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As a professional web designer, it's dogshit.

As a person with eyes, it's a fucking abomination.

I hate having to keep deleting site data just to see the old layout.
I get that sites would update layouts to add quality of life adjustments and style, but the new layout here still hurts my eyes and is frustrating to use.
Changing the layout just for the sake of change is the worst way to go about it.
KEEP. THE. OLD. LAYOUT.

Example of another bug with the new format I found:
https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1234148-guess-ill-die
The upload/update date for older things is NaN, which is a bad look for a documentation/archival site.
EDIT: Wait, it’s not just old stuff, actually.

Part 2

Okay, to be honest, everything can be most easily summed up as; if something in the new UI differs in any way from the old site UI, assume it has issues/is wrong/ disliked/makes site navigation and use more difficult. This sounds like hyperbole but… the more I look the worse it gets. I’m listing the stuff I noticed since the last post but I bet if I really looked hard enough I could double this post’s length. "The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the pieces."- Aldo Leopold. I will let the fact that so much is missing speak for itself.

Previous post with other issues that were immedatly obvious. This pot is for stuff that took a little bit to find.

Image Galleries

• Clicking an image in gallery view opens new page. Generally, I just need to check something minor that is hard to see on the thumbnail and I’m done. The old site let me do it 90% faster than the loading time of the new UI. This is especially a problem for people who might try to deep dive on mobile. Having to open a new tab may cause the page to reload losing one’s place. As strange as it is, sometimes people will dig for over 100 pages of image results to find something. The old version was inarguable superior.

• No popup rollover title text for images. Site functionality broken, unless this was somehow a deliberate decision, in which case the old version was inarguable superior.

• Image mouse over text in galleries is more difficult to read. For some reason, the text pops up when you mouse over an image has been made bold which makes it more difficult to read. Good to know KYM is bucking the trend of increasing accessibility. The old version was inarguable superior.

• Trending image feed infinite scroll repeat. Trying to scroll on trending leads to the gallery scrolling indefinitely. This would normally be okay, if you wanted to see what was trending several weeks ago. The problem is that it just repeats the same images over and over again. Site error.

• Specific image galleries have “template” viewing options even when no templates exist on the site. The old site only did this for galleries that actually had templates available. The old version was inarguable superior.

Image pages

Major issues summarized in image:

• Make it obvious which text is linked and not linked by using different colors. This is something most sites, including KYM figured out nearly two decades ago. The old version was inarguable superior.

• The previous “Obviously Linked Entry Name – Image Title” at the top of images was better for multiple reasons
  - Aforementioned have linked text be obvious.
  - It was obvious which image had titles and which ones did not. Now it is not obvious.

• Forced image dimensions makes it difficult to tell how big the image uploaded Two reasons it is a problem:
  - There are lots of images on KYM that are reuploads. Obviously, the one that is better quality would be the better one to keep. The previous site layout would often make this immediately obvious as one would often be bigger than the other. Forcing images to fit within a box of pre-existing dimensions means that this can no longer be seen at a glance. The old version was inarguable superior.
  -Images where the joke only works because the image is small now just look like someone made an especially shitty image upload.

Compare the image pages on both site versions for this image:

I sure am glad a 16 × 9 pixel image has been stretched so I can see all the details /s. The old version was inarguably superior.

• Tags on images are not separated by commas. You cannot tell if a user made a massive run on tag or a bunch of tags at a glance. This is the case for both images and entries. If you were going to change them, why not make them buttons? That would make it more obvious that they were separate and they are linked. Site functionality removed, the old version was inarguable superior.

• Are you sure you want to make the “delete image” button really big like that? Users in the past have often contributed, then go on a deletion spree. Uploading the wrong image or later uploading the image at higher quality to remove the original I get, but this just makes it easier for someone to wipe all of the contributions out all at once. If they were just here to spread propaganda that’s one thing, but many made actual contributions.

Entries

• Entry view totals are no longer visible. Site error? Otherwise, the old version was inarguably superior.

• Tags on entries are not separated by commas. You cannot tell if a user made a massive run on tag or a bunch of tags at a glance. This is the case for both images and entries. If you were going to change them, why not make them buttons? That would make it more obvious that they were separate and they are linked. Site functionality removed, the old version was inarguable superior.

