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#1

Dear Friends,

Since the acquisition of CGSociety by The Art Society , (TAS) in February 2015, teams in both Los Angeles, California and Adelaide, Australia, have been planning and working tirelessly towards delivering phase one of the new website.

The new site has been designed to be visually compelling, with a focus on innovative design, and it has been built around the needs and preferences of CGSociety readers. Key features include a dynamic and responsive design, a more engaging user experience and enhanced search and navigation. There is also the option to have an easily customizable homepage, which empowers users to choose what they want featured; either an editorial-focused experience, or gallery centric one.

This is just the beginning, and we want our community fully involved. CGSociety would not be where it is today without the support of you, our amazing community, and we promise to give you that back tenfold! We would love to hear your feedback on what you think about the site and suggestions that you would like to see moving forward.

One last thing, our technical support team have also asked that you send through any bugs with the new site (or old) that you find. They’re all in full busy mode at the moment launching the new site, and bugs will be prioritized accordingly.

Without further ado, I present you our redesigned website: www.cgsociety.org and here’s a mini page created just to highlight and feature what has changed in this first redesign phase: CGS Redesign and Features Page

CGSociety: Redesigned Home Page, Refreshed Features/News Pages, Renewed Passion!

Cheers and May The Force Always Be With You!

#2

I’m not a big user of the main cgsociety site so this is a minor critique, but as a Wacom user without a mouse (and therefore no scroll wheel) I’m unable to scroll the site as middle-clicking forcibly opens up a new tab of whatever is under the cursor.

Other than that, it looks good!

#3

the homepage and the forum page look very different now is this going to change?

#4

I´m completely loving the new design. I never really used the main portal much, but now it looks like a place I´d go for new stuff and the latest coolest art.

It would be great to go for “endless” scroll in the main portal. And also the little arrows that expand one side or the other, it would be great if that stayed in wherever you are looking at. Meaning, it seems not so practical scrolling all the way back to change it.

Plus 1 for the wacom navigation.

It looks fantastique, congrats to everyone.

#5

CONGRATS GUYS!!! This has always been my go to site when it came to cg! Made my first steps in 3d by coming to this site! Love the design although there are a few kinks that you need to sort out.

Portfolio page Update your portfolio button under profile picture doesn’t work and leads to .cgsociety.org

Portfolio views shows nothing as well…

Going to me and then hitting view my portfolio shows featured portfolios but non of my own works. link leads to portfolio.cgsociety.org instead of hbajramovic.cgsociety.org

#6

Looking pretty pretty nice. I think I’ll make more use of the front page now.

#7

Not a big user of the main entry, I love the forums.

I see you are going for a very artstation-ish setup, which is cool, except you seem to have stories mixed in with art content.

That in itself is not “bad” however, the filtering is weak. There are no categories/tags to filter, and it is a boiled list of top picks by XX or trending.

Trending is a self-fulfilling prophecy, the more people click on it, the get a list of “trends” which get more clicks than other things which will never trend because they are never seen.

Perfect example is trending and trending weekly. They are almost 100% identical. Given something is trending, it is most likely trending weekly, so that entire filter is superfluous.

Thus is why artstation et al. have categories to filter over like 2d vs 3d, scifi vs fantasy, cg vs traditional, etc…

I would suggest you all take it one step further and allow for 2+ or more filters, and also apply that to your news stories.

Cheers

#8

i try to click every link possible that I can find which says “my portfolio” so I can see well… MY portfolio and all I get is linked to the trending portfolio page every time.

This includes the my portfolio links under my name dropdown and the “new project” plus sign. Nothing works to actually get to MY portfolio and to see my art or add new art…

#9

Thanks for the feedback everyone,

Very helpful, Thank you. We’ll look at tweaking the touchmove events to get the page scrolling wacom friendly. :keenly:

@hbajramovic, @SeanE I’ll work on fixing this bug today, in the meantime logging out and back in will hopefully resolve your issues (you’re missing some browser cookies).

#10

Very Nice guys… :slight_smile: - this CGS portal overhaul is not only an aesthetically pleasing result, but also a boost in UI functionality where it matters, I think.

Further…a query if I may, are there plans in the wings to update for example, the user’s control panel, specifically Edit Options, too include re-enabling the option to disable the VIEW CGPORTFOLIO button displayed via the user’s forum profile?

Which from my understanding had been available in the past, when first signing up as a new member, but was for some reason I don’t fully understand, discontinued as a matter of choice, to what we see today, to an effectively unchangeable default setting.

Probably a petty peeve on the face of it, but still IMHO a suggestion worth considering for those that do not host a folio here, also FTR I have raised this question previously on a couple of occasions, however had not received anything definitive as to feedback either way, anyways too the CGS team keep up the great work.

Cheers :wink:

#11

The challenge here is that CGSociety is a very old girl. Some of the code is over 10 years old. But our plan is to bring it up to par with the most modern social networks out there. Our priority is the artists and members of this community, so yes, without going too much into details, overhauling the user management, settings and preferences is a top priority. Our goal is to empower artists as much as possible.

Not too long from now, I think most of the code will be brand new. A lot of work ahead but many great opportunities to make this the most modern and enjoyable site in the industry.

Also, I would like to use this opportunity to thank our remarkable team of developers in Adelaide, Ben Castles and Rhys Jenkin who played a critical role making this possible.

#12

@hbajramovic, @SeanE I’ve fixed the bug, can you please let me know if you continue to have issues accessing your portfolio. info@cgsociety.org. Thanks.

#13

Yup. They seem to work ok now

#14

Hi the new site looks ok, but there is one thing i have too ask you.

The “Gallerie Filter” shows only a few headers. For example there is no longer “Environmet”, “Mattepainting”, “Horror”, etc.

It would be great if you will fix this, because too scroll on a endless site is a little bit frustrating if i look for special picutres.

#15

New design looks great - good job guys :thumbsup:
Cant wait to see rest of the website in same modern look.

#16

i love the new look website so modern. love the responsive nature of the new design. Thumbs up guys

#17

I dunno.I just use the main listing page.There’s too much going on there.I’m clicking and that opens up to a new page then I close that one…so on.
I just find it easier to go to the main listing to jump to the forum or gallery I wish to see.
I like that ole saying about keep it simple.
It looks ok and but I’m old and crankie …lol…so ‘meh’.

#18

Hey guys, first of all thanks so much for all the feedback.

Happy to report that the response from the community so far has been super positive!
We truly appreciate the constructive feedback, technical issues and comments as well.
Our tech team is taking notes of your suggestions and solving those pesty unavoidable bugs, one at a time.

I saw a couple of messages regarding the gallery filters and I can assure you we’re working on that at the moment and it should be added in a few weeks at the latest.

Overall we continue powering through this stage and prepare to focus on Phase 2 of the redesign, which is already in development.

Cheers!

#19

Awesome!!

I have two issues here:
1- Front page’s Thumbnails are too BIG.
2- I would like to see who has recently followed my cgportfolio but there is no way i could find out. please do something! so that we can track our new followers, and follow them back maybe. :thumbsup:

#20

Woah, you got some really cool works in there. Followed! :smiley: