Hey everyone!

Can you believe the site recently turned 3 years old?

It's been so cool seeing such awesome people join and upload their amazing creations. The deadsite repository has gotten so much love over the years, and we've even successfully brought some creators back by giving their mods a face again :)

Over those years, I've also heard your feedback, and honestly, I wanted a snappier site too! :p So that's why I decided to rewrite it! You might have already followed some parts of the process over on our Discord.

It's far from finished, but the general pages are already looking pretty darn good :)

Quick note before we begin: If you have any feature requests for any of the pages we touch on here, totally share them! It helps not only me, but also everyone using the site to get an even better experience!

Overall improvements:

Some good-to-know changes I've made in this version:

• Reloads on pages are much less frequent thanks to the new tech stack! :)
• Dark/light mode is much more consistent compared to the previous site.
• Mobile-friendliness is much more consistent and generally a better experience.
• Lyralei's picks is now a thing! That way you get a bit more love :)
• Added a Dyslexia font! You'll be able to toggle this on if you like.

The homepage

It still has some placeholder stuff, but overall it's coming together! The "what will you do today" section is very WIP, since I'm still drawing illustrations for it, and the colors aren't final either :)

Oh, and the cats are placeholders too! They'll go at some point as well. It just gives me something nice to look at for now.

Browse page:

Under the hood, this one has changed quite a bit! It's better optimized, has better accessibility (Yep, I see you!)

In the new version, browsing all games is an option, and it's pretty quick at that too!

Mods

Pagination now doesn't reload the page anymore either, and I've tweaked the "hottest" algorithm a bit to make it more fair (based on recent views, likes, downloads, and how many comments a mod/story/etc gets. Likes do weigh a little less because of the issue that a lot of people don't exactly heart anything.)

I'm also looking into whether I can introduce something like a "For you" section based on the content you download. But that may not make it into the released version though.

Stories:

Essentially the same page, but I've decided to make the cards a little different, so you know exactly what page you're on visually too! :)

Stories will also have a progress bar in their cards soon, so you can see if you've read it and how much of it you've read.

Tutorials

The cards are also a bit different, with the same idea: visually, you'll know what page you're on. It does look similar to stories.

Gameplay

Now it actually functions as it should! I know on the current site version, it has a tendency to overlap over things. And that's generally due to the older JS library it uses.

Plus! It feels much more like a proper 'feed' where you can scroll through posts and heart them :) I'll have to see what to do with comments, but I think for the first version it'll generally just be about hearting something.

Lookbooks

In its current state, it uses the same view as Gameplay. But I was thinking of "fancifying" it a bit by adding some "Key" fashion styles that sort of rotate.

Mods

I went through a lot of adaptations of this view and eventually landed here! :) The banner is auto-assigned using the first image, but you'll also be able to upload a custom one if you like!

Generally, the mods page is a bit more ambitious and is taking a little more work than I'd anticipated. For example, I'm trying to get a 3D viewer tab going, where you can see objects/CAS items in their 3D form.

I've also tried to bring User images a bit more into the foreground. It's currently also a tab where, when anything is uploaded to it, you can see how things look in other people's games! :)

That feature does already exist, but I'd noticed that fewer people tend to use it, probably because of where it currently sits on the mod page.

Files

Given how unfortunately malware is still a big problem on the internet, I made some extra changes to really figure out if something is actually the file it's supposed to be. In addition to that, there's better staff checking, so you can always be confident that something isn't malware and that we've checked it! :)

Recommended & Mods By

The banner idea I actually got from Nexus Mods after downloading Skyrim mods. I really liked how it would sort of "draw" you in to actually check it out, partially because of its direction. And that's what we all want! Others checking out our other mods ;)

For Recommended, you might notice that I tweaked the algorithm as well to be much more categorized. It doesn't feel as randomized anymore as it currently is, but much more based on the mod you're currently looking at, regarding category, tags, etc.

Known bugs, FAQ and Updates

As a (script) modder myself, I know there's a lot of work that goes into keeping people updated about what's going on. And comments can easily swallow those kinds of heads-up comments you might have written. So, what better way than introducing a specific field for this! :) ...or 3 :D

You'll be able to add the text there. But Known bugs has an extra element to it!

Here you can pin comments to the tab, so that when people go into it, they see someone's issue and may be less likely to report the same bug over and over again.

Comments

Not only do we have a (much) better text editor now, with lots of options (like highlights and better enter/line breaks), it's also much more flexible if I ever want to add more text options!

As you can see, there's a lot more options for what type of commentary you can leave and what you, as the creator of the mod (so, you, only you) can do!

You can, for example:

• Pin a comment
• Acknowledge an issue, (which then can be in the known bugs bit).
• Report, for reporting a comment.
• Edit your comment (Not others, that's just my admin-y powers showing lol).
• Others can press the "I have this issue" button as well, so you can see if this is a one-person bug, or if more people have it.

Story page

Note! I am still actively working on adding stuff to these pages! They're super roughly done as of right now. For example, it still needs story progress and the ability to go to new chapters/scenes :)

Carousel stories:

(I just realised the carousel buttons are behind the images again >:( So that will need fixing lol).

Generally, not that much is different from the current page. But I have implemented a highly requested feature, which is:

• You can now skip 10 pictures at a time! In case you lost track of the story.
• It now comes with a bar that you can easily scroll back/forth in, if you don't want to use the 10-picture skipping thing
• It currently stores your progress! (That annoyed me the most when I was reading stories, and I know some people had mentioned the same thing).

Text-based Stories

Similar thing, but this page comes with a really cool feature: you can adjust your own text settings!

Some people just really like bigger text, others smaller. Maybe you're someone who really loves to read everything in the center! (I don't have an upside-down feature unfortunately though :p) Maybe there's even a specific font that you find easier to read in?

Regarding fonts, they're super easy:

• Serif
• Sans (default site font)
• Dyslexic.

...getting you to these results! :)

I might also include an option where images are in "no-spoiler" mode, so when you scroll down, the image is initially faded, but when you click on it, it reveals itself.

That's it! I'm still working on it super hard and, as you can see, a lot of things still have to be touched on. (Profiles, Dead site repository, feed, uploading, etc). But hopefully it's looking promising for everyone! :)

Love,

Lyralei