• A mini image gallery preview is now at the top. This feels really out of place before the body to be honest.

• The mini image gallery preview at the top of the entry page says it is "Top Gallery Images". It isn't. Why add this if you're just going to lie about it?

• Entry fields that are blank are still posted in the headers. If an entry’s origin is unknown it reads “Origin: [blank]”. Site error? Unsightly redesign issue?

• Add image/video button has been removed from the entry page. Site error, unless this was somehow deliberate, in which case the old version was inarguably superior.

• Entries list a large header for sub-entries even when no sub-entries exist. The old site only did this when they actually did exist. The old version was inarguable superior.

• Entry header lists “region” on all entries even when one is not listed, or would even make sense. Literally, why? The old version was inarguable superior.

• External references are painfully small compared to the body text. Please, increase the font size. It’s fine to be smaller than the main body text, but this is way too small. The old version was inarguable superior.

• Who is this “null” fellow, and why do they have authorization to edit entries? Site error?
  

• Site stretches out entry thumbnails to fit dimensions and seems to hate transparent backgrounds. Remember where I complained about how images are forced to fit a certain size on the image page and fills in the “extra” space with white void to force it to fit? THIS is where that would have actually have been useful. WHAT EXPLANATION IS THERE FOR IT NOT TO BE EMPLOYED HERE‽ The old version was inarguable superior.

The old site displays significantly more information in a much smaller space and is less painful to look at. To say old version was inarguable superior is an extreme understatement as to how bad the new version is.

Part 3

Search Pages

• Headers for search results no longer display search result number total for some reason.

Example:
If I search “Tomberry” on the old site I get: [Entries (5)] [Images(56)] [Videos (6)] [News (0)] [Forums (3.1k)] [Other (2)]
None of these numbers are visible on the new UI, even if you click on the results page. Better yet, ZERO USERS are listed in the user results. Site error, and site functionality removed.

• Search results headers no longer have drop down menus.
  Drop down for Entries: Confirmed, Submissions, Deadpool, All
  Drop down for Images: JPG, PNG, GIF, All
  Drop down for Forums: General, Serious Debate, Meme Research, Q & A, Video Games, Moving Images, Music, Books & Comics, Websites, Creative, Forum Games, Just For Fun, Riff-Raff, Memeory Lane, Announcements, Report Problems, Suggest Ideas, All
  Drop down for other: Editorials, Users

These are just gone. There isn’t even a way to filter this once you click the results page itself. This is especially important given the site can glitch and not show all the result pages when scrolling. Site functionality removed.

• When searching for entries, entry categories are removed. This would be better to keep, even if it was made a header.

• If an entry is NSFW, the entire thumbnail is replaced with the image NSFW thumbnail? One of the least painful changes I’m listing. The thumbnails themselves are generally fairly tame, and indeed, this makes navigation of search slightly more difficult. I get that the small NSFW button on the search thumbs isn’t super prominent but I feel like making the button bigger would be a better alternative.

• Entry search results/viewing all of x-type entry do not line up. I like how there was a lot of effort to add so much painful to look at unneeded white space to make sure things lined up and they still couldn’t do it. The old version got this spot on, how did you guys mess this up so badly? The old version was inarguable superior.
  

Frontpage

• Trending images are all cropped. In theory, I like that the trending images are larger on the frontpage. However, they are literally all badly cropped forced into dimensions that none of them use.

• Trending images, Trending entries, Active Entries, Explainers, Latest Episodes, Collections, News, and Latest section headers are not linked. Literally why? All you need is just link the word trending images to /photos/trending.

• For a site that has been trying to prioritize Click bait news, it seems really strange to put what I assume to be four top “newsy” and collection things at the top, then fill with all the other things, to only then get to the other news stories. If this was part of a “customize your frontpage” feature it might be cool. You could filter out the offensively poorly tagged “meme collections” that the reddit bot uploaded a week before the site staff reuploaded them, hide TikTok entries and just focus on new memes and anniversaries of old memes. And an option to hide all of this and just make it be a useful (not cropped) version of the trending images and trend entry feeds with the top idk 30-100 images or entries.

