The rollout of the new Comics Kingdom site continues problematically.
The site has fielded complaints from not liking the new look to not being able to access the strips as before. I understand they want to make it more profitable for themselves and their cartoonists – so they can take the heat from the freeloaders. But they are upsetting the paying customers too.
Actively trying to fine tune the spring launch and placate the maddened crowd has been a chore.
Certainly they didn’t need another gremlin jumping into the system. And then…
The posting on the Comics Kingdom Facebook page brought angry responses from subscribers.
Comics Kingdom patiently explained:
But complaints keep rolling in.
They have been inundated with customer emails,
so much that they had to devote someone just to deal with that:
The above Comics Kingdom Facebook thread can be read here.
Even when they announce a fix the response is discouraging.
Again, it is subscribers that remain upset weeks after the remake.
disclosure: Daily Cartoonist is a part of the Andrews McMeel/GoComics family.
It really appears the new site wasn’t properly tested, and the responses from CK representatives on Twitter suggests that things that should have been core functionality didn’t make it into the design brief.
It has been an object lesson in how not to do things. When your core business is “displaying comics” you really need to get that bit right.
I started reading the comics in my daily email (because I think the site now looks awful). But the email started coming every other day instead of every day. And the classic comics – which are the reason I subscribed in the first place – ALSO seem to update every other day.
It’s amazing how many different things were broken. It took forever to load. The comments stacked up. The email stopped coming. It’s OBVIOUS that they didn’t test it before rolling it out, and that’s so incompetent that it boggles the mind.
Bummer!
I gave up on it.
I got a feeling of foreboding about these latest glitches. Mainly for the vintage comics. I’ve been a subscriber for years and love those old strips for the stories, art, and glimpses into the mindsets of the times in which they were created. I suspect, and I hope I’m wrong, whatever third party comics server they’re using can’t handle the format the vintage strips are provided in automatically so the vintage strips got out of sync with the rest of the feed. Now the out of sync strips are maybe being loaded manually, but maybe not by someone who comes to work everyday. Now I’ll never know how that Rip Kirby ghost town story ended. Bummer, but I’ll stick with my CK subscription until they figure out these mistakes.