Hi Fakku Staff, (the following is a very detailed post which i put many hours in, to help improve Fakku and give you my humble feedback)
the basic and (imho) most important feature, which should be highest priority for the Website Team and which i wrote about two years ago, is still missing, so i write again very dissatisfied. How such an important feature can still be "not implemented" after so many years (and a friendly reminder two years ago) is in itself a mystery for me. Other Websites improve lightspeed-fast and the speed with which website changes on Fakkus are implemented, feels like SNAIL SPEED in comparison (in two years not much has changed :( ). Perhaps adding more members to the Design Team and html technicians for the website would help to improve the situation. Perhaps their teams are seriously understaffed and because of this so small progress is made. I, like your other users seriously love Fakku and therefore wish for more progress and higher website quality. It's a shame that you are so successful with everything and performing perfectly, but the main website's design, functions, and techniques flaws are not corrected (in a timely fashion in my humble opinion). Another matter are the many website bugs, which are still unresolved after so many years which is very frustrating. (In the coming days a Found Bugs post from me will follow)
On a sidenote i would like to see more official website changes NEWS in the Forums. The Frontpage news forum ONLY covers media releases and no Website changes! Most other sites report about their Website changes as well, so they especially can get feedback from users on implemented changes immediately. For now changes are made and nothing is announced, so no user gives their feedback in the forums and that is seriously not helping Fakku at all.
Communicate EVEN THE SMALLEST Website Changes in the Forums, so you can get valuable feedback from your users. 3-5 changes max should be reported in an official forumpost, so modern agile development feedback could be acquired.
Just to support Fakku, i subscribe not only monthly but yearly, so Fakku gets my money in advance for all the superb work you do (although i btw seriously wish for more Loli Content or Comic LO added as a magazine :P), but from a more pragmatic viewpoint i shouldn't even subscribe, until a particular feature is implemented. Especially because i mentioned it two years ago and still there is NO progress to it, AND in my humble opinion it is a DEALBREAKER! for the Fakku subscription. I will describe the problem in detail and many other Feature Requests and please don't judge this feature request, before you read the situation in detail. Currently there is a solution implemented, but the implementation is faulty to the point of being pointless (detailed explanation below).
Seeing the subscription as a sort of LIBRARY makes clear that the sub should have basic Library features. (Perhaps Fakku should even bring a regular Librarian in, as a consultant :P).
One of the most important features of a library is to help the user keep track of what you have read and what not, current situation at Fakku is seriously deeply flawed(detailed explanation below with many other points).
The CRUCIAL Feature:
Marking Chapters you finished reading as "Completed/Finished/Already read" (Status), to keep track of what you finished reading and what not. (Optionally add "Wishlist/PlantoRead and other Statuses (perhaps even personal Status categories when you are implementing it anyway)"
Current Situation (worst implementation, browser cookie)(TWO major problems):
A chapter in the search or browse mode has a red Title when not opened and when you click on the chapter opening it, it is marked thereafter in the searches/categorybrowsing with a black title. There are TWO major problems with this.
Problem 1: The thing is totally browsercookie based, which means that when you use another browser, PC/Device(probably even Android app), or reinstall your browser/PC you lose all your "Already Read" markings!!!!! How do you expect your subscribers to keep track of their reading statuses with such a ridiculous implementation???
Problem 2: The chapter is changing colors/state just by opening the chapter. Often i dont want to read the chapter immediately and just for now want to see/read the comments or look at the sample pics/tags. When i do this the chapter though is marked black as read although for now i didn't really read it. This is essentially faulty by design. I didn't read the chapter(planned for later) but now it is marked black as already read/Completed. How can i even keep track correctly when the website falsely assumes i have read the chapter just by opening the chapter page?
THE PROPOSED SOLUTIONS:
The Solution is a manual state choosing which is implemented by other mangasites as well. Because the example in mind is a pirated manga site, i will refrain from mentioning it by name here, but will describe their solution. (If the fakku (technical) staff wants to know my "inspiration site" they can privately message me, because they really have nice other website features which would improve Fakku hundredfolds).
Solution Part 1 (ADDING STATUSES TO ALL FAKKU SITE ITEMS(BOOKS,GAMES,ANIME etc.):
The manual state choosing should be done manually with buttons like the ones you have now with collections.
