Getting Spiked back on track again

RaiThioS's picture

Okay so there are obvious political and technical issues with the new site going live a bit before it was ready. If it doesn't get fixed soon the site is going to obviously suffer more than it already has.  I think all of these issues can be resolved but we need to rope in the talent from our userbase that is willing to pitch in.

Spikedlegend, you have been handed the keys to the site from what little I know.  I think you should hold on to them for now and bypass handing that off to the mods until they step forward to take on responsibility (perhaps they already have, I wouldn't know).

The reason for my post is to publicly get the ball rolling so to speak with ideas for moving forward.  I can throw 1, possibly up to 2, Destiny 2 keys on the table as incentive for raffles, or payment for work on the site, motivation, etc  however they can be used. PC, PS4, XBOX, whatever platforms it's being released on. In the past we have had raffles on stuff that took years to get handed out. This one will be on release day.

So. Ideas? Thoughts? Offering some free stuff as incentive to get some of our dev userbase to work on bugs, maybe some voting on new mods or admins to help out. I offer the keys freely for you guys to decide what to do with them to get things stirred up.  Eitherway I think we need to rally to get some shit leveled up around here. Lets not settle for half a site. Yeah?

Grothesk's picture

Something that will really help is having clear communication upon WHO is either *in charge* or actively "working" on the site.  It seems to me the overall consensus on the new site look is that it needs some more work and tweaking, but the general populace of the site don't know if anyone is actually doing that or if it is a rumor that someone is working on something.  I really like the idea of a general "status" at the top of the front page to let the userbase what is going on. 

There has also been a conversation going on about how many active users we have on the site...I see that front page videos get over 100+ views but I only see like the same ~15 people commenting and perhaps ~8 people uploading videos.  I personally thought the idea of users having to first vote upon a video before commenting is a good idea but I know that may also turn away a few users

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RaiThioS's picture
Beta Tester

Communication is definitely an issue. I'm wondering already if its to late just based on response to this post.

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danmanjones's picture

I've put my hand up to do some dev work on the site & took over from Critikal last weekend. Critikal has been really helpful with the handover. The site will be migrated in a few days and then development work can begin on a new separate domain (eg. beta.spikednation.com) with changes rolled out to the live site periodically (weekly/fortnightly).

Here's a rough plan for development (some of this is subject to discussion/greenlight from admin team):

  1. Squish bugs
    - comment reply indentation
    - thumbnails display
  2. Enhance front-end
    - work on header/nav, possibly simplify it in a similar layout to the one on http://www.funnyordie.com
    - revert to paginated results so we can use back button to navigate 
    - get the site working better for mobile
  3. Introduce features
    - Ability to see all posts from a user
    - ideas?

There should be an official announcement of what's coming up soon.

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Grothesk's picture

That sounds great!  Thank you for your help, DanManJones.

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RaiThioS's picture
Beta Tester

That's really great to hear. I've seen you volunteer to help in comment section before so that's really a positive step forward to getting the site back on track. If you need any help with graphics drop me a line. I'm pretty handy with photoshop. My one suggestion for additional bells and whistles would be to change the color of the site or theme. Personally I'm tired of the orange going on here and being able to change through a few colors would be a great option to have (can't remember is this was drupal or other site shell that did this)

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danmanjones's picture

Bells & whistles will come in stage 3. I'm keen to get help with graphics since I'm not a designer. At this stage I'm looking at drawing some inspiration graphically from https://funnyordie.com (simple header) and functionally from https://funnyjunk.com (hideable sidebar). We could also look at previous versions of the site for inspiration
- https://web.archive.org/web/20100212143507/http://www.spikedhumor.com:80/ (footer layout is good)
- https://web.archive.org/web/20130715010001/http://www.spikednation.com/ (top navigation layout could be worth looking at)

If you want to help we can discuss more on skype - dan.man.jones is my handle.

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RaiThioS's picture
Beta Tester

I don't do skype but perhaps a slack channel is in order for awhile throughout the re-development of the site? All I need is some direction on what you need and I can fit it into my work day

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danmanjones's picture

Update: the comment indenation bug has been fixed, it'll be live once the site is migrated around 4th September

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puttefnask's picture

Didn't want to start a new thread, just wanted to mention that trying to add videos today gives me this message:

  • SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1366 Incorrect string value: '\xF0\x9F\x98\x82' for column 'filename' at row 1
  • An error occurred and no file was uploaded.

 

I'm using Google Chrome btw.

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danmanjones's picture

Cheers, this may have been during the update we did earlier. Please let me know if you get the error again, just email mods@spikednation.com to report bugs.

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backdraft's picture
Beta TesterDiscord userImage gallery

Looking nice now and loading faster. Thought I'd rather have the navigation bar and other stuff on the left side. 

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danmanjones's picture

Noted. The nav bar is kind of a work in progress.

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sal9000's picture
front page

never got around to mentioning it. the ability to try to resize an embeded video doesnt work. to change it, you have to change it in the iframe code.

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backdraft's picture
Beta TesterDiscord userImage gallery

danmanjones, so whats going on with the site? 

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Muchos Munchbagger's picture

So is this site done now?

There's nothing to display on the front or recent tabs. I can't find any link to inform me about it

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craven12's picture

The front page is blank on chrome, but on IE it works. What gives?

 

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sato's picture

nice one, just assumed it'd been taken down for some work. didn't even think of using another browser.

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daftcunt's picture
Discord userfront page

Blank page on opera too....

 

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RaiThioS's picture
Beta Tester

Have you tried  SHIFT + F5? I am loading the site fine in both firefox and chrome. Bugs are still being worked on.

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craven12's picture

Thanks, that worked. Thumbnails are messed up though.

 

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RaiThioS's picture
Beta Tester

New bug :/

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Mori's picture

So it's not just me then :) Weird black and white images showing up.

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Dagambit's picture

Is it the Russians? damn hackers.

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robbby1234's picture

Mobile Chrome: not working

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beer420's picture

yeah using chrome here too and nothing shows up, I have a menu on the upper right to recent content/my account/shit like that but other than that it's totally broken

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RaiThioS's picture
Beta Tester

Clear your cache or use SHIFT + f5

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beer420's picture

heeeey that worked, that's why you make the big bucks you magnificent bastard

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backdraft's picture
Beta TesterDiscord userImage gallery

Yeah, if someone could just go ahead and fix this site. That would be great. 

 

 

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RaiThioS's picture
Beta Tester

patience Lumberg. We have one volunteer carrying the torch for us. He also has other paying projects that take priority. 

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backdraft's picture
Beta TesterDiscord userImage gallery

I know. I don't mind the small bug and such, but the site is somewhat crashed and has been that way for many days now. Maybe the server just needs a reboot.

Just saying it's not really cool if the only guy that handles the dev side only semi-randomly checks on the site. 

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robbby1234's picture

Oh. Silly me. I didn't realize it was such a simple... Oh wait still didn't work. Haha.

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RaiThioS's picture
Beta Tester

Without knowing more about your setup (or the problem) I can't really help you. If the site isn't loading properly it generally means there was an update and you need to empty your browser cache or do a fresh load from server Shift +f5 for chrome, cntrl +f5 for firefox. Site is currently up and working.

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