Sitewide/other

• Rules are no longer linked at the top of each page for some reason.The old version was inarguable superior.

• Pages do not show that you have new images in your inbox. Many people on the site only know to check this if they see the notification on every page. The old version was inarguable superior.

• List of currently trending entries has been removed from the top of all of the pages? I get that people can get heated there, but it would be preferable to just let us get rid of the users causing the problems than to cripple everyone’s ability to use the site. The old version was inarguable superior.

Thing I would complement the new design on but it’s too broken to actually use:
Okay, one thing I do legitimately like. This wasn’t obvious but it does help people who browse multiple windows at once/ do other things. When minimizing a window, thumbnail sizes shrink. Not only that, but the header options go from all being listed to a drop-down menu. This does help in some site functionality. However, this small improvement doesn’t justify anything else.
…
Unfortunately, even this is broken. Rolling over the images in the small tab view, the images actually jump out of the way, with new ones appearing. If I try to reach an image to roll-over it, very frequently, the image “runs away” before I can reach it and a new one takes its place.

Tiny improvement that I actually can't find issue with (yet?)
Images that are embedded in notes on an image page have the capacity to be larger and are now easier to see compared to the old UI. I feel this might be accidental, but it is something.

Can the staff focus on adding editable comments and the ability to revert dislikes rather than find new ways to fuck up the UI?

It's variable, sometimes you get it in one session, then in another it goes back.

literally just look at jill's posts in this thread, this has been documented extensively, with images and all

Oh boy! We doing this again!

First off, I'd like to thank Jill for the amazing description and analysis because it saves me from wasting my already limited time on doing the same.

Second, the meme image I'm using is not without reason.
It really is like the Staff, or rather the completely out of touch executives at Literally Media just don't actually understand what makes KYM what it is, or what the community that visits wants or expects. Any, and I do mean any redesign will simply never be accepted. Ever. Especially when as it already is, the site still has unresolved issues and bugs.
Even less so when Staff has been making excuses about implementing the single most requested feature for over a decade now. Guess which feature I'm talking about.

Third, let's actually talk about Literally Media.
Go ahead, click that link at the bottom of the site, and then click on each of the websites.
Looks familiar? It should.

Here's my theory on what's actually going on here.
Someone, some executive there, decided that a redesign was in order, so as to "modernize" and "SEO optimize" and all of that usual corporate garbage. And that redesign was going to be applied to all the websites under the corporate umbrella.

Unfortunately, there's a bit of a snag here.
KYM kind of has an entrenched community. An actual community if you can believe it.
See, turns out KYM is by far the larger site of the group. In fact, I would even go as far a say that without KYM, Literally Media would've collapsed and shutdown long ago.

Cracked is the very, very distant second place.
What? Cracked has almost 3 million subs on youtube? Not a single video has broken 30k views in 10 months and the website barely has 1/20th the traffic of KYM. I can show you some less than 50k or 100k subs channels that regularly bust their sub count in views. These numbers are not signs of a healthy channel.

And the other sites are all doing even worse btw.
Cheezburger being at the bottom of the barrel when it used to be so much bigger is just sad. Remember when it was called The Cheezburger Network and it was that entity that acquired KYM?. It almost makes me wonder when it'll just be taken offline, not even a question of if.
Seriously, looking up all these numbers is hella depressing.

It's clear that at this point, KYM is above 80% of all of Literally Media's incoming traffic and revenue. That for some reason it's still below a corporate entity even though it's the single biggest part of it and so far above the others is just baffling. Know Your Meme should legitimately just buy itself out of it and leave the rest to rot. Just leave, so that the community doesn't have to deal with yet ungodly stupid and unwelcome change.

Here's the point, and message, I'm getting at.
A message that I'm addressing to someone in particular.

Don
Yes, Don.
I see you there, on the Literally Media executive team as the General Manager with Know Your Meme as your charge.
Please, tell whoever it is that keeps demanding and pushing these wildly unpopular changes that literally no one in the community asked for, even if it's you yourself:
Just stop. Please

Please don't.

whatever dumbass exec greenlit this website layout change needs to have a swift, merciless kick in the nuts and a lobotomy, because lord knows someone who's had one could EASILY make a better layout than this steaming pile of shit.

