The New GoComics Beta!

GoComics.com has been remodeled and the new GoComics Beta makes its live debut today! Take a few minutes (after your eyes have adjusted to the freshly painted walls) to explore all the great new interactive features:

• Tag comics with relevant keywords
• Share comics with friends
• Make a Comment under any comic
• Mark comics as Favorites
• Create Comics Pages - Subscribe to your favorite titles
• Create free online Collections; keep them to yourself or make them Shared Collections and spread the love to the rest of the GoComics community
• Connect with other fans - View shared collections and member profiles and click Follow to keep up-to-date on their activity
• Take the comics-inspired Tour - Click here!

Comics Profiles: Everyone with a free or paid GoComics account has been given a Comics Profile. To access yours, sign in to the site with your GoComics username and password. (If you don't have one, get one!) Once you've signed in you'll be taken to your Dashboard, which is like your own personal headquarters on GoComics.com. You'll find all of your Comics Pages, Collections and Tags saved there. You'll also find sections devoted to your followers and those you're following, as well as a Comics Action Feed with updates from GoComics and other users.

Toon Picker: If you're not familiar with all of the comics on our site (or if you're just feeling adventurous) give the Toon Picker a try. The Toon Picker automatically generates a Comics Page for you based on comic categories you select, then you get to read and rate them. When you're done, you've got a great new custom comics page on your dashboard, and you can come back and read the updated version everyday.

Update on Free Emails: While the new GoComics.com is in its early beta stage, the free GoComics email system will not be operational. (This does not apply to GoComics Pro members, who will continue to receive their comic subscriptions by email.) We'll soon unveil a brand new free email product with features inspired by the new site, and we'll keep you updated as we get closer to its debut.

We want to hear from you: The new GoComics.com is designed and built for comic fans, and we value your opinions! If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for ways we can make the site even better, take a moment and email us directly at support@gocomics.com.

We welcome you to the comics community at GoComics.com, and we hope you'll enjoy all the new site has to offer! 

Comments

[colin]

CSS needs tweaking, or my browser is running stale, the comments and what not are being displayed over the comic itself.

[Robert Nowall]

Are you guys going to redesign GoComics *every* July 1st?

[Fortran]

Are RSS feeds being eliminated? Because I'm pretty sure there were RSS feeds on the comics before...

[gamma]

grrr - where's the list of comics that I might like if I like the one I'm reading?? And the hover calendar?? what was wrong with the old site?

[wmm]

It loads much faster than the old site, maybe there will not be a tendency to overdrive the cache with advertising. With a little time to adjust to the new site, I think it will be better. Good job.

[darky324]

Definitely needs tweaking. I like the overall look much better, but it's not easy to get to the select comics I regularly read (would appreciate the drop down list or some alternative that is easier than what you have now) and other features that were useful on the old site should have been kept (the hover calendar, for ex).

It is a much nicer set up otherwise.

[chris]

Frankly, I hate the new layout. It is much more difficult to select a comic now, my clicks to get to the ones I want to read have at least doubled.

First Dilbert and now you, why does everyone have to take a good working design and ruin it just for the sake of change?

[MARY-ROSE FITZGERALD]

THIS IS RIDICULOUS. I CAN'T GET SIGNED ON AND WHERE IS THE MESSAGE BOARD????

[R Pyle]

Dear Dipwads:

Having to click back and forth and back and forth is NOT an improvement.

Having to visit 2 separate pages to read 1 comic strip, as opposed to simply using a combo menu, is NOT an improvement.

Congratulations! You've made this process MORE COMPLICATED!

Darwin Awards coming your way.

[comicsgeezer]

People,

I have one good eye and a limited knowledge of the internet--I have used this site for the past several weeks and can read all of my comics without any problems. If I can do it, so can you. This is a much better site and requires very little effort to find and enjoy my comics...ron

[M. Orr]

Removing the comic list drop down menu for the current set up is NOT an improvement. Everything else is fine, but please bring back the drop down menu.

