Cel view numbers?

Post by **JWR** » Thu Apr 14, 2011 5:33 pm

This was brought up to me in RS chat a few nights back.

Has anyone noticed a decrease in gallery hits as well as a drop in cel views of items they have updated since the revamp of RS?

Now on the front page when you update you see thumbnails of the cels that have been updated where before you just got a listing of the section updated.

cutiebunny · Post by **cutiebunny** » Thu Apr 14, 2011 5:50 pm

I have not noticed a decrease in the hits for my personal gallery, and in most cases, I actually find that I have more hits. Having a preview of the items is handy because it gives you an idea of the kind of artwork that particular anime or art form features. For example, a lot of cel/sketch collectors aren't big shikishi collectors and may not know exactly what those items are. So, when I update with a shikishi and give a preview of the artwork featured, a viewer can decide if it's worth their time to look at it.

But this can be problematic. Before, all anyone logging into the home page would know is what series or character was updated. If they were interested in the series, they'd click on the gallery and visit. But now, with a preview, not only does a potential visitor know what exactly was updated, but they also get, in 3 shots or less, a 'taste' of your gallery. So, whereas before, I might stop by if you updated with a series that I was interested in, now, if I didn't like any of the artwork featured in the thumbnails, I won't visit at all.

dark-water-dragon · Post by **dark-water-dragon** » Thu Apr 14, 2011 7:31 pm

To me it would be what the significants of the gallery hits are to you. For me it is not that big of a deal. I do see both of your points and agree that the preview could decrease the amount of gallery hits. What I like is the "something fun" topic were my fellow Beta can pick what they like about my gallery or in other topics.

Matt · Post by **Matt** » Thu Apr 14, 2011 9:50 pm

I have noticed a HUGE decrease of everything since RS was revamped. A few of us have talked in detail about this in the RS chat. Lots of us are getting viruses, many links don't work, uploads are not working, the site is very slow, the search doesn't work etc etc so naturally people have just not been stopping by. Everyone GREATLY appreciates the hardwork that goes into making RS available for us, but I have heard said many times, myself included that we wish the old RS was back.

I shouldn't neglect to say that fewer galleries are shown on the main page as updated. If you want to see more than six galleries you have to click for the next page. Most people either don't want to click on the next page or they don't know that that option is there. It was easier to keep up-to-date with new additions when 20 galleries are listed on a page.. like the old RS.

star-phoenix · Post by **star-phoenix** » Thu Apr 14, 2011 10:23 pm

Still waiting for that delete option to be installed. We asked about certain features to be fixed almost 6 months ago? A year ago? I am kind of sad about it too.

My site ended up getting a lot of views earlier this year when I had some updates. But, it has also slowed down a lot now.

zerospace · Post by **zerospace** » Fri Apr 15, 2011 8:20 am

Not to stir up a hornet's nest or anything, but if I were most of you, I'd be looking for a new home for my gallery if RS were my primary host--especially if I were waiting on features that have been promised. I took my secondary gallery off RS over a year ago, and haven't looked back.

I haven't been particularly fond of the new RS since it was first unveiled (I don't really care for the thumbnails on the main page -- I turn them off), and all the issues with it have made my view of it sour even more.

I agree that most people won't click beyond those first 6 galleries shown on the main page, and I find it rather annoying that each subsequent page only shows another 6 updated galleries. I used to use the longer updated galleries list on the old site to see the updates that I missed. I'd imagine that a combination of less main-page (or even secondary updated page) exposure, hacking attempts, and disgruntled former user exodus is the reason for the decrease in overall hits to individual galleries. Then again, maybe I'm wrong and people just don't look inside galleries anymore. I also miss the old search engine -- I often searched artwork, titles, and curators. >_<

I find myself visiting RS much less these days, and when I do, I spend more time looking at the list of complaints on the forums (and chuckling at them) rather than visiting updated galleries. Most of the galleries I used to follow don't seem to update anymore (or I'm missing them). Combine the lack of interesting updates with the seemingly increasing likelihood of getting a virus upon visiting, and you have a great recipe for why I don't visit RS more than a few times per week at best.

I guess you could say that I've become one of those collectors who doesn't care if anyone looks at my collection anymore. I collect because I like it and feel no great need to show it off. I have a primary gallery website that has over 150k hits... most of which are probably me or search engine bots.

Maybe one day I'll devolve into a black hole collector ... *snort*. The online community should be so lucky.

Just my two yen -- I mean no offense to anyone

.

Sky Rat · Post by **Sky Rat** » Fri Apr 15, 2011 8:41 am

I actually probably click on more galleries these days with the thumbnail option...I really am a very narrowly focused collector, so I'd only click on people's galleries if one or two specific series were listed in their update. Now with the thumbnails sometimes art catches my eye and I find myself occasionally checking out updates that I before wouldn't have bothered to look at for series outside of my usual range.

