Regarding the Site Update

[Venthas]

A few more notes on the update.

Yes, the update was large. And unfortunately there were a few things that weren't able to be converted due to how the new system functions. The new groups system is a brand new system, and I could not convert Clubs to this.

Further, some artwork did not make the transition. For this I apologize. My personal system, which handled the conversion as the server could not contain all of FLO's uploads, was not able to handle some color profiles. Unfortunately, I would need to go back, correct the color profiles on all of these pieces by hand, and do the conversion again. This would be massively time consuming. While I understand the frustration, I encourage the reupload of any missing pieces.

I do understand that some do not like the new themes on the site, and will take suggestions for themes into account. You can offer suggestions in this thread:

Themes

As the title states, I'm opening up suggestions for the site's themes.

furrylife.online

FLO has the capability of adding additional themes, and this is something I will look into.

Hopefully this helps sort a few things about the update. As ever, as FLO progresses into the future, my aim for the site and software is to be as user (and developer) friendly as possible. This updated added a lot of functionality that had been previously lacking. Moving forward, suggestions on functionality and site features are appreciated. I look forward to seeing opinions on how to progress and improve FLO. This site is not something that I consider mine alone. I am merely trying my best to bring something new to the Furry community.

As ever, I look forward to serving the community for its needs.

Ever yours,
Venthas

 

[Twenynyne]

I think a lot of the userbase kind of forgot about FLO because the update took so long, it kind of sucks, I don't see as much happening as it was before the update. But I still enjoy using FLO so I'm gonna stay here. ​

 

[Venthas]

I think a lot of the userbase kind of forgot about FLO because the update took so long, it kind of sucks, I don't see as much happening as it was before the update. But I still enjoy using FLO so I'm gonna stay here. ​

I'm hoping (and I'm quite sure) that things will pick up again, even if it takes some time.

 

[Tamara]

I feel that you should have posted a sitewide announce listing all the problems that happened during the migration and their consequences on the very day the site was back online, not two weeks later. That way everybody would have known from day 1 that the Clubs were gone and had to be recreated, that many artworks did not made it through, and that the personal profiles and follows and ignores were gone as well. It would have been way better than just letting people discover it by themselves and being confused and probably thinking that the site was broken.

Also, could you list what are those new functionalities ?

So far, I've seen only two : the Articles thing, and the ability to fully hide parts of the site from view (ie you can ignore threads or even an entire forums or section, and you can basically make people invisible to you and make you invisible to them by using the full extent of the 'Ignore' function'.) From my point of view, it doesn't feels like this was really worth the hassle.

 

[Venthas]

I feel that you should have posted a sitewide announce listing all the problems that happened during the migration and their consequences on the very day the site was back online, not two weeks later. That way everybody would have known from day 1 that the Clubs were gone and had to be recreated, that many artworks did not made it through, and that the personal profiles and follows and ignores were gone as well. It would have been way better than just letting people discover it by themselves and being confused and probably thinking that the site was broken.

Also, could you list what are those new functionalities ?

So far, I've seen only two : the Articles thing, and the ability to fully hide parts of the site from view (ie you can ignore threads or even an entire forums or section, and you can basically make people invisible to you and make you invisible to them by using the full extent of the 'Ignore' function'.) From my point of view, it doesn't feels like this was really worth the hassle.

The new functionality has been listed for some time:
Post in thread 'Upcoming: Core Rewrite' https://furrylife.online/threads/upcoming-core-rewrite.3317/post-28830

And I did not have the time over the winter break to sufficiently get a list of known issues due to the update.

 

[Deckard Holiday]

Any ETA on when the thumbnail issues will be fixed? Not being able to upload a thumbnail until after going through the full upload process feels a bit janky. It also makes the "latest audio" on the homepage look empty.

I'm sure you have enough on your plate so try not to stress too much on it all! This stuff ain't easy lol

 

[froggeman]

Also, could you list what are those new functionalities ?

So far, I've seen only two : the Articles thing, and the ability to fully hide parts of the site from view (ie you can ignore threads or even an entire forums or section, and you can basically make people invisible to you and make you invisible to them by using the full extent of the 'Ignore' function'.) From my point of view, it doesn't feels like this was really worth the hassle.

In case you don't want to go through the Core Rewrite post, some personally notable features are stories having multipage functionality and the ability to organize them into a series, the ability to move images to different albums without reuploading, favorites(now called bookmarks) can have tags and descriptions added to them, groups are easier to manage, and searching has been streamlined.

 

[Tamara]

I just read it again since Venthas provided a link, though it's listed as an 'Alpha Update List (As it stands so far)' and it ends with 'The list above are just a few of the things happening in the update.' meaning that it is not complete. Also, going by what happens in software development, 'Alpha' to me meant that many things could change between the moment that list was posted and the migration, looks like I was wrong though.

And I did not have the time over the winter break to sufficiently get a list of known issues due to the update.

