What was the point of the site redesign? I thought it was great the way it was. And I just paid full price for Prime membership in July and now its $29.00 and all the prices have been raised? I am very unhappy with these changes!!!!!

Hello,

I am sending you a site mail my dear.

I've got to say, change for change's sake is not always good. And this series of changes essentially amounts to fixing things that weren't broke and accidentally breaking them in the process. Sorry guys, but this site re-design is the "New Coke" formula of user-supported computer art websites. My recommendation as a former business owner is to restore all the lost functionality, not worry about your site not looking like a phone app (who makes Poser and Daz art on their smart phones???), and listen to the majority of your customer base while you still have one. Not meaning to be harsh here, but the psychology of human group think tends to circle the wagons around organizational mistakes and seeks to rationalize and defend them, instead of correct them while there is still time to do so. If the site needs increased market share, come up with a new desirable product line to sell instead of re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. I don't think I'm telling you anything now that your balance and P&L sheets aren't going to tell you later. I tell you this not as some griper and chronic complainer, but as a customer who has spent literally thousands of dollars here for over a decade.

One word "Advertising" just have a look around. Renderosity now has an Artist Commodity not a community.

What Razor said. I feel like a sheep about to be fleeced......

This new layout is a complete disaster.
The whole site looks like a BADLY DONE and cheap phone app.
Goodbye... I am not sure I keep will visiting this place on a regular basis.

The site is supposed to adjust with whatever device you are using. We understand that things are not working the way we had all hoped and our programmer, developer, as well as the VP is working very hard to fix the issues.

I do understand all of your frustrations, we all do. What we are focusing on now is trying to rectify the situation and do it as quickly and efficiently as we can.

As stated above, to show up on Google searches your have to be Mobile compliant - it isn't so much what your customers are using that is the driver for that, but that you disappear down the list if you can't get the mobile tag.

As far as the look of the new site, there are a few tings we discussed as a team yesterday however, we have to be sure all the bugs are worked out before we make these changes.

Please feel free to send me an email with suggestions as to what 'you' would like to see as far as layout goes.
kristis@renderosity.com

We deeply apologize for the inconvenience and we are trying very hard to make things right.

Putting together a site mail. Mine's going to focus on the Marketplace.

Sounds good pt, I will be on the lookout for it :)

Thank you for taking the time to do so! I really appreciate it!

@ Kristi--

A site mail? why duplicate the effort? Everyone has been quite clear in the forum about what they want to see.

Tara

Because honestly auntietk, I feel it is important for everyone to be heard and if anyone has an idea on what they feel like the layout should look like, or maybe they like the idea of something we've done and have an idea on a way to improve that.

This is how we improve. Most people are upset and just saying they don't like it and they want the old site back...this is not really key information to help make it improve.

Warmest Regards,

no because your users telling you they don't like the mess you've made is not important. the nays are out weighing the yays.
but hey. we're just the users and whats a site without users..............?

Color me stupid, but isn't all this kinda stuff supposed to be worked out BEFORE the site goes live and not after the site goes up broken?

Laurie

@4221848

If your looking for some specifics a few things to consider. Look at web sites in general.

1. The home page for renderosity is beyond busy ... it is hard to find the news or other listings with all the advertisement space and flashing going on. Your also affecting people with visual disabilities that will trigger migraines. It looks kludgy your old news system was nice. Click on link get the synopsis click through the story. This one is a nightmare frankenstienian creation. You need to make it sleek, not eye jarring, not cluttered with adverisements.

2. You need a separate mobile handling not one site fits all, devices are typically handled that way as the needs of a desktop/laptop is quite different than mobile/tablet. You can support both but you need to do it right not one size fits all.

3. Your web pages are not supporting a lot of different resolutions that folks either. I haven't tested shrinking and all that yet as honestly I get get over the eye jarring thing.

4. You have two navigation brs in placees, bad mojo, bad design... your not helping anything your just confusing things.

5. Marketplace not sure it is still doing it but you have different size images for products, bad as it messes with the eye and easy accessiblity.

6. Search I don't want to default to searching the entire site marketplace and otherwise. Either default to a store search or have a separate one that is all I ever used it for in the first place I don't want to see gallery stuff.

