search feedback thread

Posted 1 year, 6 months ago (Edited 1 year, 6 months ago) by admin

Feedback thread for the Front/Browse/Search page updates — the corresponding announcement and changelist is here!

🎯 Goals —

Reduce congestion in the character trade listings and search pages that was previously caused by a bunch of ads/non-characters being submitted to the site
Improve visibility on the top page for characters that are currently being pushed off by non-characters
Make it easier to find what you’re looking for when searching for characters/codes/resources/services/etc

📋 Seeking feedback for —

I wasn’t sure whether people would prefer having each character type separated out into a separate listing rather than everything just being types of character?
- I opted to just add an optional filter since this seems more flexible in terms of search and customization (people seem to just be creating everything as a “Character” profile currently anyway, and a lot of the features are going to be the same), but let me know if this doesn’t feel good, or if anyone has suggestions regarding how to better structure the listings.
- My original idea for the front page was to allow people to add an arbitrary number of blocks (eg. if you want to add a Popular Characters, Popular HTML/CSS, Popular Resources blocks separately), but the UI for the control panel started getting very long and confusing so I just scrapped the idea. I’ll probably be fiddling with this to see if there’s a way to do this that isn’t overwhelming for the average user.
Character categories:
- These are currently “Character”, “HTML/CSS”, “Resource”, “Service/Ad” based on what we most commonly receive reports for, but this can be expanded or updated if we feel that this is missing anything or is too broad.
General UI/UX feedback:
- If there’s anything confusing or if you have suggestions for how to improve any areas of the front/browse/search pages.
Extra features:
- Are you someone who regularly uses the trade listings or front pages and feel like there are changes or extra features that could be added to make life easier for you?? Have ideas for how to help make the listings less frustrating and more accessible?? Let me know!!
Performance issues:
- Is the site super laggy for you now??? If not site-wide, please do point out the specific pages that you’re having issues with.
Anything else related!! If you have any feedback for an unrelated feature, it may be better to submit a HelpDesk ticket rather than replying to this specific thread.

If you’re uncomfortable leaving feedback in public, please don’t hesitate to open a ticket via the HelpDesk.

Thanks as always!

StormyStarlight

i'm having the same/similar-but-definitely-related problem as @junkieskarte on safari on mobile, but specifically only on the front page + browse pages (maybe there are others but i only noticed these), so you're not the only one! no issues for me on firefox desktop or chrome desktop, though.

(also, these new updates are great, thanks so much admin!!)

Skykristal

I'm also having issues. I'm on Samsung Internet browser on tablet. The menu itself is fine but not the sub menus. You need to manually close them again or refresh the site.

CrescentCaribou

it'd also be nice if you could search through worlds. for example, say you're looking for something specific to a fandom, you can type in the fandom name and see if anything pops up

protag

it's a small qol thing but it would be nice if i could reorder the front page listings so for example i could have "random" above "popular" :0 unless you can already do this and im not aware??

Harrie

So obviously, ToyHouse is a character repository & RP site and not an artsite so I don't expect it to compete with things like deviantart and artstation etc,

But on the topic of browsing feeds, I wonder if it would be possible to implement a latest images feed? Perhaps a popular one too, the feature is underutilised at the moment since you can't view faved images anywhere and they're off by default, but it is possible for images to get favourites and comments.. so they could be used for a theoretical popular feed algorithm?

But my thinking is, with a latest images feed it'd be an easy way for people to discover characters and more artists and designers and so on. I think it'd be a great way for people to find artists to commission as I know a lot of people find people to commission via characters' galleries, so a general images feed would be a great way for people to get some visibility.

Additional thoughts:

- Obviously itd need to be opt-in like the rest of the listings, and a checkbox like the worlds listing would be more than enough i think, but perhaps for QOL there could be an account toggle option of "never list images publicly || change listing settings on images individually || always list images publicly".

- it would also be nice for a future polish update if the images upload could pull from literatures screen a little, moving the option to enable favs and comments from your account settings to the upload screen instead so you can toggle it per image? It'd make the features' availability on the site more apparent, too.

- this i feel like would also be a part two feature update but it'd also be nice if the character category listing filters could be applied to images, so you can filter out ads or codes or only see resources etc and it'd draw the category information from the character(s) attached to the image

balyena-lu

I'd like to have a similar feature for the literature tab, Service/ADs literature - Resources literature / Character Literature. I feel like the literature aspect of TH is quite underappreciated and un-loved.

Sinamuna

What, I never knew about the "non-character" thing. I'm confused what that is.

Apollyna

I finally realized what was bugging me about the front page now that I have the random box toggled on: I think I would like it if the selection of random characters was updated every time you refresh the page, so you had a constant stream of new things to check out.

As it is, I think they're only updated once a day, maybe? Are they the same selection for everyone across the site?

Harrie

Apollyna I'm not sure exactly how often it changes i think it may be every couple hours? But it does change multiple times a day, and the selection is shared by everyone across the site. It's a random chance to be featured sitewide rather than a random selection for each individual.

cloudycodes

unsure if this was reported already, but i'm having a bit of an issue: the main page for a code bundle is categorized as html/css, which is correct, but the split tabs (which are the codes included in the bundle) are categorized as characters, which is not correct, but i cannot change them... which is strange, because this is only happening with one of my bundles, the other one is fine. am i just being dumb...?

FernShaw

Every time I post an add, it seems that the site shifts it into a character ?? I just got two site notices about changing my characters into adds when I know I posted them as ads

nightlustrous

Gonna +1 Antimoany here! I love the idea of a world quicknav; currently I just built a link into my main profile as a replacement but I’d love an actual quicknav to be a thing! A forum quicknav to see my owned threads would also be great so I don’t have to use a bulletin on my main <3