At the very least making a quick post warning about the three main issues I mentioned in my previous post would probably have avoided some of the confusion and disappointment that has been expressed by many people in their profile posts and in the forums. And saved you and the staff some time as you wouldn't have had to answer to all the people confused and wondering where their art/clubs/followers have gone. Communication is key and, so far, your communication on the forums about the new version of FLO is quite lacking in my opinion.

 

[woffpls]

themes? like the aesthetic/colors of everything?
I only have one request: pure dark mode like the "lights out" version of twitter. you could also make the current blue highlights changeable like on twitter too, although that's not really as big of a deal.

a more further in the future idea is making it waaay more customizable like how the fediverse does it.

 

[tapestrybeast]

Further, some artwork did not make the transition.

Not a single one of my dozens of uploads across three albums made it through the transition.

 

[Tamara]

Not a single one of my dozens of uploads across three albums made it through the transition.

Based on the number of posts like yours, it would seem that quite a lot of artwork didn't make the transition.

 

[Kyarameru]

I haven't been on in a while, glad to know there was some sort of website overhaul and I wasn't just going crazy. I really like this site so I hope activity picks back up once people get settled back in. Thank you for continuing work on this site.

 

[raphial]

I appreciate what you're doing and that you're trying to provide another positive outlet for the community to get involved with, but I would honestly be lying if I said I didn't have a few disappointments along the way. I remember when this site was just a small beta that you had been working on, and I remember a lot of the hype and excitement you had put into it. I understand you work very hard to make this happen, but I would like to give a few pointers as a systems engineer, network administrator, software engineer, and web designer...

Since day one I've had little issues here and there with the website using it as a new practical source of a new portfolio, and sort of a reboot to my old FA and deviantART profiles. Whether it be technicalities and bugs in the site, or things that felt jarring, uncomfortable, or really out of place for what it was supposed to be. Then I lost my entire gallery and everything on my profile with an update that was implemented... now after seeing this new update status post, it makes sense why there's now even more changes, and that some of these changes bring a new "Face" and impression to the site, for better or for worse. I would honestly suggest having a temporary server when making these changes to run off of when making these updates, so that if there are any issues, you can roll back while the original remains live.. I would also recommend giving a forewarning and heads up over these updates and changes (And highlight the main changes/features). I know sometimes unknowns are an inevitable risk factor running such a large-scale community website, but if there's any hint at all of any negative impact it'll have on its users, I would give them a warning.

Maybe I missed the previous warnings, but it sounds like others have had issues like this, or similar, before too. I think you may need to hire/delegate more of the workload and programming of the website so you can further maintain it more properly and effectively; you'll like lose more members if you keep making these updates like this, especially if people are losing large amounts of posts/art from it... This place has a lot of potential, but it still needs a lot of work. I'm hoping it'll get there <3

 

[Venthas]

I appreciate what you're doing and that you're trying to provide another positive outlet for the community to get involved with, but I would honestly be lying if I said I didn't have a few disappointments along the way. I remember when this site was just a small beta that you had been working on, and I remember a lot of the hype and excitement you had put into it. I understand you work very hard to make this happen, but I would like to give a few pointers as a systems engineer, network administrator, software engineer, and web designer...

Since day one I've had little issues here and there with the website using it as a new practical source of a new portfolio, and sort of a reboot to my old FA and deviantART profiles. Whether it be technicalities and bugs in the site, or things that felt jarring, uncomfortable, or really out of place for what it was supposed to be. Then I lost my entire gallery and everything on my profile with an update that was implemented... now after seeing this new update status post, it makes sense why there's now even more changes, and that some of these changes bring a new "Face" and impression to the site, for better or for worse. I would honestly suggest having a temporary server when making these changes to run off of when making these updates, so that if there are any issues, you can roll back while the original remains live.. I would also recommend giving a forewarning and heads up over these updates and changes (And highlight the main changes/features). I know sometimes unknowns are an inevitable risk factor running such a large-scale community website, but if there's any hint at all of any negative impact it'll have on its users, I would give them a warning.

Maybe I missed the previous warnings, but it sounds like others have had issues like this, or similar, before too. I think you may need to hire/delegate more of the workload and programming of the website so you can further maintain it more properly and effectively; you'll like lose more members if you keep making these updates like this, especially if people are losing large amounts of posts/art from it... This place has a lot of potential, but it still needs a lot of work. I'm hoping it'll get there <3

Thanks for the tips, they're appreciated. In the future, I don't plan or expect such a massive change to the website. This overhaul was due to a change in the underlying software that runs FLO itself, which implemented a lot of features which had been requested by the users (Such as a fully functional block system). The change also fixed a lot of permission errors we were running into due to the spaghetti code of the old system (Such as with Groups and Literature improperly displaying content to those who had it disabled). In the future, I plan to have both a production server and an actual test server that isn't my PC. Updates will be performed on the test server before they're live here. Hopefully any issues with an update will be picked up on the test server before the updates are implemented here. To that end, when an update is going to be implemented, I'll likely be running a live 2 week update check, and grab some testers from FLO to check things out.