Can we have some love & feedback please?

So the new site has been up for nearly 48 hours. We would appreciate some feedback on the new site design. Is it good, bad or indifferent? Does it seem quicker? Are there functions you like? What is missing?

So drop us a line on our new and let us know what you think.

Also while you're there hit out like button and feed our egos :)




The uploader is much faster than the last one. There is no more waiting time to save the uploaded set on the page (!- before it was about 10 to 20 minutes per 300 base-set).
The Setpages are a little bit... simple. It makes Hollow just another Icon side if you know what i mean. This layout without some details or decorations is quiet similiar to other sides - it's not bad, but i liked our own style!
The Request functions are not available? I can't delete the request, i have posted, because there is no operation to select. The Requestpage is a little bit confusing too. The Layout is different - for sure- but I really don't know if i like it or not. I suppose it's more funcional but not quiet cleary.
I also miss the Indexes and the different divisions for male and female and other stuff. You can chose them in the search... but...

You did a great job, really! :-)
Homepage has a new style and the random switching pics are brilliant! Just like that!


So… I love the new uploader as it’s just so much faster than the old one and I like that you can finish your set in one go and don’t have to switch back to editing again for adding the tags. It saves quite some time. The changing highlight pictures are great.
Yet… there are some things I don’t like. As Fani already pointed out the new layout is very similar to other sites and I always liked the old layout. I don’t mind it being simple but in some parts it’s just too simple. For the layout with the set-sites I guess I can get used to them, but we are spoiled with the old layout, so it might take some time.
My biggest issue is the request-site. I know that there had to be some changes but now it looks really generic and with all information being visible directly on the site it’s really confusing. With the functions I just figured it would take some time to program all that stuff. (Btw thank you guys for making me a requester it made me really happy to see that you like my sets ;))
Another, yet minor, problem is the feedback function. I didn’t want to use the facebook page for feedback but if I hadn’t been told to click the link in the twitter post I wouldn’t have found the feedpack page. I think that’s a bit odd and maybe you should add a link to the main site. And, as Fani also pointed out, there is no edit/delete function for replies which is a bit… let’s say… difficult as most of us are non-native speakers and we just make mistakes ;). One more little thing is the signature in comments. There is no difference between the signatures and the “normal” comment text so it’s just a bit strange when you look at the comment and read some quote or something. I was actually wondering if I had somehow made a mistake when I saw my signature beneath a comment. Maybe you could just switch the settings there a bit? Like adding a line or putting them in italics. Also I’m missing the comment function on the set pages. It’s not a total must-have, but it was always nice to have the possibility to give or get feedback directly for the set.
But… I am glad that Hollow-Art is back up and you guys are doing a great job ;)

Life's more painless for the brainless.

I wanted to give the site a complete check before posting some feedback.
Uploading is much faster now, but it also causes huge problems with firefox as it crashes regularly while uploading a set. That’s a real pity especially because uploading is much more comfortable now.
Regarding the looks the new site is, compared to the old one, a lot simpler, but you can get used to it.
What I really don’t like is he missing index. I always loved that on the old site, so that’s what I kind of miss the most.
The search function’s upgrade is nice and I think it’s much better now, but I think it would be better if you got pictures in the tag-search and not only a sets profile. After all people are looking for the pictures and with them there it would be easier to find what you were looking for.
What really bothers me is the request page, because it is very confusing and seems to be unfinished. I, for example, can’t edit anything and I also can’t claim sets. It would be great if you could, in this part, go back to how it was on the old site, at least for a bit.
Another issue is the comment function, because it seems to be put on the site, but not fitting there. Basically the comments seem to be there but there is no distinction of them being comments. It would be a lot easier to identify them as what they are, if there were some markers like dividing lines.
And one more thing regarding the set pages: it would be awesome if there was a count-function. Like on the old site you could see how many bases there were included in a set and it would be really great if that function was there again.

Generally speaking it feels like the site is not yet finished completely, not only the pages, but the layout as well.
All in all I guess I have mentioned quite a few things that have already been pointed out by Fani and Maehry, but sometimes it’s better to hear things twice :D

Apart from all that stuff I’m really glad that Hollowart is back up :)

Long time user, first time register-er, lol, as I made an account purely to offer some feedback. Also, I'm a Web Design major, so apologies in advance for the detailed feedback that follows.

There's nothing wrong with simple and minimalistic layouts, but this feels TOO simple, especially compared to the former layout. It also doesn't feel as user-friendly as the previous layout. Admittedly part of that may be because of the newness factor, however as an example, just to get back to this post so I could comment once I had created an account I had to go back to Twitter and follow the link because clicking on the little "news bulletin" on the front page only opened a pop-up showing the Admin post but offered nowhere to comment or read others' comments. There should at least be a "news" link or something similar in the main navigation bar so users can easily get to these posts. The average user won't expend extra time hunting down a direct link, they'll just go about their business, making for less constructive crit and feedback in the long run.

As someone else mentioned, I'm really disappointed to see the familiar links to quickly and easily search by letter are gone and there's only one massive search page. Personally, the only time I used search was if I already knew exactly who I was looking for icons of. Otherwise I would choose a random letter and scroll through, or click a tag link and scroll through there. If possible, I think there should be a "basic" search, right from the front page as before, so that way if someone knows precisely what they're looking for they don't need to click over to the Search page and mess with a bunch of modifiers. The advanced Search will no doubt prove useful to me in time, but on the whole it's more detailed than I would ever actually need. I'm also a little confused why, before even entering a search, icons are shown. It feels like an unnecessary use of bandwidth since in most cases those handful of icon sets won't be of use to most people going to the Search page (especially if it's showing the first few sets alphabetically, meaning they're unlikely to change much over time) and yet the user has no option to not load them. On a similar note, after performing a quick search -- which yes, results do load much faster than I recall them loading on the previous version of the site -- it strikes me as odd that the respective makers' names aren't immediately viewable with their sets.

Another function that I get a lot of use out of and I just noticed is not easily accessible is being able to quickly and easily search by icon maker. What I expected was being able to click on a user's name from the home page where an icon set what showing, and it would take me to some sort of user page which would have a link to browse their sets. However, while it does direct to a user page, there is absolutely no way to actually see their work. The only way I was able to access this was to click on one of the sets, and then I found a Portfolio link which then took me where I wanted to go. I'm hoping this is just something that was overlooked because I would think it would be one of the most used functions. If you find someone whose style you like it's naturally that you would want to see who else they have made icons of, maybe even people you wouldn't have thought of playing before but because the style is desirable to you, suddenly they're more appealing. It's kind of the whole point of people following specific maker's icon journals. So there's no reason that a link to a user's Portfolio shouldn't be directly on their user page. Ideally, I would expect a small preview as well, maybe four random or most recent icon sets.

While I understand you guys felt the need to massively streamline the site and I presume cut down on unnecessary bandwidth to help cut down on costs, this feels a bit like the site was gutted and only the foundation was left standing. Is it going to stop me from using the site? No, not at this time, mostly because usually if I can't find a certain played-by or character on IJ I can find it here. However, I do feel there's definitely room for improvement with this iteration of the site.