You should be ashamed of yourselves, making me look at that awful, near incomprehensible layout.

Been visiting the site for over 15 years now and gotta say this new layout is terrible, borderline unusable. Redesigns are good when they improve, bad when they degrade functionality. Change for the sake of change is the wrong approach when redesigning. It looks like a jumbled buzzfeed mess. Took me much longer to find and reach the content that I looked for.

Oh my christ who the fuck approved this layout? What is wrong with you??

Yeah definitely don't like it. Sorry, please revert as much of this as possible..

Jesus Christ, this layout is getting roasted harder than a well done beef. At least I've learned my lesson about subscribing to threads like these.

It doesn't even work, the upvote/downvote buttons don't register at all.

All images i try to press gets broken.
gallery repets the same 6 images over adn over again.
I'll return when the preoblem have been sorted out

The new layout has a lot of empty space and buttons that are far too large for no discernible reason.

"Minimalistic" modern UIs like this are awful on everything other than mobile phones.

This layout is absolutely horrible. If the idea is to make the site more mobile friendly then how about just making an optional mobile version like all the other big sites do. Or better yet, make an app.

Welp the site layout just changed for me today too. Am certainly not a fan of it and can see why people want to move on from here now. It's a bit ironic since not long ago, I remember posting about being against a website ui update, and and now that same problem has been repeated.

You can't even click on an image and have the comments be displayed at the same time.

The new layout is utter trash. Not only can I not see the comments on images, but it also really chugs when loading.

I still fondly remember the old layout. The one we had like ten years ago. Never got used to the current one, and now you're fucking that one up as well.

Great.

So now that I've had more than 5 minutes with this garbage, a few more comments.

Does KYM just… not have a testing / development environment? Why in the absolute fuck is a literally functionally broken website being pushed to live production?
I work in IT, I would literally get sacked instantly for delivering something like this.

Why are the comments literally broken?
Why is the site literally breaking and not loading half the time or exceedingly slow?
Why are the front page gallery headers not linked to their galleries?
Why is there no on:hover effects on almost anything?
Why is the "Go to gallery" an extremely small and unlabeled button that took way too long to find?
Why is the gallery formatting completely broken?
Why is there so much white space everywhere?
Where the fuck did image previews go????

And, since I brought up the other Literally Media owned websites in my previous comment:
Why are the new layouts for the websites just straight stolen from other news websites like CBC, BBC, Fox?
Yes, I checked. Because I can tell this is what the Literally Media administration ultimately wants. To try and get all the juicy clicks like those "proper" news sites.

At the risk of repeating myself, unfortunately, this is not what the community frequenting KYM is here for, this is not what the community wants, this is not what the community asked for.

The old layout was, for a measure of "good", much better than this. But as some others have mentioned as well, there are some like me who have been here long enough to remember the older layout, which was actually the best.

Revert this. Just stop.

It's only been like 10 minutes since I posted the previous message and I find even more broken shit that absolutely should not even be a thing on a live production website.

So the broken comments thing, for some reason the comment counter always seems to think that there's one (1) more comment than there actually is. So when there's no comments, it keeps showing (1) even though there aren't actually any. And if there are, it adds 1 to the counter. Yes, I went and counted comments on a few posts to check.

In an image post's notes, if there is an embedded image, well… The note's image can literally end up much bigger than the actual post, which is honestly just hilarious.
See this post as an example: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2811562-vshojo

And one more:
Did you know you can now click on banned people's names with the new layout?
Yes, really. Something you couldn't do with the old layout because, you know, they were banned.
Is this the first instance of an actual added functionality with the new site? How wonderful!

I’ve been lucky so far that I haven’t seen the new layout when logging in on my computer (ah great, now that I’ve mentioned it, I fear the people who run this site will “fix” that for me. Me and my big mouth).
It seems to me that it only appears when I log in via my phone (sometimes it appears, other times it doesn’t), and yeah, it indeed does look terrible, and using the site is more complex.