[Josh]

Hey everyone,

We appreciate the feedback. Besides a few quick-fix technical glitches, several of your comments have been calls for the return of the dropdown menu. In this first release of the beta site we've deployed a "curtain" menu instead of a dropdown menu for selecting comics. You can access the curtain by clicking on the little green triangle to the right of the Explore tab. The comics are sorted in alphabetical groupings. It would be great if everyone (especially those of you who've already commented here) could give it a try and then let us know what you think.

And keep in mind that this is a beta release - that means we're still building, based on your feedback. We know that the free features we've added so far to the site - things like tagging, commenting, collecting, subscribing and sharing - are light years beyond what the old site could offer, but our goal is to add features like these while keeping the site as user-friendly as possible. It is, after all, all about connecting you with the comics. So keep letting us know what you like and don't like, and I'll keep you updated as we make changes.

Josh

[M. Orr]

I've used the Explore tab and I still maintain the change is counterproductive. As others have mentioned already, it takes longer now to get to whichever comic you want to read. Simply put, I don't see the need for changing to the current form. The drop down menu was simple and quick.

[Bill S. Bruce]

Well, I've been a subscriber for several years, and I keep getting an error message that my ID or password is incorrect. When asked to give email address for my password, I get a screen that says I used wrong ID or password. It's a circle. My email address is above. Send whatever log-in info I need to that address. Bill Bruce

[Bill S. Bruce]

I posted a comment, and after 2 verifications I am back to this screen. Did you get my request for sending whatever I need in way of password to my email address above. I have been a member for several years, and this is frustrating. Bill Bruce

[Josh]

Mr. Bruce, I hope you're checking back here. I took your case to GoComics customer service and they located your info, lickety-split. For you and for anyone else having trouble signing in: send an email directly to support@uclick.com and we'll get back to you with the info you need to get signed in.

[That One Guy]

Sorry, folks, but I don't like this new setup at all. While I normally like whitespace, this just feels weird. And as another poster commented, it now takes multiple clicks to jump from comic to comic. I much preferred the drop-down menu. Did it look as nice and slick? Probably not, but the functionality was way better.

[Josh]

Try out the new auto-fill search bar in the upper right corner.

Josh

[Bill Roberts]

I don't like the new layout at all. And go back to the drop down list for selecting comics. Two levels of selection (first by letter, then the comic sucks.

[darky324]

When I commented earlier I had already used the curtain menu. The major problem is I do skip around to get to my favorite comics, and it takes way too many clicks to get to anything pass C in the alphabet. If you could either make the curtain menu scrollable with all of the comics available in one shot, I could deal with that. If not, please bring back the drop down menu!

[TMR]

While I like the new design, I see no improvement over the old design. And like everyone else, the 'curtain' menu is awful and impossible to get to a comic without clicking two or three times and it LOADS SLOW. I read all of my comics on another site while just the menu changed from the A's to the D's and then to the actual comic I was trying to load. And BTW, I thought your little instruction injection above was condescending...I'd have to say every comment I read about the drop-down menu inferred they'd tried it your way and didn't like it.

[Josh]

TMR - Yikes. You're right about the tone. That's what I get for hurrying. I can assure you there was no intent to condescend in my last comment, but I apologize anyway. I posted that comment too quickly, right before I shut down my computer for the evening and right after we had launched the auto-fill search bar, which I was just hoping would be out before I left for the evening. My only intent was to let everyone know that another option was now available for finding comics; it wasn't meant to be a reply to anyone's comment. In retrospect, I should have just gone with my first impulse and made it a new post.

Hopefully you can look at my previous and subsequent comments and see that I'm not one to condescend.

Okay, on to the rest of the feedback...

[Josh]

Hey all,

The Curtain/Dropdown issue is a top priority - thank you all for the feedback you're providing here.

Also, we're going to be adding a few enhancements tomorrow. (Today, actually. Wow, it's late.) I'll announce them here and in the Comics Action Feed on your Dashboards.

Josh

[chris]

I found it was easier and faster to just bookmark the explore all comics page and just reload the bookmark to get the comic I wanted.

Yes, it's easier to leave your site and come back than it is to use your internal navigation tools.

[J.P.]

I'd definitely appreciate the return of the drop down list and the calendar for navigating comics. The new system is fairly cumbersome. As far as the look, though, it's nice and clean, which I appreciate.