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Are there plans to ensure the reliability of the website? I've noticed that over the last few months the reliability of connecting to the website has gotten much, much worse.
Instead of once every couple of weeks with goblins showing up, now it seems to be every other day, if not every single morning.
Seriously. Need to chase the gobos out of the servers.
There is another thread about this issue however we are working the issue. Can you please take a look and see if everything is back up and running
Thanks
Dean
A few minutes ago I started to post that everything seemed to be working, but at that point I lost access to the site for several minutes.
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Thanks Tallow for the feedback....
No worries.
I'm mostly concerned with the frequency of things breaking lately than weather things broke today. Every day this break happens, it seems things get fixed later in the day (some days take longer than others.)
I'm mostly concerned with long term viability of the web site and whether I can rely on it to be working each morning or not.
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About the website redesign.
You're not going to get rid of all my aliases are you...
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Oooh, will there be a way to see a list of threads you've commented on? Not just your last post? It would make it easier to see when threads get replies.
(Unless there's already such a function and I just missed it somehow.)
Focus view? It gives you only threads you've posted in (dots) or read (x new).
Focus view was a great addition.
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There will be a new look and feel...
On the one hand, I generally trust Paizo.
On the other hand, modern web and UI design is generally user-hostile*.
Oh the gripping hand, you didn't use the word "modern", so there's hope.
*For reference, things I think of as user-hostile include:
- putting site functionality in a burger menu button
- having crap move around while a page is otherwise idle (sliding animated banners)
- making everything graphical and/or animated, and thereby slow, when plain old text would suffice or work better
- have a page move around while a page renders/loads
- removing shading and 3D context around buttons and entry fields so really you only know what to click on by trial-and-error instead of visual obviousness
- hard-coding appearance so (for instance) the site using 800 pixels of rendering width and ignores the other 3040 of my 4k display
- making everything big, presumably for fat-fingered mobile users
- hard-coding obnoxious stylesheets with illegible font/colour combos
What I'm saying here is that... Slashdot took an otherwise serviceable web site and modernized it to the point that the userbase revolted, and the update was rolled back. Ars Technica took an otherwise serviceable web site and modernized it to the point that the userbase revolted, and the update was rolled back. In Ars' case, the devs accepted and addressed a huge amount of feedback, and eventually re-implemented the update with easily half of the changes either removed entirely or optional. Why? Because the designers and developers were out of touch with what the users actually wanted and used. No, it wasn't a case of "the users got used to it". The UI was bad and the developers didn't know why because they were creative types, not users.
Please, for the love of all that is holy, throw up a beta.paizo.com and let us offer input before you commit to a new codebase. It might add a year of development, but it'll ensure you produce something good.
Oh. Also... get off my damned lawn.
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Personally, I wish they'd just refactor the back-end to make it fast, extensible, and reliable. The problem is not, and never has been, the interface.
Director of Technology
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Thanks for the feedback Anguish... Your comments are very appreciated and welcome. You're absolutely right in that this is yours, the community’s site, and should be redesigned with you in mind.
There will be a whole section of this message board devoted to user feedback where, requirements will be created from posts like yours.
So please stay tuned.. The adventure will begin very soon….
Thanks
Dean
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About the website redesign.
You're not going to get rid of all my aliases are you...
Careful, that vault flooded last week!
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There will be a new look and feel...On the one hand, I generally trust Paizo.
On the other hand, modern web and UI design is generally user-hostile*.
Oh the gripping hand, you didn't use the word "modern", so there's hope.
*For reference, things I think of as user-hostile include:
- putting site functionality in a burger menu button
- having crap move around while a page is otherwise idle (sliding animated banners)
- making everything graphical and/or animated, and thereby slow, when plain old text would suffice or work better
- have a page move around while a page renders/loads
- removing shading and 3D context around buttons and entry fields so really you only know what to click on by trial-and-error instead of visual obviousness
- hard-coding appearance so (for instance) the site using 800 pixels of rendering width and ignores the other 3040 of my 4k display
- making everything big, presumably for fat-fingered mobile users
- hard-coding obnoxious stylesheets with illegible font/colour combos
What I'm saying here is that... Slashdot took an otherwise serviceable web site and modernized it to the point that the userbase revolted, and the update was rolled back. Ars Technica took an otherwise serviceable web site and modernized it to the point that the userbase revolted, and the update was rolled back. In Ars' case, the devs accepted and addressed a huge amount of feedback, and eventually re-implemented the update with easily half of the changes either removed entirely or optional. Why? Because the designers and developers were out of touch with what the users actually wanted and used. No, it wasn't a case of "the users got used to it". The UI was bad and the developers didn't know why because they were creative types, not users.
