in.

personally I'm fine with the visual changes, it's just the default mobile site I don't like, most everyone has a large phone today.

bitwolfy said:
Prevented - no, caused problems in the future - yes.
Was this update done perfectly? Absolutely not. Was it necessary, in the grand scheme of things? Yes.

You don't need an account to look at porn. You need an account to look at very specific kind of porn.
And if you want to look at that very specific kind of porn - be it scat, gore, or cub, you will need to be logged in.

Caused problems... how? This is the issue. No one has every given an example. WHAT needed to change, that is so earth shatteringly badly needed, that they had to fuck over everyone and fuck the entire site over, just to add it. People can upload Porn. People can tag porn. People can look at porn. Those are the only 3 things this site needed, and nothing over time should ever been able to break that, unless somehow there Windows or something is preventing people from uploading files off it and they need a new code to get around Windows to upload a picture? Or Monitors are somehow able to detect pictures of porn and need to change the code to encode pictures differently on the site?

WHAT in the code, is going to cause problems in the future and WHY? The site, could literally go 'Updateless' for the rest of existance and be fine, except maybe needing more storage space, but that's a physical limitation, and has nothing to do with the core basic structure of the site itself. Does Code suddenly go bad? Does it rot and you need to create new code to replace it daily? What the fuck was it?! And if it has nothing to do with Uploading, Tagging, and Looking at porn, THEN IT WASN'T NEEDED!

As for needing to log In, I know, THAT'S THE PROBLEM! We didn't need to before, now we do, WHY. WHY force people to log in? Why not just have a 2 Filters at the top you can switch between that shows All or the 'Safe'. Heck, you should be forcing people to make accounts if they want to Blacklist Scat, Gore, or Cub, and whatever else is hidden, you know, like it was set up before and working perfectly fine for people! Heck, you can even, get this, when searching just add a - in front of a tag, and it won't show up. So complicated and advance, right?!. Why suddenly fuck over your users, instead of adding options? Are the Mods just retarded and don't understand common sense?

jirodyne said:
... stuff ...

"Updateless"... you just have no clue what you are talking about. It's actually quite funny.

Just chill. This will get resolved one way or another. Not instantly, but eventually.
You can survive a few days without your guro or whatever it is you are looking for.

Updated

bitwolfy said:
"Updateless"... you just have no clue what you are talking about. It's actually quite funny.

Just chill. This will get resolved one way or another. Not instantly, but eventually.
You can survive a few days without your guro or whatever it is you are looking for.

Lmfao man I'm fucking dying over here. At first I instantly hated it because of how bland it looked but after some initial browsing I like how I don't have to pinch to zoom in and out in order to see things. All in all 10/10 this is the best thing to happen to E621. ^.=.^

jirodyne said:
Caused problems... how? This is the issue. No one has every given an example. WHAT needed to change, that is so earth shatteringly badly needed, that they had to fuck over everyone and fuck the entire site over, just to add it. People can upload Porn. People can tag porn. People can look at porn. Those are the only 3 things this site needed, and nothing over time should ever been able to break that, unless somehow there Windows or something is preventing people from uploading files off it and they need a new code to get around Windows to upload a picture? Or Monitors are somehow able to detect pictures of porn and need to change the code to encode pictures differently on the site?

WHAT in the code, is going to cause problems in the future and WHY? The site, could literally go 'Updateless' for the rest of existance and be fine, except maybe needing more storage space, but that's a physical limitation, and has nothing to do with the core basic structure of the site itself. Does Code suddenly go bad? Does it rot and you need to create new code to replace it daily? What the fuck was it?! And if it has nothing to do with Uploading, Tagging, and Looking at porn, THEN IT WASN'T NEEDED!

As for needing to log In, I know, THAT'S THE PROBLEM! We didn't need to before, now we do, WHY. WHY force people to log in? Why not just have a 2 Filters at the top you can switch between that shows All or the 'Safe'. Heck, you should be forcing people to make accounts if they want to Blacklist Scat, Gore, or Cub, and whatever else is hidden, you know, like it was set up before and working perfectly fine for people! Heck, you can even, get this, when searching just add a - in front of a tag, and it won't show up. So complicated and advance, right?!. Why suddenly fuck over your users, instead of adding options? Are the Mods just retarded and don't understand common sense?

Aww, what's wrong, afraid you'll be caught erping off to those kind of things or are you not wanting to have to sign in because you dont want your name associated with it? *Snorts* Dude. This thread is meant for constructive criticism and feedback, not for people who are going "REEEEEE!" And by the way, moderators aren't developers. Two totally separate things. And if you use E621 on a consistent basis then you should be using an account so you can INTERACT and CONTRIBUTE.