7. that is off the top of my head and off the cuff.

You need to fix all the problems with glitches as well but you really really should not need a tutorial to navigate a site... that is bad form.

@4221848
I think the staff's heart and motivation are in the right place, however, I believe the hard feelings about the site's changes are less about function/aesthetics (Though that does play a large role) and more about being ignored and/or not valued as a community as the site's radical changes were done without consultation about what the community wanted, at least that's what it seems like on the surface...

I would wager if the community had been involved more in the process of the site's renovation, some of the changes already made would have been met with much more acceptance than it is now. If there would've been a poll/contest or suggestion box about the site's look or function, that would've involved the community's input, which would make folks feel as if they had a say into the look of the site, but as it stands I think people feel left out and that the changes were done without their input.

Again, I must stress that the motivation of the site's new look/function was made with the community in mind as a whole, (in context of the long view) which is why, I'll wager that decisions were made internally, but the execution needed a bit of adjustment...Thanks for clearing some of the reasons why it had to be done the way it has, that just proves my point of your good will.

FWIW, the site will not load in Firefox on my phone.

Laurie

@ Kristi:

I'm not trying to be snarky about this -- it was a serious question. I've read all the Forum posts, and I'm sure you have too. It's easy to see that people are upset, but in the midst of all that I've seen more than one suggestion, and most of the important ones have been requested many times. Larger image size, uniform and self-generating thumbs, page numbers rather than infinite scroll, and correct gallery stats are just some of the specific requests I've seen over and over again. I hope you won't dismiss people's suggestions and ideas because they are surrounded by high emotion, hurt feelings, and frustration.

One of the previously pressing issues, that of the 1000 character text size, has already been fixed. Thank you for that!

I can imagine how frustrating it is for you to read nothing but yelling and negativity, especially when it's obvious that you all put a lot of time and energy into this, but limiting constructive ideas to a personal site mail means nobody in the community sees those hopefully constructive ideas. When people know an issue has been brought up and subsequently changed for the better, I think that will go a long way toward calming the waters.

Tara

@4221848

Wow, I'm speechless... Just pointless grumbling apparently...

It is pointless grumbling in the sense that the PTB has no intention of really changing anything. Most of us just won't hang around to see what finally gets done. I feel really bad for the vendors who I'm sure are making next to nothing the last three days or so, if anything at all. Too see a sweet person like Fabi begging that the admin not make a tutorial on how to navigagte this mess but instead infer that they please fix it and other vendors starting to lose their tempers just turns my stomach. A lot of these ppl do this for A LIVING, and they don't deserve this and I'm downright certain THEY didn't ask for it. I know the members didn't.

Laurie

So, Google now dictates your design? Wow..

Actually no, Google didn't mandate the change as some have put it. Not that I'm blaming the admin for it...it's probably a misunderstanding on their part.

Laurie

It's not that I don't sympathize with the need to be mobile-friendly, but other sites have managed to do that without breaking every functionality!

(And I have never heard of ANY site that felt it prudent to make a tutorial on how to navigate the site because of it)

I suspect the main problem here is that the people that run this site aren't artists themselves, and so they simply don't understand the needs of the artists..

Kristi,

I work for a company that develops web applications for our products. There are technologies (Bootstrap comes to mind) that automatically displays and organizes content based on device or window size. Secondary elements are hidden and formatting changes are made to keep the elements readable as the window size decreases. Making your site device friendly requires careful planning and making difficult design choices about what needs to be shown.

RR should take a step back and decide what the customer needs while browsing through a device versus customers browsing through a computer. Good luck. We spend many weeks making those decisions and our applications are more simplistic the RR.

@4221700 and @4221755 (a.k.a. standard party line response)
Quoting KristiS:
"The site is supposed to adjust with whatever device you are using. We understand that things are not working the way we had all hoped and our programmer, developer, as well as the VP is working very hard to fix the issues.

I do understand all of your frustrations, we all do. What we are focusing on now is trying to rectify the situation and do it as quickly and efficiently as we can.

As stated above, to show up on Google searches your have to be Mobile compliant - it isn't so much what your customers are using that is the driver for that, but that you disappear down the list if you can't get the mobile tag.

