I like the staff
i don't like that the activity levels have massively decreased since I joined but that's not really something we can fix.

I like how many people get into discussing the comic, I dislike that the only thing the reliably will talk about on it is the latest page

Thing to improve: search engine, if possible, should include the subforums. Example: if I want to search 'xxxxx' in a thread under 'roleplaying', I'd like that option (Applegate, BPS, ecc., not just 'roleplaying')
Thank you for listening

an alternate layout when loaded on a phone that's optimmized for a smaller screen, while retaining the standard layout on everything else would be nice.

I second what Buster said. Also, out of curiosity, there a way to make rp easier on a phone? This setup is not user friendly for that stuff when you prefer using that for it

considering i asked for that two years ago and got more or less "we're not sure how to do that" as a response... don't hold your breath.

shame, but what can you do?

Likes: the fans and fanart and casual activity of the forums. and the comic comments. <3
Dislikes: The forums i find are too simple in terms of design and color. I feel it could be better. Would be fun to see holiday themes or Saturdays/Sundays be cat/dog day =P

EDIT: I forgot to add that it's not that the forums were always like this. It's just something i felt that needs to be changed to spice it up a bit. Like a new paint job. x3

I wish I could like or give a thumbs up to what Cobra just said, is that a possibility?

It's fine. It's a pain to read on mobile though.

I would like to ability to block specific posts from view. Just individual posts from certain people who have a tendency to raise my blood pressure.

Also I I want to be able to “like” posts. There are some really good ones that deserve some love.

Fenrir, we do have a Friend and Foe mechanic here, though I haven't tested it yet, but the description implies that foes won't typically be seen by the user. Maybe give that a shot if you absolutely need to? It's under the User Control Panel.

I don’t want to block users just specific posts.Trust me I’ve tried. Block is a strong word. Hide specific posts from view. Those rare moments when someone posts six paragraphs about something irrelevant or you may not agree with.

Also we need the ability to delete our posts after someone else posts after us. I don’t know why that’s not a thing. There have been many posts I would have like to have simply deleted instead of having to change the words to n/a.

This is a request for the RP section, is there a way to get something like a dice throwing mechanic working on the forum? While I don’t think they’d use it much in the slice of life ones, there are a few I think that could benefit from it

Let me tell you about the card game page. When I first started doing it I posted pictures 3 at a time with the "upload" function. It wasn't until D-Rock told what to actually do I realized there was a better way. But by that point it was too late and we had 5 or 6 really large unnecessary posts that I couldn't get rid of. So I had to deleted the text but since you have to put something there or the program won't let you finish, I ended up putting n/a for each post and waited for someone else to delete them for me instead of just doing it myself and saving everyone's time.
And again there are some really embarrassing posts that would have been better off deleted and forgotten. Sometimes there are things said that we regret the next morning. Not necessarily bad just regrettable.

The Staff does an excellent job of monitoring this site although problems arise from the automatic censor. I'm still chuckling over how the "prude-program" substituted several unique words to blot out the name of Walt Disney's "B. O. N. G. ooooo." the bear which I unsuccessfully tried to reference. I'm uncomfortable with forum members taking the place of staff in blocking or deleting other members; that could get nasty and a lot of folks work really hard on their entries even if some of them get a bit "windy". If you want to delete a post you regret, try edit...I've done it many more than once. Rgards.

And...for what it's worth...while most of the comments are well-intended and reflect a genuine concern for Rick's personal well-being, I would like to very humbly suggest that what Rick needs is not a break from the strip. I think what he might like is that we all quit speculating about "what's wrong with Rick" for a while and let him art. We're getting a little intrusive sometimes and, meaning no disrespect, Rick owes us no accountability for his muse or his moods.

There's so much other good stuff to chat on.

First off, none of the members are deleting other members and no one is taking anyone's place. Second, blocking exists for a reason if someone you don't like just for whatever reason posts often then it is perfectly reasonable for your own well-being to avoid seeing those posts. And for the last time why is deleting an old post such a strange concept? All the social media sites do it and it's such a basic function. You don't like something you wrote and you get of it. It's not an e-mail where once it's gone it's gone. You can still edit the posts so why not just remove it entirely.

As a note, listing points off in that manner may come off to other people as more hostile than you intended
Deleting posts can break up the flow of a conversation causing confusion for anyone who later reads the thread. You certainly can still achieve the same effect by editing, but at least people can get an idea of what happened. On the other hand, mods can always delete posts if need be, so for example, if the card posts are big and pointless/redundant at this point you could PM a mod about removing them

He means only blocking himself from seeing their posts, not blocking them from the forums entirely.

phpBB has responsive styles built into it that optimize for any screen size. My guess would be that the current HP! style this forum is using is not 100% compatible with that. The main phpBB forum is pretty smooth for mobile use.
A temp solution would be to use a stock phpBB style and try and tailor the colors for HP until a true responsive-compatible style is made.

The only quibble I have is a minor one. When receiving the e-mail updates, a similarly based forum I'm on tells you the name of the person updating - "This topic has received a reply by <insert name here>' or "you have been quoted by <insert name here>" and I often find that useful and wonder why this forums' alerts don't include the information.

Other than that, I enjoy the posters here. I don't agree with everyone on everything but what the hey? I'll never agree with everyone on everything but they have a perfect right to be wrong, as do I. So long as things are polite, it's no bother.

