The Toyark.com Front Page Upgrade
 

Hey all,

Still working on things so I'll do up a front page post with some details soon. But if you guys have any problems, see errors, see broken things, etc - let me know here.

Can also give feedback generally.

Of note - no more news.toyark.com - just use https://www.toyark.com from now on. Should auto-redirect if you have old links bookmarked tho.

Later!

Attachment 71698 I have a few gripes. Between each topic I don't like all the white background. I'd prefer you make it yellow or leave it grey as you had it. There should be a thicker black line to break up each topic or piece of news on the front page. Without the photo, it just looks like walls of text. Third is that I would still like the discuss button on the corners of each without having to actually press the topic.

I like that the article tags are more prominent/readable now, but they take up a lot of real estate being stacked as they are. It's also a shame they're only viewable within the article and you can no longer click them from the main page, that was my main way of quickly sifting through articles for a particular line or character. I know it's only an extra click to open the article and then click the tag within but, still.

Is there a reason for the associated thread no longer having a page one preview in the article?

I also think you need more of a divide between articles. As it is now it looks like one long article when scrolling on my phone.

Good stuff. Open to suggestions. May not act on all, but good to hear it all, so keep em coming.

Definitely echoing the "more separation between articles" and especially the "change the background to more classic-Toyark grey or something instead of white" comments.

EDIT: seeing the site on desktop now, and yeah both ways I'd really prefer the amount of white to be kept to a minimum. Even just having it the way it currently is but swap the white for the classic light grey would be a substantial improvement.

I dislike how it no longer displays comments beneath each article. I have to click to go to the forum. If I've already read the previous discussion, this step doesn't seem to even take me to the latest page.

I miss that too, but understand if the purpose is to separate product promotion from critical comments / opinions / reviews. That said, the opinions of experienced and informed collectors on this board are important, so if I have to click through an extra page or two to reach them, I will.

"Bravo Zulu"...

For the work...
"Tony-B" ;^)

My issues:
1: I use half of my monitor screen for web browsing and the new layout uses too little of that. It's only a 32 inch screen and there's still about two inches of dead space on both sides of the page.
2: The posts being cut short sucks. I liked being able to read them and keep scrolling, opening the full thing just for more photos.
3: The Amazon adbar is massive. You can leave it the same size if you decompress the rest of the page but as it is now it's taking up more than a quarter of the actual content.

Agree on spacing or a barrier between articles and adding a link to the discussion.

This was my first thought as well; trash talking marketing pressers is not going to help Tony further monetize this labor of love. The comments littering these releases have featured more and more animus since the Rancor HasLab (in my recollection) with participants eschewing decorum in favor of eviscerating manufacturers. I try to temper myself, but I acknowledge that my own participation has been, at times, less than ideal from an advertising standpoint.

However, without participants commenting and engaging/clicking, you won’t have the ad dollars either. If only there was some way to make comments without showing one’s ass…hmmmm.

Just to be clear, the removal of the forum threads from front page had zero to do with what the comments in the thread were about.

Front page works on Wordpress. Forums work on OLD vBulletin. Merging the two systems has always been difficult. The upgrade of the front page system to newer tech and server software to match made merging these two systems even more difficult. So for now, it was removed in favor of the thread link.

I hope to upgrade the forums themselves to newer tech eventually, and when that happens, will attempt to re-connect the two systems then.

I will look into a short term fix of generating two links - first page, last page, for the thread link.

I stand corrected. Just the thicker yellow divider line definitely helps the giant scrolling block effect.

That's good.

I did some clean up on mobile yesterday. Things changed right before launch which threw it off, and then I heard multiple "blocking" issues on mobile, so tried some things out. Will continue to refine based on feedback over time.