Important Site Announcement
Posted: 01 Apr 2010 12:18 am
Hello everyone!
No doubt you'll have seen the changes we've made to the site today, and if you haven't, we encourage you to take a look round the Neopets section in particular, because that's going to be the blueprint for this site from now on.
The changes are necessary because we've recently been informed by our webhosts that they will be changing the fee structure for hosting. Previously, the agreement was that providing we didn't exceed a bandwidth cap, a flat fee would be charged to cover the hosting of this site. However, for the new financial year, they've implemented a policy designed to drastically reduce their image traffic: they've decided that they will now be charging by the metre for images. This, unfortunately, hits us fairly hard, because by my calculations, this site uses approximately 408 square feet of pet images alone. This is the same size as a stegosaurus, so you can see why we're concerned.
Ty and I have been searching for a solution, and we believe this is the best compromise available: we will continue to provide the site, but it will be stripped of all images, and pets will be displayed as text only.
You might be balking at this, but don't worry: we've worked hard on the quality of our display, and feel confident that you will barely notice the difference. We have had to sacrifice some detail, but the overall viewing experience has hardly changed!
For those of you who are thinking that only the Neopets section of the site has been updated, this is true for now, but the forum and Subeta section will shortly be converted to match. We have prepared some sample pages to show you how this will look for our Subeta pages, starting with Field, Glade and Scribble. People have always pointed out how similar certain Subeta species look, and we've listened to you in producing our new graphics! Technical limitations have also forced us not to include buttwings on pets, but we're sure you won't miss them. We considered wiping the pet ratings and making people re-rate them after the updates, but we came to the conclusion that it wouldn't be necessary given how faithful our versions are to the originals.
We hope you appreciate the need for these changes, and look forward to your feedback
Sample pages:
Subeta Field pets
Subeta Glade pets
Subeta Scribble pets
Post-customisation Neopets
The Neopets pose viewer
No doubt you'll have seen the changes we've made to the site today, and if you haven't, we encourage you to take a look round the Neopets section in particular, because that's going to be the blueprint for this site from now on.
The changes are necessary because we've recently been informed by our webhosts that they will be changing the fee structure for hosting. Previously, the agreement was that providing we didn't exceed a bandwidth cap, a flat fee would be charged to cover the hosting of this site. However, for the new financial year, they've implemented a policy designed to drastically reduce their image traffic: they've decided that they will now be charging by the metre for images. This, unfortunately, hits us fairly hard, because by my calculations, this site uses approximately 408 square feet of pet images alone. This is the same size as a stegosaurus, so you can see why we're concerned.
Ty and I have been searching for a solution, and we believe this is the best compromise available: we will continue to provide the site, but it will be stripped of all images, and pets will be displayed as text only.
You might be balking at this, but don't worry: we've worked hard on the quality of our display, and feel confident that you will barely notice the difference. We have had to sacrifice some detail, but the overall viewing experience has hardly changed!
For those of you who are thinking that only the Neopets section of the site has been updated, this is true for now, but the forum and Subeta section will shortly be converted to match. We have prepared some sample pages to show you how this will look for our Subeta pages, starting with Field, Glade and Scribble. People have always pointed out how similar certain Subeta species look, and we've listened to you in producing our new graphics! Technical limitations have also forced us not to include buttwings on pets, but we're sure you won't miss them. We considered wiping the pet ratings and making people re-rate them after the updates, but we came to the conclusion that it wouldn't be necessary given how faithful our versions are to the originals.
We hope you appreciate the need for these changes, and look forward to your feedback
Sample pages:
Subeta Field pets
Subeta Glade pets
Subeta Scribble pets
Post-customisation Neopets
The Neopets pose viewer