I actually used my secondary email to make an account so I don’t tend to see those notifications, so I’d also like the idea of the forum giving notifications on things other than PMs

What if there was a separate page for each chapter. Like a place like where we talk about each strip but for the chapter overall. Considering how many times we spent discussing the overall chapter and/or comic instead of the specific strip, I think it may be a good idea to have a separate space for the two.

The work load I’m betting is what would determine if they do that or not. There are a ton of chapters... and temple crashers would be a conundrum to figure out what to do with, and to a lesser extent the other multiple part chapters

for the record we did used to make discussion threads for each Arc instead of each comic, but that was back when each strip had comments before it. when we got rid of that we had need of a new place for discussion of single strips, so we started making them per strip instead. I think it would be too cluttered to do both, especially in the "old comic discussion" section. and going back to just the arc threads would discourage new users who want to comment on one comic specifically and end up being in the middle of an ongoing conversation, or if they want to comment on a previous comic for an ongoing arc an would have to worry about spoilers.

Are there any plans to move to HTTPS? I'm starting to get the little warning symbol in my browser. Google's going to flag all unencrypted sites as potentially insecure moving forward.

Security-wise it's unnecessary to switch the forums to https, since we don't deal with any information that needs to be secure. As far as I know, there are no plans to change.

Just remember: Make your passwords unique, e'rybody!

I like how Rick Griffin comes to the forums occasionally. It's not like you can read Harry Potter and they chat with J. K. Rowling about it. That alone sets Housepets! aside from just about all other media. I'm sure there is a lot on the forums that I take for granted, but since I take them for granted, I can't put everything into words.


*Disclaimer: I don't know how feasible changing the following are, but they are stuff I'd be happy to see improved*
The search bar could use an upgrade. The three letter minimum can be annoying, but more troublesome is it throwing out words "because they are too common". I don't have a specific example off hand, but there will be times where I'm looking for a specific post that I remember only one phrase from word-for-word and the program will throw out most or all of the search terms so I'm left with too many results or no results.

I would like more manual control over the unread feature. From what I've seen, it appears right now opening a page will mark the last post on it and every one before it as read. If I click on the wrong topic by accident, get linked to a topic, or there are more new posts than I expected, I feel compelled to read everything so later I can trust that I have indeed read everything that is blue. Because the system only marks stuff as unread if the post was made after your account, when I'm looking through old threads it doesn't keep track for me what I've seen already. This last bit is related to the automatic side of marking read posts. If someone edits their post, the only indication is on the post itself, so there isn't a way to know if a change has been made unless you stumble upon their post again.

I agree with Gameb18oy in that I don't like how most of the comic discussion occurs on the latest strip and nearly all of the discussion occurs within the past few strips. The forum rules as written look to made with the idea of only prohibiting posting on an old thread with the sole intent of bumping it. Socially, however, I feel like if you post on something that old, you're expected to have made a very significant discovery like the answer to the tile puzzle. I understand that members that have been here a while may not have any interest in commenting on old strips because they've said their piece when the strips were new, but newer members don't have that luxury. I can't speak too much for others, but when I joined after reading the archive, I had stuff to say about old strips, but everyone else was commenting on the newest strips so I followed their example. By now I've forgotten most of what I would've said.

There's really nothing stopping you from posting on an old thread if you do indeed have something you want to say. What we have issue with is bumping for the sake of bumping, as opposed to bumping because you have something to add to the conversation. There are moments were a somewhat older piece is brought back for talking.

I don’t recall saying this here, so I’m guessing you meant I said it somewhere else. On that idea though, perhaps it be a little less uncomfortable for people to comment on older comics if there was more diversification to separate them. The most obvious way would be to sort the comics into subfolders that are in certain arcs, but maybe you could also separate them by the art style of the time, like the black and white comics, the first ones with color, and the ones with the first redesigns present in them. Could also sort the old fan comics somewhere as well, be nice if they had a spotlight on them, as aside from giving Rick a break, I assume that’s why he intially started posting them

Know this might need some restriction if it could be abused and/or it may be its already present and I just don’t know how to use it, but is there a way to tag certain people in your replies?

I was taking what you said and building off of it. I'm sorry if it seemed I was implying everything I said In my last paragraph were views also shared by you. The (dis)organization of the Old Comic Discussion does play a part in making it harder to post on older strips, but I didn't mention that because I'm in the middle of creating an in-depth solution to that problem. I didn't mention I was creating a solution earlier because no one brought it up and, pardon my flair for the dramatic, I was hoping my unveiling would be a surprise.

As far as I know, the best existing way to tag someone would be to, after you submit your post, click the PM button at the bottom and send that to any user you want to be notified. It's not perfect because there is a limit of five people per PM, so you'd have to send multiple PMs if you want to tag more than five people, and it will take space in inboxes and outboxes if you're concerned with that. Really though, those downsides aren't that big of a deal.

It really depends on if people are comfortable with being messaged just to see "hey, I answered you in the threads." Seems pointless to me.

One thing I would really like to see is the content of the post you get an email notification about in the email itself.

Instead of clicking the link to view the post or reply, it would be in the email. That way I can just read it then, then post later.

Hey, could we get text alignments? What if we would want our text to be centered or aligned right. Either I'm dumb, or the site doesn't have tags for text alignments.

What he said.

I really like the forum as is, actually.
The only thing that even comes close to complaint is the backround being to bright-white.
Maybe a %10 darker shade? Or I don't know, a pattern with dog-bones and fishes in cheerful colours?