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Discussion: The new Digital-Fanedit

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TV's Frink

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Vultural said:
I do not understand the hostility towards BionicBob.
He was surprised and confused by the new look and expressed his concerns.
BBob gets belittled and mocked.  At least that is how I perceive it.

Hostility?  Belittled and mocked?  What the hell are you talking about?

You should probably just stop posting for a while.
 

L8wrtr

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Perspective.

Certain Points of View.

Breathe.

Thank you to everyone who both got the joke, as well as those who were freaked out by it and didn't know what to make of it. As many members have noted, some of the best advice for April 1 is to treat everything as if it were an article on The Onion. No ill-will was ever intended by it. Some took it in stride and in the spirt of which it was intended, some truly worried, and some have been offended. Honestly, I can understand all three perspectives. Personal reactions are all equally valid and I'm not going to say anyone is wrong for responding any particular way, but it was a simple prank built equally out of a unique opportunity ( a full rebuild of the site) and the need of the staff to have a laugh after all of the hard work. 

To provide everyone some insight and understanding on how it evolved.. in order to build the new site on a parallel server, we needed a domain name to build on.. as an internal joke we used a modified DFE name, It is a common joke for web coders to do things behind the scenes that will never see the light of day for the public and when the digital-fanedit.com domain was used, it was simply an inside joke for us. As completion drew near it was clear that April 1 was a likely completion date... well.. I think it's pretty easy to see how the prank evolved from there. No ill-will or nefarious intentions at play, just a way for us to have a good laugh to celebrate the completion of a truly massive undertaking, with an opportunity that we likely would never have again (the complete, massive rebuilding of the site).

At this point I believe that we can all put the DFE joke in the rear-view mirror because it was just a way for the admin team to have a bit of relief after the hard work put into the site... if it still grates on you, my best recommendation (both as a forum member, and as an Admin) is to leave your frustrations off of the forum itself. If you still need to flame away, feel free to reach out to myself directly via PM and I'd be happy to wear my asbestos suit and hear you out, but nothing constructive will come from further public airing of grievances.. This isn't Festivus. This was a joke of best intentions. Like it, or don't like it, but I promise you it was never intended to be anything but fun-spirited, so thinking it is anything other is a waste of your energy.

With the above in mind, I invite you to walk a moment in the shoes of the staff...

Look around the interwebs, from /film, to aint it cool, to OT.com and any other place that people with our passions for film tend to go, and I think it's safe to say that the organization and generally professional execution of our site stands easily alongside of those sites (and far better than some), and that includes the previous cluttered version of the site.

I know it shouldn't bare repeating, but when you consider that this site not only generates zero income for the those that own and operate it, but it typically operates at a loss, the quality of this site is nothing short of amazing. While donations trickle in to cover the fixed costs of the site, the site regularly needs infusions of cash to either to increase the server capacity, or purchase plugins, update licenses, update versions of software or new software that benefit the community. Often we get infusions from very generous members to help offset these costs and we are always grateful to those folks that are able and happy to contribute in times of need, but also, quite often, admins with the means to do so simply step in and make up the difference without making public notices about needing money or asking for donations. We see a need that will make the site better for the members and we just simply pay for it. Not for glory. Not for personal gain but just because we love this site and this community so damn much. I don't bring this up to spur an influx of donations or to make people feel guilty, because if that's what I wanted, well I'd be publicly bemoaning that on a regular basis. I only bring it up as something for members to pause an consider before you post on the site.

I won't pretend to have been a major player in this recent update, but I was in the previous major 3.0 update that included the creation of IFDB. I know how much work that took, and this project took even more. If we had paid a professional web team to produce this work, you are looking at tens of thousands of dollars of time and expertise, and this was done all on the side by people who have full time jobs, families and responsibilities (and even some donated time by a professional web designer to trouble shoot a few specific issues, and he's not even affiliated with our site). Someone joked earlier about this, but it is really the truth; people had to sacrifice even more time away from their families and sacrifice sleep than normal in order to essentially re-build the site entirely on a completely different server, and figure out how to integrate/migrate all of our data into the new framework, and then execute it in the span of one evening in order to make the switch and go live.
 
We had no intention of laying this much behind-the-scenes 'look at what we did' attention on how we got from A to B, but I feel it is important to highlight so that as I indicated above, you can pause and contemplate about how to construct your observations on the new site.

