Big-merge project (website)
Hi,
I'm opening this thread to show you my mockup of the next big evolution of the website (you can skip an look at them at the end). It's also a good place to write my thought about why this type of change will be necessary, a sort of F.A.Q of why I'm doing changes. The change is a big merge between peppercarrot.com blog and davidrevoy.com blog while keeping two distinct theme/UI for both domain. P&C posts (webcomics/derivations/community) will keep the P&C header. Other one, the DR header.
The benefits of this merge are numbered:
- Easier maintenance: one PluXML engine, plugin set, database, comment system, filetree, dev local folder. This week, www.davidrevoy.com was attacked by hackers using the search box and comment system. OVH (the host) started to complain about the optimisation of davidrevoy.com, bandwith at same time. I constantly connect one site or the other to remove daily one or 3 spams in the comments (unfortunately, not as much as it was before where I had 10 daily spams). DR website starts to have many downloads of brushes, resources, reading of tutorials (around 8000 visitors daily). I don't want to maintain two caches, two set of big CMS with complex plugin and track if changing one break the other. Also financial: I better invest money into a better single host with two domains attached, than two hosting solutions as I'm doing now.
- More blog posts: right now my updates are split between two RSS feed and two website with their own timeline and categories. I also started to develop a trouble I named Where should I post this thing?. (eg. the "I'm doing DIY", personnal but on P&C blog; the Purism who sponsor P&C but on DR blog...Bleee! Add to that the third blog: the Patreon one with Weekly News and I'm crazy.)
- Better consistency: with my social networks feeds. On them (Google+, Framapiaf, Twitter, etc...) I often use an account at my name and share with it all Pepper&Carrot news.
- Easier access to the content: My 'fight against CDN' is an article on P&C and the Making-of episode 11 is on DR. Even I have trouble to find back something on my own websites. Future DR website will have them all. It will look like a big grid of thumb, easier to browse all, and with more categories (having their own pages) and a search field to find back something. Default view will propose latest blog post first.
- Recentered around my name: I reintroduce the subtitle "the Open Webcomic by David Revoy" that was removed on last refactor around 2016. (the string is translated already in all lang files). This is because I started to receive feedback if Pepper&Carrot was drawn by a collective of artist or if the story was written by a collective: the geometry of the project is not clear as the website show it now. It shouldn't. I'm really happy with the proof-reading effort, contribution and this parts are really important to the project and I still wish to develop this aspect. But still: I'm doing 95% of all work, decides on art-direction, story direction, draw everything and I have to not try to hide myself behind a fictive "We/Pepper&Carrot project".
- Easier navigation between website: Big buttons on top-right invites to switch to other website with the theme/UI of the sister-website.
- Smaller 'Become Patron' adv: Not in big on the cover of the P&C website anymore, but only on top: as it was at first. "More information" buttons propose to give more explanations about the tag line "A free(libre) webcomic...". (It links to Philosophy). The red button on the top-right "Become my patron" links also the Philosophy page; the page explains why I need support and offers more options(Tipeee/Paypal/etc..). I prefer it this way than all the button on frontpage right now.
- Pepper&Carrot frontpage fully translated and better interaction: Right now, a big issue is the patchwork of lang on the frontpage of Pepper&Carrot. The blog of Pepper&Carrot is English-only... In the better-homepage I was trying to add a XML of Framagit in English only... Fan-art title are also in English only. And the interaction with language not fully translated (semi-transparent pills, like Latin) is not great at all... I'll remove the frontpage of Pepper&Carrot, and replace it with the Webcomic page with a cover. The cover+headline will disapear in case the website strings of text are not translated. That should create a better experience when clicking 'Latin'.
Posting style:
I'll stop posting "Weekly News" on Patreon blog. I dislike adding my datas into this platform. It locks precious content and a real blog. I'll keep the routine creating a weekly blog post but this on the DR blog with repost on social networks.
Patrons will get as extras access to next videos, tutorials,resources,brushes two weeks before everyone. It will be via a link of hidden blog-post, I have to design a system for that.