This post practically tells the full story of this little website. If you just want to see and read the juicy bits, just jump to the paragraph near each image. I’ll also include a little menu to help you navigate.
This may be a multi-parter if I go over any limits…
The challenge is to create a website experience that feels good to the user and perpetually update it to match or beat the competitors offerings, one step at a time, as cheaply as possible and using as much of the EditorX tools as possible.
Due to the complexity of the website (and some historic Wix glitches) I could not migrate the existing Wix site to EditorX, this meant that the experience had to be redesigned (In EditorX’s early releases, a lot of the features that were in Wix was not yet available and still isn’t.)
The website will deal with 3 core objectives.
To promote community content in whatever way possible
The Video is the central focus, flanked by your username and your video description. It stands tall above you LinkHub integrations, creator bio (on hover) and the ad just peaking in there!.
Video - The website allows for video links from 3rd party sites (such as YouTube and Twitch) to be used Site Wide. This includes the Playlist feature and the profile feature and I plan to expand it with procuring DRM and allowing licensed video to be purchasable on the website, though due to the way EditorX’s store works, this may have to be done via a 3rd party app or applet. I also plan to natively host content, though again, I am looking for a 3rd party alternate as EditorX’s Live Video and Video Hours is too low to be cost effective in it’s current state.
The second feature for the first objective is LinkHub. Link Hub, like link tree, provides a service where people can list their favourite URL’s and append an image (and colour scheme in the future). The plan is that this can be used for personal or business use, as well as be one of the main features the website will generate most of the non-advertising revenue.
The third feature that will enable our first goal is customisation. Customisation is at the core of the business and enable’s you to have a fun browsing experience in addition to allowing you to get your creative skills pumping.
I also have additional features planned for development, like the ability to upload and sell E-Book’s, Games, Movies, TV DRM free.
Here, I was the first time I thought of making a site wide Accent system. I developed it because a close friend of mine complained that the header was too chunky on low-medium resolution displays. Keying in this advice I decided to brainstorm ways I could overcome this issue, and the way I eventually concluded was the most fun to build and easiest to implement was the accent system, in addition to reducing the menu size by 30%. After developing this page, I realised that single colour accents were not the best course of action, and decided to implement Bi-Tonal and Bi-Colour accents, many of the colours represent different companies as I plan to also implement them in link hub pop-up about pages. The twitch icon needs to be resized as the image element prioritises width over height.
To monetise your creations.
GoMedia Group is intended to be a site where creative freedom can give you monetary gain, either through advertising partnerships (AdSpot By GoMedia Group is planned to be the most user friendly advertising service built in Europe, and is an in house brand for all things ad related. In the future I plan to expand it’s borders and allow partners to host ads on external platforms, where the GoMedia Group quality standard would continue to apply with custom solutions based on the platforms needs and desires. All ads are non intrusive, none-flashy, but placed in very strategic places to maximise viewership, and it’s cheap too and starting at only £10/$10/10 Euros per spot, and especially right now, advertisers could end up with exclusive spots without needing to pay exclusive prices.)
GoMedia Group also plans on making benefit based Subscriptions and a Goods store which creators can share the wealth to by contributing their own crafts to. Though due to the lack of Digital Subscriptions on EditorX, I cannot make the earlier a reality, I am working on a storefront so keep an eye on the updates page ( https://animeotaku.co.uk/updates-hub ).
PS Update hub is the same one from the original release. Just added OG Accent Theme Support, Icon Support, Changed from Codenames to normal titles (codenames are used in the URLs though, like the latest update, Summer Pride: https://www.animeotaku.co.uk/updates/summer-pride . I even updated with support for the primary colour of the chosen V2 Accent Colours. I’m also thinking of a redesign to put it in line with the rest of the website, and shed off the UI 2 design once and for all.
Last but not least, our 3rd core objective is to beat and exceed our competition.
GoMedia Group has a better linking tool in development than Link Tree, our most popular competitor, and it plans to get even better with a custom short link tool, allowing you to obtain a short url to any piece of content on the platform for free without you relying on 3rd party tools Saving creators lots of money in the process.
