Drivethrurpg redesign not working - just me or everyone?

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raniE

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So, not sure if this is the right subforum for this (or if there is one that is right for this), but is it just me or has Drivethru completely destroyed their site with this redesign? Apart from me not liking it (that's mainly aesthetics), the search function hasn't worked for me there for days now. It works fine on DMs Guild, Drivethru comics and Drivethru fiction, all of which are still using the old design, but when I tried searching for the exact same book on DMs Guild and Drivethrurpg, DM's Guild returned results within a second, while Drivethru just loaded results for ten minutes and then just went back to the main page. Am I the only one having issues with the redesign, or is it a more widespread problem?

edit: okay, got a response from them, quicker than I thought, that they're aware of the issue and are working to resolve it. How is rolling back to the previous design, the one that clearly still works, not the answer? I hate it when companies do this. The redesign fixes none of the actual complaints I had about the UI, makes some things worse and clearly isn't finished and doesn't work. Why do people think websites need to be updated? It looked fine.
 
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It's not live for me yet - I still see the old design - but the last time I tried it, it was utterly broken across all browsers on all operating systems. I have no idea what they're web developers are doing, but if they don't get a clue before that rolls out en masse, they're going to have a train wreck on their hands.
 
Seems to be working for me now, and back on Monday when I bought something.
 
It's not live for me yet - I still see the old design - but the last time I tried it, it was utterly broken across all browsers on all operating systems. I have no idea what they're web developers are doing, but if they don't get a clue before that rolls out en masse, they're going to have a train wreck on their hands.
Justifying their pay checks I would assume. And/or some middle manager was sold some stupid idea by some consultant. At the moment, the site is absolute garbage for me. Is there anyway to go back to using the old design once they've foisted this on you? Last time they tried it there was, but I'm not sure there is now, they may have started full scale migration. I can't find it at least.
 
Can you send a screen shot of this new design? I've tried it on a couple of browsers and it looks the same.
And I have always had issues w/their search bar. One thing I miss that helped w/B&N or Amazon were ISBN numbers. Makes things easier sometimes.
 
Sure. Currently trying to go back to not using it, hashing it out with their customer support. Editing the cookies as suggested has not helped so far. And while the search may never have been great, at least the old site tended to give you some result, especially if you had a full title. Not so much this new one.

drivethruredesigncookienogo.pngdrivethruredesigncookienogo.png
 
The only problem I had was at checkout and only on my mobile browser.
 
Sure. Currently trying to go back to not using it, hashing it out with their customer support. Editing the cookies as suggested has not helped so far. And while the search may never have been great, at least the old site tended to give you some result, especially if you had a full title. Not so much this new one.

View attachment 40503
Woah.
When did this start? I've been on firefox, brave, & chrome in the last week & hadn't seen this.
 
Woah.
When did this start? I've been on firefox, brave, & chrome in the last week & hadn't seen this.
It's being rolled out in stages. I guess I'm one of the (un)lucky ones. Oh well. Too bad there's no real competition in the online rpg sales department or I'd just head over there.
 
As a comparison, here are Drivethrurpg, new design, and DMs Guild, old design, with the same search input.
drivethrunewsearch.png

Drivethruoldsearch.png
Note that as I type this, the new site is still spinning and showing no results, and it's been about five minutes now. DMs Guild found the title in less than a second.

Drivethruoldsearch.png

drivethrunewsearch.png
 
It's pretty bad. Aside from the above complaints, you also don't have the "You've already purchased this title" and a handy little button to redownload said purchase, without going into your library and searching. Which is slow.

It's not the final offering, so I really hope they sort things out because if not, it could get messy.
 
Once the cookie thing didn't work, all I got back was a boilerplate response and then that was it. I hate this bullshit, and I've been on the other side of it at work, where we were rolling out changes that were not ready because management had a plan, and their timetable hadn't accounted for such variables as "doesn't work" or "needs more development time". So, is there any sort of alternative to Drivethru? There's Warehouse23, but that's mainly for SJGs own stuff.
 
