Site Update: Username Changes, Journal Widget

May 18, 201215 min read

Deviation Actions

Published: May 18, 2012

90.6K Views

In our continuous effort to improve the deviantART experience, we're publishing Site Updates to keep members informed and to gather feedback. Below is a list of recent changes to the site, bug fixes, and feedback that was brought up by members in the last Site Update.

What's New

Username Changes Now Available

DeviantART has been around for almost twelve years, and in that time, we've seen artists grow from hobbyists to students to professionals. As a member of any community, your identity can change and grow over time.

For years, we've been getting requests from the community asking for the ability to change usernames. We realize that as an artist, it's important to give you the ability to change your personal brand, just as you change your interests, skills, and art types.

This week, we added the ability to change your username in your Settings. To change your username, you must have an active Premium Membership. (The reason there is a "fee" associated with the change is because switching usernames is a complex technical process that can create confusions for fellow deviants.)

Read the full announcement

Improved Journal Widget

The Journal widget on your profile can now be customized to display one long entry, multiple short entries, or one long with the rest short.

There is now a pencil menu on the corner of each Journal you publish, making it a bit easier to edit your Journals without having to visit the Journal's page and then clicking the "edit" button.

Bug Fixes

General

Journal Skin installation is now a one-click process! Simply click "Install to Journal" and you'll be taken to a new Journal using that Skin. Added by $muteor
For a period of time, items that are removed from the cart page were still stuck in the cart at the end of checkout. Fixed by ArtBIT
There was a short-lived outage of the deviation storage system. Fixed by shadowhand
Various issues with the display of literature and journal thumbnails were reported. Fixed by shadowhand
Browsing deviations in your Message Center using the "next" and "previous" buttons was limited to the current page of thumbs. Fixed by muteor

deviantART muro

Discovered an issue with playback when Brush strokes were too short. Fixed by mudimba
The "save as" operation was optimized. Fixed by mudimba
Fixed a bug allowing deviantART muro to still work if the drawing couldn't be loaded. Fixed by Nodren
Some deviantART muro thumbnails went missing. Fixed by sgrahamUK
Improved error detection for network issues. Added by sgrahamUK and mudimba
Some duration statistics were incorrect. Fixed by Nodren
Identified a rare edge case with when drawing could not be loaded and deviantART muro was not working. Fixed by Nodren

Sta.sh

It wasn't possible to delete descriptions on stacks for a period of time. Fixed by adahacker
Deleting all but one item from a stack and then going back to Sta.sh broke the page. Fixed by adahacker
Clicking "submit" without first closing category picker did not work. Fixed by adahacker
For a period of time, deviations with no descriptions displayed "click to add description" for other members. Fixed by adahacker
Journals could sometimes get removed from "my journal" when edited. Fixed by adahacker
The login page didn't always detect if cookies were disabled. Fixed by adahacker
Using cmd+click on items in stacks didn't select them. Fixed by samshull
The "friends" button on the "send note" popup was broken. Fixed by samshull
Deleting items sometimes resulted in a phantom "deleted content" thumbnail in Sta.sh. Fixed by samshull

Sta.sh Writer

Muro recordings can now be embedded in Writer. Fixed by Alisey
Fixed some issues where Writer didn't save when the subject and metadata was changed. Fixed by kemayo
There was a case where clicking into Writer would empty its contents. Fixed by kemayo

Your Feedback

In last week's discussion, we received some great feedback on our discussion questions. Feedback included:

Collaborative drawing features in deviantART muro were a very popular idea.
Many deviants would appreciate the ability to switch between a simple and advanced group management system.
Some deviants would like the ability to toggle whether or not journal skin changes were retroactively applied.
Some deviants would also like additional documentation on Journal Skins and related features. From ~Nironan12

Bugs, issues, and feedback from previous Site Updates

Discuss!

Last week we received some great feedback on Group affiliates and member management. One of our discussion questions this week is groups-related, while the other is related to the visual display of signatures:

Group Discussions: How do you feel about the admin discussion forums on Groups? We've seen a lot of members attempting to have conversations using the comments on a Group's profile, but would you like to see a discussion forum feature specifically for these types of discussions?

Signature Visual Changes: Some members suggested that font color of comment signatures should be a bit lighter, making it clearer that it is not part of the actual comment. It's also a possibility that emoticons and avatars in signatures could be slightly faded out. What do you think?

Have a suggestion, idea, or feedback? Leave a comment on this article!
Find a bug? Report it to the Help Desk! (Be as detailed as possible!)