I’m surprised that the new layout is being kept despite the backlash

Not a fan of the new layout. It just feels very cluttered, even when the writing isn't overlapping (which it does at several points). I feel like the organization emphasizes things I (and I suspect other users) don't use often and makes us search for the things we do frequently click. I just now attempted to click a "related entry" from an "explainer" and found it non-functional. Excessive ads often make the website unreadable. I like that the comments have been moved above the related entries, videos, images, etc. Like I said, the things we use most should be nearer the top and easy to spot and access. I like that the comments now more clearly show the upvotes and downvotes. I don't like that clicking "show more comments" is the only way to browse the comments. No longer being able to click a page number to see oldest comments or skip pages is inconvenient.

Overall, the new layout is harder to read and use.

Welp. There goes 10 years worth of muscle memory

what of Heck this new site design is not practical ,the web designer is not really good for knowyourmeme . we no longer see comments or likes, it’s awful and there are bugs

Just gonna post what I put in the KYM's discord, edits and all. If they can't be bothered, so can't I.

Okay first,

See Edit 1 ~stop rolling out UI changes without going through a test COMMUNITY group first or letting the users know en-mass like through a DM or a notice thing on the top of the page. I think there was a test drive at one point for an older site ui update-but I can't remember. That way you don't just get tons of people saying 'ew change it back' and get actual feedback.~

Now onto my reasons;

1- Its way too squished, everything looks too crowded and centered. If you're going to make something appealing to mobile users, make a separate one for them.

2- Its soulless, I don't know how to describe it more then that. It's just so bleak and I can't even tell if I've liked something or not which is a massive user feedback issue.

3- The site is somehow slower now, previous version was faster. Straight up.

4- For the front page, I most likely wouldn't be as grossed out if the top quick bar was added back. Made it easier to get where you wanted to go from as a common site user. If there is one thing to note about the front page, it needs to be de-cluttered, there are so many line breaks images, different sizing of articles all over the place. No, it needs to have a rhyme and reason. Not 'Random bullshit go!'.

5- The user icon is broken, most likely you are aware of it but I'm just noting it.

6- As noted, it's jarring to go from the new UI to the old UI on user pages. Unify these changes.

7- I can no longer get into the image page itself from the gallery with a simple click on the image itself, nor can I click off of it on the black part of the close-up image.

8- I do approve of the top image galleries taking you direct to the image galleries instead of to the meme page. That's a real good change.

9- As I look into entries, the site now suffers from the age old 'wasted space'. Again, I know this is a Mobile UI design, but keep those two separate. I know site design, I know you can do it.

That's about all from my immediate gut reaction, I know I am an oldie user and I have a bias, but some of these are actual issues like the slower site and UI Feedback. Hoping we can salvage this together, but I will vote on changing the UI back for now until this new one has had more time to cook.

Thank you.

Edits

1- Seems like there was a community tested one, but the awareness of it could had been far better spread.

2- Found the way to go back to the old site design as noted above, but ironically it isn't in the 'more' section from the quick bar, but in the hamburger button (the triple bars) which further obscures it.

When you're a website about "memes" and you can't actually find the pages talking about the "memes" due to horrendous design.

Meanwhile I'll probably migrate to another website hoping it's going to be corrected at some point.

In any cases, if you want to improve something for the design, "memes" and the "comment section" should be the main thing to focus so that people can easily find them.

"articles" and "news" should be secondary.

Part 4

Site layout on desktop changed back for me unprompted. Hoping that this is because issues were taken to heart and not because the people responsible were tired of me pointing out how actively worse it made the site.

Was slowly collecting more issues since the last post. Not as full yet and with luck I won't need to make a part 5. Still, since I already had it written up, I feel it would be a waste not to share them, though site screencaps are not able to be provided now.

Comments

• There is no link to individual comments. The previous version of the site allowed for you to click the “x time ago” below the username to link to a specific comment. This is just completely gone now. Really nice for mods to just leave a vague “you know what you did” warning because we can’t link the exact response. Even better when we get a “why was user banned thread” and instead of linking all their infractions on the site all we can say is dig a few hundred comments down and maybe you can find their offending post. Malicious site sabotage?

Entries

• Citations in entries increase the line spacing of the text. Site error?