With any new release there are going to be a TON of unforeseen bugs, hiccups and glitches. If a function has vanished, or decreased in usefulness, or if something is missing or is a door that opens to a brick wall, you should intrinsically understand that this wasn't the intention, so we NEED to know where all these little oddball issues are. We are a very small team and our QA department is every single one of you. All we ask is that you report the findings with as minimal editorializing as possible. We are working to make this site as fucking awesome as possible, and we're doing it because we love this community, and we love this hobby. Nobody on the staff twirls their pencil-thin moustaches contemplating methods of making the site less than it was before. If something seems like a mistake, well, it probably is. Just kindly let us know and it will be added to the bug list. With some luck and hard work, most should be able to be addressed.

I will close with one final thing however; this project has drained some people of their energy, and if you have a negative opinion about something, be it a logo, or a color scheme, or whatever the hell you want to bitch about that doesn't have anything to do with actual site functionality.. the smart money is on keeping it to yourself. A very small group of people donated their personal time, literally for months, in order to make something that was already awesome, even better. The absolute minimum you can do is keep negative criticisms to yourself in the immediate aftermath of the change-over and clean-up. This is the site. It's not going to revert back. If something is broken, we will fix it. If something is missing and can be restored, it will be. If something seems il-logical, let us know and we'll see if it can be made more sensible. 

But if all you have is negative bitching.. my best advise is to be like Potsie and sit on it. This isn't intended as a threat, it's just common sense and courtesy.

Stay thirsty my friends.
- L8wrtr
 

ssj

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great job on the redesign and the front page and the new banners, even with 10% of the forum posts to be purged daily.  :D

and, fuck, a boon sighting! is this what it takes to draw him out? :p

thanks to all the admins/overlords/macadamia members for all the hard work involved.

one complaint: i no longer have access to the FE massage table. whaddafuqq?

seriously, and not a priority: can't enlarge the screen on an iPad. that little green arrow is hard to hit (i have ogre-sized hands, green and hairy) unless i can magnify the page. preeze and tenkyu on making that possible at some point.
 

bionicbob

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reave said:
bionicbob said:
reave said:
Another in-joke that apparently fell flat. I figured all Bob's knew about all Bob's being right.

of_course_im_right_im_bob_dog_tshirt.jpg

of_course_im_right_im_bob_trucker_hat-r8a664b1923e64d5ba5e4f7d36f4ee8f2_v9wfy_8byvr_324.jpg

of_course_im_right_im_bob_shirt-r97589dd3343f4dbe87a66188252650a1_8naxo_512.jpg

of_course_im_right_im_bob_incipio_feather_shine_iphone_6_case-r5a9491546fc84177b49d2b9f095793fc_zezap_324.jpg

i_am_bob_drinking_glass.jpg

of_course_im_right_im_bob_tie-r63cce662e1e74cad8f0927ee8cee25e6_z5nrg_324.jpg

6e566aa7a12a97022.jpg

because_im_bob_dog_tshirt.jpg

LOL!

I am apparently completely out of touch with current pop culture.   Another sign of getting old, along with my knee jerk grumpiness.
I have never heard that expression before.... I need to tell my wife and get some of those shirts and cups asap!
 

reave

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Vultural said:
I do not understand the hostility towards BionicBob.
He was surprised and confused by the new look and expressed his concerns.
BBob gets belittled and mocked.  At least that is how I perceive it.

Your perception is wrong, or you're trying to re-direct attention. There is zero hostility towards Bob, he's one of my favorite members of FE. No one was belittled, and everyone, including Bob could see that.
 

Uncanny Antman

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Lookin' good!  Kudos to everyone who put in the hard work to get it done.  :)
 

dangermouse

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Whew. What a storm in a teacup. I lolled at the digital fanedits think. Ironically it got flagged by McAfee as a "risky site"!! :)
I thought initially it was just a temporary reskin - but it looked like WAY too much effort had been put in. Now understanding it's an upgrade it makes sense! 
I remember the last upgrade - a big improvement but LOTS of bugs... which slowly and surely were dealt with and then everybody loved the site - and now want to cling to it with dead cold hands.... LOL.
This new redesign and migration will be great. It'll just take time.
Thanks to reave and Thrown and everyone else working their ASSES off - and thanks for the April Fools lolz.
 