Updated

stavinair_caeruleum said:
Aww, what's wrong, afraid you'll be caught erping off to those kind of things or are you not wanting to have to sign in because you dont want your name associated with it? *Snorts* Dude. This thread is meant for constructive criticism and feedback, not for people who are going "REEEEEE!"

Wether you like it or not, feedback can be something other than "All in all 10/10 this is the best thing to happen to E621. ^.=.^".
Feedback can be negative too, and should also be valid as long as it is expressed in a civil manner, which your mocking tone doesn't contribute to in any way.

Overall I don't mind the UI changes and the missing functionalities, that will be fixed sooner or later.
What I'm worried about is the forced blacklist for guest users, for reasons I already stated earlier in the thread. I am not in any way affected by this blacklist (for now) since those censored fetishes are not my thing, but I would like to have at least a word from the e621 team regarding their intentions when it comes to the blacklist.
Currently, it is just worrying because there is no info about it, be it regarding as to why it was implemented, why it cannot be disabled by guests who willingfully agree to expose themselves to those tags by disabling the blacklist, and what they intend to do in the future regarding this "feature".

I firmly believe that a lot if people (me included) would not be as alarmed as they are regarding forced tag segregation for guest users if they were given official info about why it's there, how it will evolve, and most of all, that the administration team is open to feedback regarding this forced function.

Currently though, most threads discussing it have been locked without any explanation or information, which doesn't contribute to appease people displeased by that new feature, on the contrary.
Again, I believe that an official sticky or announcement regarding this matter would greatly help to reduce the general animosity regarding this system, which is, hopefully temporary and prone to evolve.

nukedukemii said:
Overall I don't mind the UI changes and the missing functionalities, that will be fixed sooner or later.
What I'm worried about is the forced blacklist for guest users, for reasons I already stated earlier in the thread. I am not in any way affected by this blacklist (for now) since those censored fetishes are not my thing, but I would like to have at least a word from the e621 team regarding their intentions when it comes to the blacklist.
Currently, it is just worrying because there is no info about it, be it regarding as to why it was implemented, why it cannot be disabled by guests who willingfully agree to expose themselves to those tags by disabling the blacklist, and what they intend to do in the future regarding this "feature".

I firmly believe that a lot if people (me included) would not be as alarmed as they are regarding forced tag segregation for guest users if they were given official info about why it's there, how it will evolve, and most of all, that the administration team is open to feedback regarding this forced function.

Currently though, most threads discussing it have been locked without any explanation or information, which doesn't contribute to appease people displeased by that new feature, on the contrary.
Again, I believe that an official sticky or announcement regarding this matter would greatly help to reduce the general animosity regarding this system, which is, hopefully temporary and prone to evolve.

Yes that is precisely my own opinion as well. If I can handle youtube's dumb changes over the years I can handle this. However I'm used to seeing weird fetishes and all while browsing since it exposes me to more artists who might've done it as a one-off thing or if they have a style I am particularly fond of. If I specifically didn't feel like seeing it I had tools (-tagname) to remove it from my sight, very simple, no complaints. I come back to find out that images get hidden even when I clear out the blacklist without an account. I had to add yet another account to the many I have to manage now, I disdain having to make unnecessary throwaways. I'm not sure what the point of doing that is since it's just more steps for the same thing. If it's to make people use the blacklist I doubt it will decrease the amount of complaints nor accomplish that goal. Most people who do, in fact, not know how to blacklist need to be taught or pointed towards it in the first place. Even signing up there wasn't anything really pointing me towards it aside from a decent guess to go to the settings (which I had intent, unlike people who are flat-out unaware.)

Seeing threads regarding the blacklist locked without retort is more concerning than anything. I hope the approach to the blacklist is reconsidered. I don't particularly enjoy having to make and log into an account when I am just perusing images, safe or otherwise. This may not even be "relevant to the thread's topic" unfortunately. Personally I was alright with just lurking in peace up until now.

peegus said:

bitz said:
Is there any way to contribute more directly to the team? I am a Full Stack developer that specializes in frontend and Ux design. I would love to work on e621- if permitted.

Same here. At the moment, the best thing to do is contribute fixes or improvements in this thread the way kira outlined in the op. Admins are definitely watching this thread for stuff like that

Here's a link to the Github repository: https://github.com/zwagoth/e621ng
I haven't had time to really look into any of it yet, so I'm not sure if e621 is directly working off of this repository.

I'd like to suggest the native font stack instead of font-family:Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif;:

body {
    font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", "Roboto", "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif,  "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol";
}

This will give site a native look with smooth fonts in all operating systems: Widows, Mac, Linux, Android. And will bring the support for colored Unicode emojis too! πŸ’πŸ‘ŒπŸŽπŸ˜

I'm testing this now as custom CSS and everything looks great!

