What’s New On Sir TapTap.com? (March Updates)

Been a lot of changes on SirTapTap.com lately, but mostly stuff you might not have noticed without looking. So let’s list ’em all up in a big ol’ post!

New Content

I’ve had several “series” in mind for this site for a long time and hadn’t really gotten started on them until recently. As of today, three of them have gotten started and I’m proud of them. They’ve all been added into the header menu for ease of navigation.

Free Points

Free Points is a new series of weekly (actually) free game recommendations, ranging from flash games to games on Steam, from traditional platformers to surreal Alt Games. I’m slightly behind on them as I write this, but they’ll be back soon!

Finer Points

I’m allowed to use the same spikeball-related pun once more than once, right? Ahem. Anyway, Finer Points is a series of UX-focused articles on game design and design in general, particularly the little touches that have a big effect (positive or negative) on the whole experience.

Tap Into YouTube

I’m a YouTuber as well as a writer and developer, so Tap Into YouTube is my series for discussing gaming-related YouTube stuff. It’s both for YouTubers to learn the ins-and-outs of YouTube’s workings (both technical and social), and also for game developers/PR people to learn about how to get the most out of their interactions with YouTubers.

I noticed a lot of devs make some common mistakes in reaching out, so I hope Tap Into YouTube will help make it at least a bit easier.

Patron Benefits (Beta)

A major feature that was added was the Patreon Login Page where my patrons can log in with their Patreon accounts to get the following benefits based on their monthly pledge:

  • $1 – Current Month’s Parker Pictures
  • $2 – No ads on SirTapTap.com
  • $5 – Early Access videos & full archive of past Parker pictures

The feature is only in “Beta” because of an odd conflict with my Progressive Web App caching; the caching makes the site crazy-fast, but it unfortunately sometimes caches the “logged out” copy of a page, so logged in users may occasionally see ads or be initially refused from Patron-only pages; these issues are cleared on a page refresh.

It’s not the biggest issue in the world but I’d really like to stamp out that last bug before rolling it out of Beta.

AbyssRium

Disclaimer: To get this out of the way, I’m not affiliated with the AbyssRium devs in any way…they don’t even reply to my support requests! And nope, “Sir Tap Tap” has nothing to do with “Tap Tap Fish”—it’s been my name for 9 years, and it’s based on enemies called Tap-Taps in Yoshi’s Island for SNES!

So AbyssRium’s been a bit of a contentious issue lately; the developers have made some major changes to the game and players aren’t very happy. I talked of leaving the whole thing and no longer updating my guide (though I would always leave it up for players to use as I do with all my guides).

The more recent update shows some signs of improvements, though not quite a full return to quality. For now I’ll still be making guides, but I’m very unhappy with the game’s direction and if players continue to abandon the game due to its hostility to players I may leave. But not yet.

New Features

Lots of new little features were added as well!

Better Progressive Web App Functionality

I kinda broke offline caching for a bit in my Progressive Web App, and in the process of fixing it I made it better than ever!

If you don’t know what a PWA is, going to “add to Homescreen” from most Mobile Browsers will add a shortcut to your mobile device’s Homescreen. On supported browsers and devices, these pages will actually act similar to full-blown “native” apps with (opt-in) push notifications, offline caching, special UI, and if you use Chrome on modern Android versions the app can even be put in your App drawer. 

The SirTapTap.com PWA has the following features:

  • An adorable TapTap (spikeball) icon for your homescreen
  • Instant access to the Guide Index, one tap away from any major part of my site
  • Offline caching for fast page speed and offline access of previously visited pages
    • Also a more pleasant “offline” page that still features full UI!
  • Ad-free guides supported for logged-in Patreon supporters
  • A minimal  browser UI will now be shown, so “Find On Page” functionality is available
  • Interest-based Push Notifications (optional)
  • Firefox & Mobile Safari now support PWAs, including SirTapTap.com!

Better Search

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SirTapTap.com Year In Review 2017

Once again I’m a bit later than I planned, but that’s just how things go! Here’s how things have been doing on SirTapTap.com, my Youtube, and all the other stuff I do. I did one of these last year and after reading both posts over myself, I’m quite happy in the change in tone, it really was a great year.

Patreon & Donations

Despite some initially troubling changes that Patreon swiftly reversed, it’s been a good year on Patreon for me. We’ve exceeded $100 a month and, while the fee change halted my momentum, things seem to be back on track there. At $200 monthly I’ll have a special Paker Cam stream!

Several very generous people have also donated via PayPal, which is another valid way to support me.

Thanks so much to everyone who’s supported me no matter how, how much, or on what platform! You all made it a great 2017 and will help make an even better 2018!

New Server

As I mentioned in an earlier post I’ve recently moved to Linode after initially using Namecheap hosting. There were various factors involved in the move but there’s a time when shared hosting simply isn’t enough for a site and I was pretty much there, with fairly regular downtime on Namecheap’s SSD tier.

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What’s New on SirTapTap.com?

It’s been a busy month on SirTapTap.com, but perhaps not in a particularly visible way, so I thought I’d post a little update.

$100 a month on Patreon!

Before getting into the nitty gritty of the site changes, I’d like to thank all my Patreons! My monthly contributions have grown, just recently activating the $100 goal, reducing ads on this here site! I keep ads sparse in general, only putting them on Guides (the highest effort and highest traffic pages), but the moonshot goal is to not need ads if my Patreon grows large enough.

That’s why the next goal is $200 where I can turn off another ad unit, leaving only a max of 2 adsense ads per page (no fishy ads here, adsense only). I’m not in the financial situation to throw out my ad money at the moment, but if the Patreon ever gets large enough that’s one of the first things I want to do.

The support from my Patreons has been great and makes it so much easier to plan my spending and use of time around my site and videos.

New Host

SirTapTap.com is now hosted on Linode! Linode is a Linux Virtual Private Server hosting company and basically by moving to them from “managed hosting” I gain more control over my site and faster speed in exchange for complete responsibility for making sure everything worked.

Sort of like getting a shot, it hurt a lot at first but once the initial panic left I realized it wasn’t so bad after all. I got it all running in about 3 moderately confused days full of learning Linux commands, file structure and so on, and now the server runs beautifully without any babysitting at all. I even save money compared to my old hosting plan!

New Slogan

I updated my little blurb at the top left: I wanted something short, descriptive and upbeat. The one thing I never wanted to be is one of those “Angry Gamer Hates Games: The Screamening” type YouTubers. You know the ones. Hell, statistically, you probably even subscribe to one of them! But that’s okay too, no worries.

The new slogan is “Love Games. Share Love.” It’s sappy, but I think it shares my message pretty well; games are for enjoying, and my mission is to help you enjoy them even more.

Faster Pages

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