Aztek463

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I too thought this was solely a prank, but I'm very much glad to see the site undergo a huge overhaul like this. It's always good to see changes and upgrades made, and this one definitely makes the site look very professional. I've been a member of a lot of online communities, and I've never seen a more dedicated administrative team than the folks who run (and have run) this place.

Keep up the amazing work!
 

TomH1138

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While I really enjoyed the banners in concept, it did get tiring seeing the same ones over and over again, without new banners for each new edit, so I can see why that idea was abandoned. (And, hey, I wouldn't have the first clue about how to do a banner myself, so I can't complain.) Very smart move.

Meanwhile, one of the nice new additions to the site are the catchier titles for the articles. I didn't mind the standard format before this: "(Name of editor) has just released (name of edit)," but the new titles show me that I didn't know what I was missing!

"The Cuddly Ninja Puts Us into the Murder House"

"Voyage of the Dawn Treader Gets 'Book Cut' Treatment"

"Q2 Combines Both Parts of Deathly Hallows into One Epic Finale"

Suddenly, with this seemingly small detail, I find the news page a lot more exciting. Keep up the great work, everyone!
 

Smithers

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I'm starting to get used to the new update, I thought the entire thing was a huge joke and I'm thrown off by sudden changes like this. I'm sorry for bitching about it.

First off I have to say that the new logo and the home page are really nice looking. The interface is actually pretty nice but I have a few suggestions:
-Make the text a tad lighter, it's just a little too dark and I have a hard time reading it
-Add and easy to access subscriptions section, it's already missing on OT, I don't know if I can stand not having it here either.


I like that IFDB is more of a part of the site, it's just a section rather than it's own thing.

I think this is a smart move if you guys want to get the word of fanedits out there, the article titles and icons are pretty cool and I'd like to see this grow our community.
 

MWRK

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I like the redesign and the logo, but I sort of miss the rotating banners and user flags. Any plans of reintegrating the features at some point?
 

reave

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MWRK said:
I like the redesign and the logo, but I sort of miss the rotating banners and user flags. Any plans of reintegrating the features at some point?

The rotating banners were a pain in the ass. We have other plans to promote edits. Right now we're trying to work out the existing bugs, then we'll start working on extra features. Stay tuned.
 

sgp1428

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Just had a little play for half hour or so and the site looks pretty good, and as the little bugs get ironed out things can only get better.

I guess the price of progress is change and if things didn't change then we would all be in front of our Windows 95 computers connected to the internet via dial-up :cry: ........ congrats to all involved. :)
 

Vultural

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Ha ha.  Like BBob, I had no idea there was an entire I'm With Bob industry.
Instead, I went bounding to his defense.
Again, as I wrote earlier in the thread - and in numerous PMs - I apologize if I upset of irritated anyone.
Families do suffer outta control members at times.

The new site is rockin' swift.
Meaning, I can move from one page to another, one thread to the next, pronto.
So, bravo.


Now, down in my CP, in OTHER OPTIONS, I can tick off "Show Friendly Redirect Pages."
Is that for live links, say to Huffington Post or The Sun?

Also noticed the bottom of the page no longer mentions not being affiliated with another site.
 

beezo

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I've had some time now to digest the new changes here and I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.  :)

In the spirit of helping those who are improving the site, might I suggest a unique thread just for bugs and/or site suggestions?
 

jerick

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Another color issue: The % of space used on messages notification is the same color as the background it's written on.

In my admittedly worthless opinion the default CCCCCC text color on posts really seems to create unnecessary eye strain against the dark gray backdrop. I think it would be much better for the default text color to just be white.
 

ThrowgnCpr

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jerick said:
Another color issue: The % of space used on messages notification is the same color as the background it's written on.

In my admittedly worthless opinion the default CCCCCC text color on posts really seems to create unnecessary eye strain against the dark gray backdrop. I think it would be much better for the default text color to just be white.

Thanks for the feedback, but I'm going to respectfully disagree about color contrast and eye strain.  Contrast isn't the only variable for eye strain: high intensity also factors into high eye strain. We'll continue to make modifications to the theme, but we won't be switching to a complete high contrast format. If this isn't to your liking, you can try a number of browser font plugins to customize your experience.
 
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