• Resizing an entry makes the thumbnail look awful. At a certain point, resizing the window shrinks the thumbnail in all dimensions. It maintain the metadata on the meme (Category, Status, Origin, Region, Type, Tags) at the same size next the entry thumbnail. However, after a certain point of sizing down, it suddenly jumps to being huge, poor quality, and poorly cropped. It also forces the Meme metadata out of the frame. Site Error?

• On an entry, if a user who worked on the entry has deactivated, this is not reflected in the editor list. A former moderator who has deactivated and has left the site for several years is still listed as a moderator. Minor issue.

Search Engine

• Entry search has “Uploaded by Unknown”. First is the “unknown” error. But second… This is one case where the person who created the thing might be better not to be credited. There are lots of users that just make entries at a bare bone outline. Why is it important information in the search that 13 year old throwaway account that made three posts a decade ago created an entry? This is epscially true as Don has told us to keep entries with “the correct name” even if they were made by trolls (and even if they contain obvious slurs like hard N-word). Yes, still have this visible in the entry itself, but in the search results, this is distracting, especially when it is extremely common for the entry creator to have done little more than click the submit entry button. Useless feature added that I see causing issues that were not present before it was implemented.

Images

• Images cannot be marked as OC and link to a source page. The previous version of the site allowed for someone to upload an image with a source field while also marking it as OC. Lots of artists would upload relevant art while plugging in the site it was uploaded to (DeviantArt, Tumblr, Twitter, New Grounds, etc.) the new version of the site removes this (literally, as far as I can tell, the information in the source field is just completely gone from the visible image page) and is replaced with a illegible dark blue button with black text that links to all images marked OC on the site based on newest. Is there not a way to link it to the specific uploader? It would make much more sense to link all OC images uploaded by the user that uploaded the image than just all marked OC images on the site. Site functionality removed, the old version was inarguable superior.

Tiny improvement that I actually can't find issue with (yet?) but is something I don't see anyone caring about.

• On an image page, below the image itself, there is a “Origin Entry: [entry name]”. If that entry name has a mobile summary, the Entry name now has roll over text that is the mobile summary. This is a change that I would argue is more good than bad, but it is so minor and insignificant, I do not believe anyone has requested it or will miss it being gone.

• Mod specific Issue
  Admin area button is gone from frontpage. There is no way to access site data that helps us find certain issues with the site that I've had access to for overa decade. Site Error? Functionality removed?

I dont like it, it looks so alien and unwelcoming. It looks like an ugly web design from 2000s. Why anyone thought it even looks good? Maybe if they started a new site, then maybe.

Change it back or let it bake in the over for a few more month at very least, plz.

Hey… is it me or does somebody else having the issue of NO FEEDBACK whatsoever ? If I upvote a comment it doesnt have any feedback, the counter doesnt go up , no color changes, nothing.

when I move over the mouse on stuff it doesnt show anything, not even the page color changes… the stuff goes properly once I reload the page , but I am not reloading the page every time I wanna see if something actually worked

aditionally … a lot of textile quirks no longer work on the new layout.

I really just dislike everything about the new layout, the biggest thing is that so much of what's on screen was highlighted and considered important, when with the current layout main items we want to see are still the primary focus and get the most real estate.

When everything is important on the homepage, nothing is.

Ok so on mobile atleast i've now been struck by the new site layout, and the one thing i'll say on it is something that i don't think anyone's brought up yet; you can now see the upvote/downvote score without mousing over the thumbs up/down icon, which to my knowledge is impossible on mobile.

I'm not saying i think this new layout overall is a good thing, but atleast it seemed to do something right i guess

it finally effected in my end today. and wow, it looks like shit.

is there some form of settings in which I can change it back because I can't find it on my profile account.

[edited]
nevermind, I found it on the main header on the site. but seriously, is it even there instead of the user's own setting options? is the spaghetti code is that bad?

Thanks I hate it.

the web designer is not really good ,we no longer see comments or likes,the amateurism of the site designed at the beginning of 2000 by its design of the site it is still very buggy

the like buttons and the dis-like buttons under comment under image its bug also

Absolute cancer
The old Ui was intuitive and displayed everything in an organized, easy to read way.
The new one has absurdly large thumbnail scaling and wayyy too many in-site ads

Reading all these comments kind of makes me worried.

WHAT'S THIS HOW DO I GO BACK