Welcome to Raythe Reign 4.0!
Some of you have actually been with us since the site started in December 2010. In terms of sites, that was Raythe Reign 1.0, and it was ugly! Slow to load! Crashed constantly! And when it first came out, I had only 5 stories on there with 25 chapters total (which is considered a SHORT STORY now not the site lol). Oh, and we had 3, yes, count them, 3 Members. Two of them were pity memberships, and only ONE was a legit Member, who is STILL on the site today. It was this one Member that gave me any hope that I could make a go of this.
So where are we today?
This is the fourth iteration of the site and we're thousands of Members later! This is the most beautiful (I think so anyways) and the most user-friendly (we incorporated as many of your ideas as we could) of all the sites. I encourage you to explore the site. Look at everything. Click on every link. Check out every nook and cranny. If something doesn't work, please let us know.
Some ideas for where to start:
The Library - We really took to heart how difficult it was to see everything that there is on the site. Now, you can see stories organized neatly by genre, if you like, or by alpha.
The Reading Guides - Want to know where to start reading? Want to know which story is in which universe, let alone which one to read first. Find everything here from sequels to short stories to manga!
The Gallery - We heard you about wanting to be able to go to one place and look at all the art. Now the art will still be on the story pages, too, but this is one place to easily see everything from every story.
FAQS - Now I know that this doesn't sound like an interesting place to check out. But the FAQ is your friend. You want to know something about the site, billing, stories, people who work here? You find it in the FAQs! So do check that out. Plus it is a really cool widget.
We're not done with upgrading the site. Things that we hope to do are to (1) add a Dark Version of the site, and (2) ability to purchase prints of the art from the website itself. More to come!
Comments
My main concern was whether or not we could still go back and read (or re-read) the completed stories or older chapters as I sometimes get behind due to life but that concern was well and truly put to rest. Not only are they still there they are easy to find. The set up of the new site is beautiful and so user friendly! Thank you to all who have worked so hard on this you have out done yourselves yet again.
You thought we wouldn't have the completed serials?!? I really worry sometimes that I don't communicate effectively. Yes, of course, they are there. And I'm glad that you think that they are much easier to find. They are. I think so too.
Like I told you already when I stubled ofer the site a few week ago I adore this new website!!!! And I agree with the other coments that the reading guide and the gallery are my favorites so far!!!! So many new pictures I didn' t know!!!! And I like the icons of the different genres a lot better than then coments vampire witch etc on the old website!!!! And The new art for Elvens Kings Blade is just amazing!!!! I think I could go on gushing the whole day but I need to explore more^^
P.S and you added an edit buttom for the coments!!!! Fantastic!!!!
Everyone worked incredibly hard. Sylvia with the design and all the images (she had awesome Mathia artwork to work with), Jeremy with all the tech, and me to do the grunt work. But all of it just came together in the prettiest and most useful site. I am already loving having the blog on the site. We're going to do a lot more interactive stuff from a podcast to more polls to more just talking. I can't wait!
The site is so beautiful and an absolute joy to experience and to explore. Amazing job!
Aw, thank you so much!
I love the new site! It's so much easier to navigate, and much prettier. And all the art...! I do wish the art in the "misc" folder had captions though, some of them I don't know which story they are from and I really want to know!
There is a glitch for me on Win10 (ugh) Opera 58.0.3135.65: when reading manga on the site (which is so great now! I really hadn't read much because it was too hard to navigate before. Now I can just press -> and get a new page~~
I'll let Jeremy know. It is likely that the plugin may not be compatible with that browser. At least, you can see the manga on other browsers! But yes, many people didn't look at it because it was so small.
I'm a veteran of the late 90s scanslation scene, small I could deal with! But for whatever reason on the old site, I had to click the thumbnail of each page. _-_ Right now I just have to refresh when I hit the end of a volume and then the menus work as they should. I'm sure Jeremy will be like "...one of the members uses Opera?! No one uses Opera!" XD
LOL! Yeah, he might say that!
Hi there! I noticed that in the library, The Abyss I and the Abyss II have the same story description and subtitle; the Pact I and the Pact II have the same story description.
And this is a tiny niggle, but "The Sea" is sorted as alpha "S." I had looked for it under "M" but there's only Merman 2. I know "The Sea" was 1.0 and The Merman ebooks are the new and improved version, but I wonder if it's more confusing to not have them grouped together? Poor Sea. All alone!
Last... I will stop, I swear! "The Sea" Reading Guide doesn't have "Kidnapping Casillus" connected as a short story. I love that story...
And holy wow, I love the edit function! Awesome! And I spent a lot of time marveling at the art and the reading guides... so awesome.
Other people did the Library (ahem!) and didn't realize that there should be separate descriptions. I fixed that. No, I don't think the Sea should be by Merman 2, because Merman 2 follows Merman 1. It does not follow the Sea.
I'll have Sylvia edit the Reading Guide. Kidnapping Casillus is still on the site under Short Stories.
Gotcha! I had been looking for the Sea, just because I liked the part where Cthulu stomps them all So that's why I asked!
Saw bits of the new site a few days ago and now it's back. I love it! The formatting is so.much easier. A few questions. Is the home page going to have a link to the most recently posted story\ manga update of the day? Or do we need to check the calendar?
Have you considered doing a character encyclopedia\ dictionary? There are several characters that appear in multiple stories, but their pictures only appear in one. For instance Corey Rudman is in Sanctuary, The merman series, and the Ghost Half. I think his pic only appears in the ghost half. And of course there are others like Alric and Stephanus and Nate who have many crossovers.
On the front page and on the top of the calendar page, you will see what's been updated that day. I'm debating whether I will put manga pages in there as those are repetitive or just the chapters and events. Right now I'm leaning towards the latter. You can btw already see that on the front page what the update is.
Have you considered doing a character encyclopedia\ dictionary? That's actually a really good idea, but not right now. I need a break! The whole team does as many of us have been working at this non-stop for awhile. But yes, that's something to consider as an add-on.
This is so great! I'm fairly new so this is my first time seeing a change in format on the site. I thought the last one was pretty nifty but this....WOW! Gonna have fun exploring!
I only started seeing what was "wrong" about the old site. So to me, this feels so much better. Though I can still picture the old site in my mind and it did great work for over 5 years.
OMG!!!! This looks amazing.I LOVE IT😍🤩😍🤩😍
I sort of feel like there should be an eldritch tag on the site as well, mostly for The Sea and The Merman serials. Yes, you have humans who change to be able to breathe water, but unlike changing fully into a dragon, a tiger, a wolf (or a Canadian lynx) it's much less outwardly augmenting and much more internal. They still look human, so if one is shifted and the other is not, we don't have to worry about amazon not hosting it possibly... Don't get me wrong, I love that Cuthulu and the Unnamed One prance merrily throughout the series on the site, but especially for the Merman/Sea stories, the shifter tag doesn't seem entirely accurate. Especially since the only ones that can shift are the human born, and their shift only happens once and then they are merfolk the whole way and will (eventually) be able to breathe air as well as water as needed, as the born mers do.
this'll prolly mess with the pretty sorting tiles but it's something that really caused my right eyebrow to raise. Also, did we get rid of the deep within? i was meaning to getting around to reading that, i only had three more stories left to back read and that was one of them. that and price of passage, and the lightless
i noticed that the picture of Nate, Emrys, Ethan and Alric decorating the Christmas tree cannot be found. or am i not looking in the right spot i tried holiday, pact, and the fell/erl-king tiles in the gallery? i love that picture, it's so cute!