We deeply apologize for the inconvenience and we are trying very hard to make things right."

PUH-LEEEEEZ!!!!
Rendo's biggest competitors RDNA and DA are not using a "mobile friendly" format (if Rendo's present fustercluck is any definition of the term) and they are listed prominently on Google.
Just for gits and shiggles I searched Google for various porn, anarchist, druggie and other less than reputable sites (I will not mention their names or IRLs)... guess what?????
Almost all of them are NOT using so-called "mobile friendly" formats... and Google is prominently listing them.

Seems there's enough male bovine excrement being spread to fertilize every cornfield in Indiana (I lived there for 4 years... there's a lot of cornfields there)!!!

It's not nice to blame your SNAFUs on somebody else... please, just admit you all messed up, you're only human and go back to the better, truly more user fiendly, previous format.

Just my 2% of the US Dollar.

@4221755

Kristi your comment is the best worded explanation of the reason for the changes I've heard. I don't know whether it's valid or not, but it's the reasoning behind the direction, at least.

For my two cents the lead marketing page is really the worst, and it sets the tone of expectations for the rest of the site. It is disorganized, over-crammed and over cluttered. If someone had walked into a conference room with a bunch of charts and threw them on the table and said "put all this in there somehow" and the programmer said 'okay' and just made an avante garde collage of whta he was told to do... with the only critera of making it fit, that seems what you wound up with.

Fix the first page correctly, considering a work flow of what we all generally tend to look at and in the proper sequence, and I feel a lot will follow more easily by increments.

The login page, like what DAZ has done in the past, contains nothing valuable. I look to get past that as soon as I can. It's not welcoming. It's not informational. What I logged into before I was at least interested in viewing for some time. Transfer some of the information to that, perhaps, or make it the important welcoming page.

I liked the homepage dashboard that had evolved. I had a promotional bar on the top, and what was going on today, plus easy access to buttons for sales. It wasn't perfect, but I'd rather see you parse that page into what you need rather than do what you did.

In RISDI (Rhode Island School of Design) work that I've seen the best is to keep open spaces as large as reasonably possible and make everything on them meaningful.

I liked the date time and number of artists online. The new views button for product is helpful, but I don't think you need both a "like" category with numbers only, which seems a brown-nose to Facebook, as well as a review option, which is more meaningful to both the artist and additional customers, I feel.

More perhaps at another time. I have to go now.

I wanted to give the new site design a chance but it is just getting more annoying the longer I use it.

Others have already outlined the issues. The pages are far too cluttered and disorganized. I won't rehash everything that's been said but here's one of my most annoying peeves - The 'What's New' on the Marketplace is different from the 'What's New' on the Freestuff section.

The Marketplace What's New section somewhat makes sense, even if the images are annoyingly oversized. The utterly pointless offset of the items is irritating but manageable (what is the point to not lining-up the items so they're straight across?) At least at the bottom there is a page listing.

The Freestuff What's New is terrible. The offset of the images is ridiculous and there is no page listing, you are forced to keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling which is ludicrous. I do not check the Freestuff section that often, so a page listing is critical for ease of navigation.

Be consistent between sections of the site. Each page/section should function the exactly same across the entire site rather than feeling like different people designed each one without talking to each other.

So far, I am not impressed by the changes. I have found nothing that has made the site feel easier or more straightforward to use and the changes only feel like they are forcing users to adapting to them rather than trying to make things clear or convenient.

@4222423

"Rendo's biggest competitors RDNA and DA are not using a "mobile friendly" format (if Rendo's present fustercluck is any definition of the term) and they are listed prominently on Google."
RDNA and DA have been using mobile friendly format for sometime now....if you logon using a smartphone you are given a choice of full or mobile. If Renderosity is trying to get with the program, it is a bit late to the game.
Rendosity's front page reminds me of Windows 8 (cluttered with blocky thumbs).......There is a reason why Microsoft decided to go with Windows 10. Folks were up in arms about the Window 8 layout. Microsoft spent millions of dollars to get this taken care of and went back to the more simplistic design, It is beyond me why Renderosity isn;t taken advantage of MS's research and went with MS's mini flop (Win 8) instead.

Just me two dollar (adjusted for inflation)
JV