!!! BUT THERE SHOULD BE MULTIPLE "Mark as Completed, Mark as ..." buttons on the chapter page INSTEAD of a combolist (of the current collection feature) which opens a list of statuses to choose, like used in the collections now. WHY? When these features are implemented a user changes statuses all the time. So when you have to open a list FIRST and then SECOND click to choose your Status from a list you have to do TWO clicks instead of one and it takes more time and is less convenient then to have multiple buttons (their position is remembered by the user subconciously and the act of markings as ... is more intuitive with multiple buttons instead of a boxlist used in collections. Different colors for the Buttons would be nice as well, for example green-Completed, purple not interested, red-Wish to buy(subconscious reminder to buy :PP). Sorting order should be in amount of frequency used, for example if a line of "Mark as..." buttons starts from left to right, the most used ones should be leftmost. (Left top priority button -right low priority button)
(example:
Mark as:
("Completed", "Plan to read", "Wish to buy", "Reading", "On Hold", "Not interested") ---"in Brackets are Buttons",
(green color, yellow color, red color, blue, orange, purple)
Status Categories could be:
- "Reading" status (makes sense for longer reads like books), which would save the last page number you were on from the "Comic Reader". Sta
- "Completed/Finished" status (marks the chapter IN the chapterpage! AND in searches and browsing somehow as Finished/Completed (OR GENERALLY the chosen STATUS by the User!!!) by color change or an additional greyed out MAIN example picture or for example the main example picture could have a ribbon (top, or from the bottom left to the top right) overlayed over the main example image with the writing "Completed"/(or other status sign like ReadLater) over the picture. This would be be better making visible the status than only changing the color as it is now.
The Best solution imho would be showing the status of the chapter in the search And in the chapter page with different status signs which the user chose manually (like Completed Sign/ForLater Sign etc.).
- "Plan to Read" or "For Later" status (optionally should give you the option to add automatically all related chapters in a multipart series to this "Plan to Read" status). Would be very convenient.
- "WISH TO BUY" is important for purchasable items like doujins. Almost every other store has a wishlist where you can put your items into it which you plan to buy in the future.
- "On hold" status makes sense for releases where you know new chapters will be added.
- "Not interested" status makes sense if you want to mark certain chapters.
- "Watched" status for Anime (or generic Finished/Completed)
- "Played" status for Games (or generic Finished/Completed)
SOLUTION PART 2:
Interconnect the "Comic Reader" with the status, so that when you reach the last page when viewing the manga with the reader, the chapter is automatically set to "Completed" status. This should be an option in the Comic Reader which you could enable/disable in your settings.
The Reader should get its setting from your global hardcoded settings and not from your cookie infos as well by the way. (I am not sure if the comic reader settings on the site is cookie based but i think so.) As mentioned above for long books the chapter page you are on should be saved in the background when reading so that you can resume it from that point later.
- Resume Button on the Chapter should be implemented to conveniently continue where you left.
- Resume Button for watched Anime which you watched partially would be very nice as well by the way.
The user could be given the possibility to add their own custom statuses.
SOLUTION PART 3(ADVANCED SEARCH):
The Website search and browsing should give you the ability to include/exclude chapters with certain statuses and not show them or explicitly show them. When you work on this you should add an "Advanced Search" anway. I don't know why Fakku doesn't have one until now. There is not even to my knowledge a help "button or manual" to tell you how to search for multiple tags. Most other website searches give you the ability to put - and + infront of "condition" so you can include and exlude tags. I am not even sure if this is implemented or not on this Fakku Site. Therefore why should your possible Search options not be explained, so that someone like me has to guess, if and how advanced tag searching is implemented or not. Sorting by Release Date and for example popularity and views, AND FOR LENGTH of
MULTIPART series would be great as well.
PART 4: By the way why is there no multipart series tag, to differentiate oneshot manga from multipart series which are increasingly becoming popular in the eromanga industry especially because of Fakku's digital contribution model.(read about it that Wani followed Fakku with digital magazine with more multipart series because you have a reachable backlog digitally in one of Fakku's staff posts.)