I vaaaaaaaaastly prefer the old interface.
 
I managed to fix it. Well, they got back to me with better info. You need to edit the cookie "phnx_test_group" to have a value of "60000" (without the quotes). That gets you back to the old (and functioning) site. So hopefully that's just useful to anyone else who gets transferred over to the new design before it's working.
 
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Ok that's it.

Does anyone know how to edit that cookie in Chrome? I've tried a few times but the instructions seem out of date in that, what they describe and what I see (in Chrome), are different.
 
DrivethruRPG still shows up as the old webpage format for me.
The most annoying thing is for the last few weeks it opens up in French, and I have to keep reseting the page to English with the Chrome translate function, but no biggie.
 
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I managed to fix it. Well, they got back to me with better info. You need to edit the cookie "phnx_test_group" to have a value of "60000" (without the quotes). That gets you back to the old (and functioning) site. So hopefully that's just useful to anyone else who gets transferred over to the new design before it's working.
And done. Thank you
 
DrivethruRPG still shows up as the old webpage format for me.
The most annoying thing is for the last few weeks it opens up in French, and I have to reseting the page to English with the Chrome translate function, but no biggie.
Yeah, the new website still has "preview" at the start of its url, but the only way to opt out of the preview if your IP has been selected for the honor is to edit your cookies. So that kind of sucks.
 
So, is there any sort of alternative to Drivethru?
The only one I know of that sells things other than their own is https://itch.io. I use it whenever possible, but the creators themselves hamper the growth of my library by offering things on either DTRPG or itch. Like giving you both is some big inconvenience to them. Itch has it's own problems, though, being created primarily for computer/browser games- ttrpg really came into its own with the demise of G+ and the rise (and fall) of the ttrpg community there.

It's still the best place for game jams though.
 
The only one I know of that sells things other than their own is https://itch.io. I use it whenever possible, but the creators themselves hamper the growth of my library by offering things on either DTRPG or itch. Like giving you both is some big inconvenience to them. Itch has it's own problems, though, being created primarily for computer/browser games- ttrpg really came into its own with the demise of G+ and the rise (and fall) of the ttrpg community there.

It's still the best place for game jams though.

As a publisher I can state that there are two different accounts with DrivethruRPG. Some publishers are exclusive with DrivethruRPG and cannot put their digitals elsewhere except their own website.
 
I don't know if this is related to the problems people are having, but I failed to purchase something today because my password didn't work and the auto-generated email to reset it never arrived in my in or junk boxes. I wonder if they are having more generalized site management problems as they bring the new design on line.
 
DrivethruRPG still shows up as the old webpage format for me.
The most annoying thing is for the last few weeks it opens up in French, and I have to keep reseting the page to English with the Chrome translate function, but no biggie.
Have you changed the language (to correct it at least)?

You can do this in the bottom right corner of the desktop page. Mine always defaults to USD so I have to visit that area regularly.
 
The only one I know of that sells things other than their own is https://itch.io. I use it whenever possible, but the creators themselves hamper the growth of my library by offering things on either DTRPG or itch. Like giving you both is some big inconvenience to them. Itch has it's own problems, though, being created primarily for computer/browser games- ttrpg really came into its own with the demise of G+ and the rise (and fall) of the ttrpg community there.

It's still the best place for game jams though.
I really can't stand itch. Horrible interface. Hard to find things. Pretty sure no indication you've purchased things already if you go to a page. And just not much that interests me overall there.

Ill be amazed if DTRPG doesn't listen to the negative feedback and make changes to deal with it. If I were to guess they finally have gotten far enough along on the redesign to where they need feedback and they haven't received enough voluntary feedback from the link asking for people to look. Now they're forcing some people so they actually get users and their feedback.
 
I only use itch.io when links from other places take me right to the thing I want to look at and perhaps purchase. I refuse to browse. Ugh.
 