Please, for the love of all that is holy, throw up a beta.paizo.com and let us offer input before you commit to a new codebase. It might add a year of...
Since Dean has unveiled the project, I feel like I can finally talk about this:
If you've watched our Website Feedback subforum, you'll notice how many user experience related questions and concerns I've been responding to over the past few years. I have been gathering wishlist items, noting problematic features, and so on that have directly and greatly contributed to the direction and outline for what this revamp will be. While yes, there's going to be more "design" than what is currently present, we know our users value simplicity. A lot of what will happen is breaking down barriers to entry to frequently needed information, reorganizing what is currently obfuscated (did you know we have an Adventure Finder, for instance?), and once that's hashed out, addressing the backend to get us more reliable and adding some paint and trim that is sorely, sorely needed. What is especially awesome for frequent visitors to our site, is that there is a fresh set of eyes (Dean) and a voice that has been hearing our specific user concerns for some time now (Hey, that's me!) spearheading this effort (and of course getting buy-in from appropriate managers and executive team members).
I say everything above with the caveat that it will be impossible to please everyone. Paizo.com serves the purpose of housing a community, a store, a plethora of gaming resources, organized play support, and brochure for our own product lines (and each of those has it's own set of needs, PLUS, it's got to be more scalable for Paizo's future). That's a whole lot of things to accomplish. BUT! I think folks are going to be pleased by the direction we're going.
Necessary "expectation management" note: we do not have a publicly announced ETA for any of this. But as Dean said, stay tuned :)
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making everything big, presumably for fat-fingered mobile users
You know, after 10 years of getting progressively better at stuff you do using fingertips when the lights go out thanks to Paizo.com helping me hone my mad finger pixel hunting skills, I believe I've reached the point (Ha ha! Reached the point! Get it, Cyril? Also, are we still doing phrasing?) where I could give my fingertips a little grease and some leeway while trying to hit that those tiny little dots.
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Stay tuned is well and good. But we've been told this before. I heard about a 'new website' two Paizocons ago. Maybe three, I've lost track. We were told stuff was in the works, and it is going to be great. Nothing definite, and they said it'd be a while, and so the community waited.
I know you're doing what you can. But my campaigns are grinding and I've players pinging me daily now to say they'd post, but they cannot. They feel bad, I feel bad, no one is happy.
Please hurry whatever you're doing, and I'm sure I speak for many in the community in saying if there's something we can do to help, please let us know. I doubt we'd do anything but clog up the works, but the offer is there.
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...There will be a new look and feel...On the one hand, I generally trust Paizo.
On the other hand, modern web and UI design is generally user-hostile*.
Oh the gripping hand, you didn't use the word "modern", so there's hope.
*For reference, things I think of as user-hostile include:
- putting site functionality in a burger menu button
- having crap move around while a page is otherwise idle (sliding animated banners)
- making everything graphical and/or animated, and thereby slow, when plain old text would suffice or work better
- have a page move around while a page renders/loads
- removing shading and 3D context around buttons and entry fields so really you only know what to click on by trial-and-error instead of visual obviousness
- hard-coding appearance so (for instance) the site using 800 pixels of rendering width and ignores the other 3040 of my 4k display
- making everything big, presumably for fat-fingered mobile users
- hard-coding obnoxious stylesheets with illegible font/colour combos
What I'm saying here is that... Slashdot took an otherwise serviceable web site and modernized it to the point that the userbase revolted, and the update was rolled back. Ars Technica took an otherwise serviceable web site and modernized it to the point that the userbase revolted, and the update was rolled back. In Ars' case, the devs accepted and addressed a huge amount of feedback, and eventually re-implemented the update with easily half of the changes either removed entirely or optional. Why? Because the designers and developers were out of touch with what the users actually wanted and used. No, it wasn't a case of "the users got used to it". The UI was bad and the developers didn't know why because they were creative types, not users.