Updated

Search is all bjorked, press back it takes ya all the way to the top of the page every time, blacklist is just a suggestion and if your on mobile good luck. Adds and no search in favs anymore. Sorry but I have to say this isn't an update but a downgrade. Really needs to go back to the old format IMHO.

Updated

Welp, dark theme and hexagons are both gone, and Esix Extend is super dead for now at the very least which is a huge reason to not use the site anymore. Not only is it much less pleasing to the eye, but all the functionality (such as tracked pools, a feature I used constantly) are straight up just gone from Extend currently since it's broken in the new UI. I follow a lot of comics and such, and Extend made doing so on here 10x easier, but now that's all lost.

I find myself, much like with FA, asking the question of why it was even changed? The old UI was absolutely fine, quite good in fact. Worked just fine on my computer and my phone. The new UI doesn't do anything the old UI didn't already do, and often better, except the autofill for search that is kinda nice. Doesn't make up for how much brighter and bluer (which I'm sure is great for my sleep) a screen I have to stare at now with Bloodlust removed. So, uh, if your goal was to make me not wanna use the site anymore, well done I guess.

EDIT: Oh, and what the hell was wrong with the popular tab? I really liked being able to run back through it if I didn't check the site for a day or two, as sometimes happens.

I know this has been said but I would really like a change to the color of the pool text. My personal suggestion is

#0f0 

which is Green

Request: Can you please allow mobile browsers to request the desktop site?

The way it is currently configured, it forces mobile browsers to view the mobile site even when the desktop site is specifically requested.

This is a huge problem, especially for some accessibility stuff.

The default color choices make text harder to read, especially if one's color vision isn't 100% normal. This is especially apparent in the 'Pools' section. The pink/fuschia against a blue of similar brightness is really hard to read for me, and the light grey text isn't much better. I'm using a plug-in to adjust things to be usable, but it's something that should be addressed. Additionally, In pools, there should be next/previous buttons at the bottom as well as the top of the frame and those need to be in basic readable colors. Text needs to have good contrast and be readable even if colors need to be toned down or chosen differently.

venti_mocha said:

The default color choices make text harder to read, especially if one's color vision isn't 100% normal. This is especially apparent in the 'Pools' section. The pink/fuschia against a blue of similar brightness is really hard to read for me, and the light grey text isn't much better. I'm using a plug-in to adjust things to be usable, but it's something that should be addressed. Additionally, In pools, there should be next/previous buttons at the bottom as well as the top of the frame and those need to be in basic readable colors. Text needs to have good contrast and be readable even if colors need to be toned down or chosen differently.

Yeah, it's an issue. Been reported about fifty times already, unfortunately.
Feel free to check out the unofficial fix: https://e621.net/forum_topics/25811
This is how the pool navigation looks with it right now: https://i.imgur.com/uBDj8zP.jpg

stavinair_caeruleum said:
Aww, what's wrong, afraid you'll be caught erping off to those kind of things or are you not wanting to have to sign in because you dont want your name associated with it? *Snorts* Dude. This thread is meant for constructive criticism and feedback, not for people who are going "REEEEEE!" And by the way, moderators aren't developers. Two totally separate things. And if you use E621 on a consistent basis then you should be using an account so you can INTERACT and CONTRIBUTE.

Well I can easily judge you're IQ is very low, as either you didn't actually read my post and the issues I had, or you did read it and don't know anything. Maybe you can help me. Why did the Code have to change and be updated? Why would the code suddenly degrade and stop working 10 years from now?

As people keep pointing out, there was literally NOTHING wrong with how the site was 48 hours ago. So why the buggy change? And why couldn't they have worked on all of this privately, and fixed all their shit BEFORE forcing it on people, and why not have a way to switch back to the original site for those that didn't like the changes? If you can't answer any of that, I have no reason to talk to someone as uneducated as yourself.

bitwolfy said:
"Updateless"... you just have no clue what you are talking about. It's actually quite funny.

Just chill. This will get resolved one way or another. Not instantly, but eventually.
You can survive a few days without your guro or whatever it is you are looking for.

Indeed I have no clue, which is why I'm asking. And I've seen websites that still exist after 20+ years and never needing to be updated, changed, or forced to be 'improved' for some stupid reason.

As for things being fixed, that will never be fixed, cause the Mods are saying they will never return to the old system. I don't give a fuck if the site now offers better visuals, or the forums are improved or some shit. The site was perfectly fine the way it was before, it NEVER needed to change. So I will fight against it on principle alone if I have to.

The Mods fucked up the site, they fucked up how they responded to people being upset, they fucked up giving a valid reason for the changes, and they fucked up many bugs now on the site and instead of at least giving the people a complete bug free system first before forcing a change on us. They have done NOTHING 'right', and fucked up every step along the way. Including, from what I've seen and heard in other threats, locking and deleting posts and threads as well. They have fucked up. Majorly. And that's going to really heavily damage this site, cause there are plenty of other sites just like this, and they aren't filled with bugs, haven't changed, and don't force you to get an account to view some of their art.