As a publisher I can state that there are two different accounts with DrivethruRPG. Some publishers are exclusive with DrivethruRPG and cannot put their digitals elsewhere except their own website.
Oh, yes, I know that case. That bump you get from exclusive is pretty miniscule, but I know people do that.

But I'm talking about when they offer an itch link or a dtrpg link when fulfilling, and if you have libraries in both places you have to choose one or the other.
 
Oh, yes, I know that case. That bump you get from exclusive is pretty miniscule, but I know people do that.

But I'm talking about when they offer an itch link or a dtrpg link when fulfilling, and if you have libraries in both places you have to choose one or the other.
I'd like a GOG app for all the rpg sites. So I know what I have where without going through a bunch of accounts.
 
I'd like a GOG app for all the rpg sites. So I know what I have where without going through a bunch of accounts.
Yeah, that won't happen. Just like you won't have Gog and Steam consolidated. Each site has its own app, though.
 
Yeah, that won't happen. Just like you won't have Gog and Steam consolidated. Each site has its own app, though.
I thought the GOG app linked to steam using your credentials? I swear my friend is using his GOG app to link his Amazon, Microsoft, Steam and GOG games all in one location.
 
Have you changed the language (to correct it at least)?

You can do this in the bottom right corner of the desktop page. Mine always defaults to USD so I have to visit that area regularly.
Yeah I'm doing that. Sometimes the page is in English, yet other times it's all in French.
It's a little annoying, but I just change it whenever it does that.
 
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I thought the GOG app linked to steam using your credentials? I swear my friend is using his GOG app to link his Amazon, Microsoft, Steam and GOG games all in one location.
Oh... I see how they're doing it. They have a plugin for GOG Galaxy. So it's not GOG, it's the community. It being open source and steam (and others) having an API enabled it. Officially they have Epic and Xbox live, and otherwise they have a lot more through plugins. It seems that you still need the client, you just don't have to have it running. But all in all, pretty cool! I didn't know they'd added that!

You could theoretically do the same for DTRPG, as I think they have an API- just not sure if it's public. The Itch.io client is FOSS, so you could definitely hook in with that. Lulu, I doubt would have something. And others, they'd be bespoke.

The different platforms and such for GOG are listed in a github repo (though GOG has now added the ability to update them in the interface)
 
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I really can't stand itch. Horrible interface. Hard to find things. Pretty sure no indication you've purchased things already if you go to a page. And just not much that interests me overall there.

Ill be amazed if DTRPG doesn't listen to the negative feedback and make changes to deal with it. If I were to guess they finally have gotten far enough along on the redesign to where they need feedback and they haven't received enough voluntary feedback from the link asking for people to look. Now they're forcing some people so they actually get users and their feedback.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t listen (and I’ve used the little comment to express how much I don’t like the new design). Money has been put into this, and it’s probably someone’s pet project. Scrapping the whole thing would embarrass them, and ultimately humans are the ones making the decisions at companies and humans don’t want to be embarrassed. They’ll try to iron out the worst of it, making search work for instance, but I’ve seen enough horrible decisions by companies that they don’t surprise me anymore.
 
I thought the GOG app linked to steam using your credentials? I swear my friend is using his GOG app to link his Amazon, Microsoft, Steam and GOG games all in one location.
So I updated GOG, linked my accounts, waited for them to sync and... yeah, it shows them. But it doesn't work for launching them.
 
So I updated GOG, linked my accounts, waited for them to sync and... yeah, it shows them. But it doesn't work for launching them.
Ok it just tells you which app to use to launch. My friend has thousands of games spread across too many sites so this is a huge boon for him.
 
Ok it just tells you which app to use to launch. My friend has thousands of games spread across too many sites so this is a huge boon for him.
It's supposed to work to launch, but it doesn't seem to. Maybe something broke with all of the steam updates. I can imagine as frequently as Steam updates, it would be hard to keep up.
 
And now the links to products under "Customers Who Bought this Title also Purchased" aren't working on the old site. Come on Drivethru, this redesign is a bad idea, just skip it, don't do it.
 
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