Please, for the love of all that is holy, throw up a beta.paizo.com and let us offer input before you commit to a new codebase. It might
Hi Chris
I know I've bombarded the website feedback forum over the years with suggestions/gripes. Is there anywhere we can conveniently post things we'd like you to look at as part of the redesign process? Or is random thought bubbles to the website feedback forum still the best way to do that?
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Director of Technology
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I am so excited that you guys are fixing things more long term. Do you know if there will be a site outage for this, and when it will happen?
I ask because 25 tables of a PBP special take off on Thursday. If I know in advance of an outage I can fix it.
Hmm
This is a long term project that will last several weeks. No outage is expected during the process...
Dean
Hi Chris
I know I've bombarded the website feedback forum over the years with suggestions/gripes. Is there anywhere we can conveniently post things we'd like you to look at as part of the redesign process? Or is random thought bubbles to the website feedback forum still the best way to do that?
Random thought bubble threads are work just fine! If we ever need focused feedback, we'll let folks know. :)
An idea I had recently (that maybe has been had by tons of others? not sure...): What about adding an archetype index to the feat/monsters/spells/template index on on the PRD?
Now that there are so many of them, that'd be awfully helpful (it could be searchable by class, obviously, but if it also included what's swapped out -- a la Archives of Nethys' archetype pages -- that'd be great).
Thanks!
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I'm more concerned with the complete lack of accessiblity on and off for the last week. Starting around Wednesday or Thursday of last week until Monday morning, I would try to access the site several times a day, and maybe actually get in once. I could usually get to the forum listings, to see what threads were updated, but I couldn't actually open any thread. I checked http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/, and it confirmed that paizo.com was down during those times, though www.paizo.com and support.paizo.com were always both up.
That seems to have cleared up the last two days, other than the whole thing being down briefly this morning. I haven't noticed any change in speed.
So, this ist interesting. Now I cannot access anything beyond the main messageboard page on my computer.
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I do have to say that, as a user, one of the things I love about Paizo.com is sooooo simple: Black text on white.
Please, please, please, please for the love of everything that I can imagine (or not imagine), don't change that about the articles and message boards. You can mess around with borders, images, location of links, menus, submenus, dynamic content, scrolling news items and pretty much anything else and I will not care, but please don't change the simple beauty of black text on white.
This ^^
I totally agree with. Leave the message boards alone. Improve the back end, make some PbP adjustments, but leave the basics along. Please!
-- david
So far today, I have had no issues with reliability.
Me neither.
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I do have to say that, as a user, one of the things I love about Paizo.com is sooooo simple: Black text on white.
Please, please, please, please for the love of everything that I can imagine (or not imagine), don't change that about the articles and message boards. You can mess around with borders, images, location of links, menus, submenus, dynamic content, scrolling news items and pretty much anything else and I will not care, but please don't change the simple beauty of black text on white.
1000000% agreed!
Web sites that use white (or light) type against black (or dark) backgrounds are just the worst. It causes eye strain / eye fatigue and tends to look dated and often down right terrible.If this redesign included that ... man, it would be pretty horrible...
Hey folks, we appreciate the input on what the revamp project news here has generated, but it's not wholly on topic for this particular thread (since the issue here is more related to connectivity). If you'd like to continue to discuss what you'd like to see the evolution of paizo.com to look like, soon we'll be posting a new sticky thread so we can keep better track of the feedback. So, look out for that!
It looks like several of the Pathfinder Society button links on the Pathfinder Society page are broken; they direct back to paizo.com.
About, FAQ, Policies, Coordinators, and Find a Game.
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Director of Technology
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It looks like several of the Pathfinder Society button links on the Pathfinder Society page are broken; they direct back to paizo.com.
About, FAQ, Policies, Coordinators, and Find a Game.
Thunderspririt... Please recheck the buttons. I checked each link a few minutes ago and they go to the the correct page .
Thanks
Oh...it's not just me then... having same problem.. 4g working, modem/WiFi is not
For what it's worth, my laptop still can't reach paizo.com, while my phone apparently can. Traceroute dies after gi6-1.dr03.tac.opticfusion.net (all hops after that time out).