Currently right now, I'll have to be using another site when sharing pictures with my friends, cause they don't want or need an account and I don't want to be forced to get on an account every time I want to browse the site.

I really, REALLY dislike that the download button on posts now opens another tab instead of in the same one, it means that if I come back to the window later, I can't go back and favourite the posts I like without searching for them.

Oh boy, I didn't even notice the new upload page. I understand where you're coming from: To get people to tag their posts on at least a basic level, but could you please add an option for just having one big window for all tags like before?

jirodyne said:
As for things being fixed, that will never be fixed, cause the Mods are saying they will never return to the old system. I don't give a fuck if the site now offers better visuals, or the forums are improved or some shit. The site was perfectly fine the way it was before, it NEVER needed to change. So I will fight against it on principle alone if I have to.

You're conflating frontend and backend. The eventuality the devs were planning around with this change was a backend database issue that could eventually risk every picture on the site, something I imagine you'd definitely give a fuck about. While the execution was flawed and will continue to be fixed, the necessity was there to update to a better database solution before the old one shat itself, and the reason we aren't going back is so every post since doesn't get wiped clean.

I prefer the old layout. This one feels way to cludered and complicated while the old one was nice and simple, especially with the genre tags on the side of the page. Thanks for reading.

watsit said:
What do you expect the site to do then? If people can't be bothered to check the news because they're too interested in getting their rocks off, how would you give them the news in a way that doesn't generate complaints from interfering with their fap session?

Just make a new link at the top of the screen that says "News" and when there's an update just do what phone apps do and put a little yellow exclamation next to it.

helloanonmyoldfriend said:
Oh boy, I didn't even notice the new upload page. I understand where you're coming from: To get people to tag their posts on at least a basic level, but could you please add an option for just having one big window for all tags like before?

You can enable the compact uploading page in your advanced account settings.

jirodyne said:
Indeed I have no clue, which is why I'm asking. And I've seen websites that still exist after 20+ years and never needing to be updated, changed, or forced to be 'improved' for some stupid reason.

As for things being fixed, that will never be fixed, cause the Mods are saying they will never return to the old system. I don't give a fuck if the site now offers better visuals, or the forums are improved or some shit. The site was perfectly fine the way it was before, it NEVER needed to change. So I will fight against it on principle alone if I have to.

The Mods fucked up the site, they fucked up how they responded to people being upset, they fucked up giving a valid reason for the changes, and they fucked up many bugs now on the site and instead of at least giving the people a complete bug free system first before forcing a change on us. They have done NOTHING 'right', and fucked up every step along the way. Including, from what I've seen and heard in other threats, locking and deleting posts and threads as well. They have fucked up. Majorly. And that's going to really heavily damage this site, cause there are plenty of other sites just like this, and they aren't filled with bugs, haven't changed, and don't force you to get an account to view some of their art.

As I've said at least once before, the old site was running on wishes and prayers with spaghetti code so terrible trying to fix a security exploit in dtext where html code wasn't getting properly sanitized damn near broke everything and took ages to fix. And those vulnerabilities had creeped into nearly everything. The tables that handle all the information the site needs to function (tag edit history, posts, flagging history, notes history, etc) become so big and unwieldy for the old backend that we had to actually remove functionality to allow it to keep working so people could at least browse the site.
Once upon a time it was possible to feed the tag history database a time frame and find out which tag got added or removed where by whom and when. Running a query like that last week would have put the site in a total lockdown for up to 5 minutes or more with the threat we would actually run out of ram and crash everything. We've done everything we could to optimize the old backend but still hit the point where nothing short of a full rewrite of everything would have sufficed to fix it.
We've also had to remove wildcard searches for anons because they got abused, which has made a comeback already. We had to reduce the allowed amount of search able tags from 8 to 6 for members a few years ago.
Those things have already been improved on with the new site.

Nothing of the old page is compatible with the current page anymore. We've imported everything from the old databases to the new code. We're doing a full-scale renovation because the building is basically 5 months away from collapsing, but are still trying to stay open while we renovate. Most of the renovation has actually already happened, we're now just dealing with the actual store front so things will be a bit bumpy as we push stuff around.

Once everything is done and in place as it was before we can then, finally, start offering more features without fearing to set everything on fire again. Including a working reverse image search right on our server, more tags, better controls for pages, custom backdrop for all images with transparency (so they aren't blue when they should be white), possibly new meta tags we couldn't do beforehand, and more.

We've also already recruited help with the UI, so things should go back to being more pleasant to the eye soon. We're not going to be FA and take a year to fix a line of code.