Intermittent Site Updates
As you may have noticed in the past few weeks, we’ve stopped publishing our regular Site Updates. Four months ago, we launched the DeviantArt Timeline to showcase our past accomplishments and provide insight into future happenings on the site. We will continue to use the DeviantArt Timeline as a central hub of our announcements.
While we are phasing out the weekly updates, we will continue communicating changes to the community when we have announcements to share. Smaller site changes, which were normally in the Change Log section of Site Updates, may still be communicated through ad-hoc Site Updates. This change will allow us to better focus our efforts on top priorities while making individual postings even more meaningful and impactful.
Mobile App Updates: Notes and Improved Notifications
By popular demand, two highly-requested features are now available in the mobile app!
- Notes: It’s now easier than ever to have private conversations with other deviants.
- Notifications: With a completely revamped notifications, you can now view your comments, replies, activity, and mentions, just like the desktop site.
Help Desk Changes
After fifteen years on the Internet, DeviantArt's Help section has become home to an extensive list of Frequently Asked Questions — covering everything from Groups support, to Core Membership inquiries, to issues involving harassment. These FAQs contain answers and guidance to common occurrences and concerns that deviants encounter.
Recently, the Help section was updated to provide better streamlining to FAQ answers. By organizing and grouping together some of our most Frequently Frequently Asked Questions — the elusive FFAQs — we're able to direct deviants down paths that will, in many cases, provide immediate answers to questions. If a question cannot be answered via the FAQs, deviants will then be prompted to submit a Help Desk ticket per normal.
This update was implemented to provide easier access to commonly asked questions. Many questions and/or issues submitted to the Help Desk are easily found in the FAQ. By allowing deviants better access to information, the Help Desk team is able to dedicate more time to tickets that require troubleshooting and investigation.
No changes have been made regarding DeviantArt's policies or to the types of tickets to which we respond. Every Help Desk ticket is reviewed by a member of DeviantArt's Community Operations team.Windows App: Easy Access to The Mobile Site
We are working with Microsoft to ensure that DeviantArt's Web experience works great on Windows 10 devices — including Surface tablets and Windows mobile phones. The app won’t have the full native feature set of our iOS and Android apps, but will include most of the functionality from our mobile website. The app will be available in the Windows Store in the coming weeks, with several app-only enhancements — like Live Tiles! We are eager to see the the community's response, as this will inform our commitment to future Windows product enhancements.
Prints Now Exclusively Available on Deviation Pages
Several years ago, we introduced a “Buy This Print” button directly on deviation pages, so potential buyers could configure and purchase a print without having to leave the page. Our intention of this change was always to phase out the prints pages. Today, we’re making that change.
The old prints pages, which were only accessible through the main DeviantArt Shop or on the prints tab of profiles, has been phased out. All links now point to the deviation page.
Channels Being Phased Out
As DeviantArt grows, interest in different features shifts. Over the past years, the usage of channels has been on a constant decline. In the past week, less than 0.007% of DeviantArt’s traffic visited channels. Because of deviants’ lack of interest in channels, we will be phasing them out later today.
But why not just leave a feature as-is rather than phasing it out? Even if a feature is not actively updated, it still adds maintenance and technical costs, including fixing bugs with the feature that might arise or responding to Help Desk tickets regarding the feature. For every feature that DeviantArt has, making changes to the overall site adds more time and costs. For example, if the site design or thumbnail design is updated, every page has to be accounted for. In addition, outdated pages add unnecessary complexity to the site, making DeviantArt harder to understand for new deviants.
Phasing out channels and old print pages will let us better focus our efforts on DeviantArt’s primary goals.
Looking for Volunteers to Test A Groups Feature
We are currently experimenting with a new feature for groups. This is a very experimental feature and we’re looking for group admins who are interested in trying it out. This feature has a mobile component to it, so we’re looking for admins who also have an iOS or Android phone.
If you or anyone you know fits this criteria, please say so in the comments, and don’t forget to include your Group’s name!