HOWEVER I find that with the blog updates no longer appearing on the front page I almost never remember to look at those. It's not on purpose but I just forget about them when they're not automatically visible.

Can't say if my own gallery's been affected though...it was never high volume enough to begin with for me to notice a difference. Whether other people look at my stuff or not was never all that important to me. I notice that now more of my cels show up in google image searches though so it probably gets more traffic from outside the rubberslug community than before.

Post by **sensei** » Fri Apr 15, 2011 10:03 am

I continue to update and upgrade, but I too feel that the "unfinished" quality of RS is off-putting. I miss being able to replace old scans from the iffy equipment I had in 2002-04 with new ones that actually look like the art. But the only way that can be done now is to delete the item and add it again, something I'm reluctant to do on a large basis.

The loss of the search function is another big minus. Now it's much harder to tell if a sequence-buddy exists for something that I have. And, yes, there is much less blog traffic than there used to be. I do try to put comments up, and send feedback when I see something nice go up, out of respect for my fellow collectors. But it is true that since the "Great Leap Forward" the RS scene is noticably less vibrant than more.

ReiTheJelly · Post by **ReiTheJelly** » Fri Apr 15, 2011 12:16 pm

Sky Rat wrote:I actually probably click on more galleries these days with the thumbnail option

Same here. I've clicked on a lot of artwork this year which I would previously have completely passed by.

Keropi · Post by **Keropi** » Fri Apr 15, 2011 4:49 pm

It's hard to tell how many hits I've been getting. I used to check my galley hit number, but now I don't want to do that because the way to do it now would give hits to myself and that would screw up the count. I know I'm getting more popular item hits, but that's only because I have it linked on my MAL page.

I don't feel like updating very often, but when I do I can't seem to upload Jpg images. I've given up on trying. I'll try again later. I found some old cel/sketch photos that I had on CDs.

Here's my routine these days with the new Rubberslug. I do this a few times a day:

1. I click my bookmark link:

http://www.rubberslug.com/gallery/

2. I click Account.
3. I click Popular Items and see if anything seems funny with the Popular Item counts.
4. I click Community. I look for interesting blog updates.
5. I click Latest Posts. I look to see if there are any good posts to read.

That's it. Repeat that several times a day.

klet · Post by **klet** » Sun Apr 17, 2011 8:40 pm

Keropi wrote: 3. I click Popular Items and see if anything seems funny with the Popular Item counts.

Ooooh! I didn't know that was back up. Yay!!!

Keropi · Post by **Keropi** » Mon Apr 18, 2011 1:32 pm

I wonder why some of the pictures in the Most Popular Items section don't show? It used to be that all of them would show, but now they don't. Maybe the pictures timed out?

It's no big thing compared to the other stuff though.

klet · Post by **klet** » Mon Apr 18, 2011 7:15 pm

Only one of my thumbnails show up. Clicking on the link leads to the item's gallery page, but if you're annal about giving your items hits, like I am, that's kinda a bad thing. I'm not entirely sure what some of these items are!

Though, now that I think about it, ugh, if everyone's having issues switching out images, there's no way I'll be able to fix the thumbnails with color issues that I have up.

Keropi · Post by **Keropi** » Mon Apr 18, 2011 8:55 pm

klet wrote:Only one of my thumbnails show up. Clicking on the link leads to the item's gallery page, but if you're annal about giving your items hits, like I am, that's kinda a bad thing. I'm not entirely sure what some of these items are!

Yeah, I don't like doing that either. I purposely have few hits. Unfortunately that means if I click them on myself I can easily give myself two or three times the number of hits that I would have had otherwise.

Though, now that I think about it, ugh, if everyone's having issues switching out images, there's no way I'll be able to fix the thumbnails with color issues that I have up.

Oh, you mean because the hit count will start all over at zero?

kizu · Post by **kizu** » Mon Apr 18, 2011 10:34 pm

This might be OT but seeing as how the thread is developing... Anyway, I like RS, I truly do. I think itâ€™s a good service for being a free one so I tend to forgive whatever glitch I get sometimes like the thumbnails not working, the resize getting stuck etc. etc. I do think the search function has a lot to be desired especially when we lost the function on anime series titles. What really bothers me however isnâ€™t all that but the main drive of the site to mostly promote and focus on mainstream. Nothing against mainstream, popular and/or western animation as I like those too but during development I was concerned about exposure of other series that are obscure, niche, not popular or whatever you want to label it. Basically from what I saw in the posts in the forums during development, in order to gain more interest especially to outsiders/newbies, there was a conscious drive to promote art from popular shows and perhaps by doing so, unconsciously the ability to find unique gems has been overlooked or disregarded. The series title search disappearing created a serious blow to being able to find other shows that might not be on someoneâ€™s radar but might truly be worth their time. Creating tags was nice but burying not so popular series and not being able to find them a little easier (like by category tags based on theme etc) was a step back. To me thatâ€™s what really concerned me about the change.