Our video platform will offer the most monetisation than any other site, all whilst keeping it inobtrusive. I am planning a cross platform sponsorship program to allow advertisers to offer bounties to specific groups of creators, a specific creator or any creator, allowing even the sauciest of political debates, nichest of popular topics or even some content that would otherwise be demonetised on YouTube. (Which, let’s face it, is a lot of content these days). With creators on YouTube and Twitch growing more concerned over recent monetisation practises, now is a better time than ever to move to a non-conglomerate platform, like mine. It will also be the most customisable, with the ability to integrate linkhub links, your bio and themes, it won’t be short of customisation options.
I am planning on developing a social feed (like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram) that allows you to share to your community your creations, life stories, experiences and more. A messaging, comments, live chat and custom home page are also in the works in regards to this.
I am looking at third parties for video hosting, custom short links, subscriptions and suppliers to work with to integrate new and exclusive features to the site, but this is more difficult than developing everything, and it’s not currently something I’m particularly pushing for.
I am also looking to create special log in and sign up pages, however again, this is not urgent, and this is where my lack of knowledge for programming has me really stumped in thought and experience.
GoMedia Group is the only platform to pump so many features into it’s website, and better yet, it’s all currently free-of-charge whilst I continue to add features to the ever growing site, with often 4 or 5 pages in active development and 1 or 2 features each month available to the beta stream of users.
Oh, and it’s opt-in for personalisation, and we do a damned best to reduce the impact of tracking on the site. You’ll notice that I set all the links in this post to opt out of tracking.
Currently the urgent check list is:
Develop a video upload/link page
Develop viewer and business profiles
Redesign the creators settings page to match the new aesthetic
Redesign the My Account pages to better fit the UI and to fix major navigation issues
Create an automation to enrol registered users into the BETA program
Rerelease the updated video page to non-beta users
Add some flair to the website, rather than sticking to static design
Complete the rolling out of Accent Colours V2 to all corners of the site
Create an advertiser and advertising receipt form to allow montisation on the site for the first time
To test and design the storefront and find ways to embed it all over the site
Rework Logins
Work on feedback presented by the community
Implement custom Short URLs
Over the 1 year this site has been in active development, it’s went through hundreds of revisions, trials and 3 home pages.
The website’s goal from the beginning was to be a social hub, and now exactly 1 year 3 months only a day less, I feel that the website is getting closer to it’s goals. I estimate the site will be ready for content delivery and the best UX within 1 more year and will only age like fine wine.
A bit late of an introduction, but I’m Alain and I started to develop my web design skills from the age of 12, and I’m the sole designer, developer, tester and current creator on GoMedia Group ( https://animeotaku.co.uk ). I have been designing using wix’s original editor since about 1 or 2 years before EditorX was even in the early access phase, and applied to it when applications opened, eventually building my first EditorX website on April 02 2020 with the first public release of the site just 15 days later.
Originally planned to be an almost exact rebuild of my old website, my hopes were dashed by a plethora of bugs and missing features.
The old site still lives and you can access it by visiting https://go-media.wixsite.com/gomediagroup
It’s a good comparison of how much grander my vision for the site has become and just how little of the design ebbed it’s way through onto the new site.
I continued with this design, eventually doing away with the floating sidebar by the 3rd revision on 9th May 2020.
About 20 or 30 revisions later, on 23rd November came a grand overhaul of the UI which would form the basis for the website, right up until March 2021. You can still see much of the design at the legacy home page (soon to be depreciated) https://www.animeotaku.co.uk/homev2 but the 6 months between the first and last update to that page had made it practically unrecognisable in comparison to it’s first design. Many of my favourite features made a comeback in this update, including the sidebar, in addition to trialling sticky content, something you’ll see quite commonly on my newer works, including a site that I am building for a client.
The buttons on top of the image are sticky and either button will lead to a form. This is the first time I used automations, though it did leave a lot to be desired. Regardless, the main focus of this post is the community website I am building and not other projects I am doing.
Now that I look at this snippet in my website’s history, there’s a lot to be desired. For starters, I thought it was a good idea to mix sharp cornered items with round cornered items, I realise now, that the balance in this image was off and have better implemented the concept in my current build.
You may notice the horizontal scrollbar disappear an a few screenshots, this was due to the fact the bar would clip in and out of the viewing area of the posts, making it harder to actuate the buttons on the page. The bug was still around in the first phase of Project 2021 so my current build now has horizonal scrolling but no scrollbar. Most of the sites functions will still be available in vertical scrolling formats, but currently as it stands it isn’t a priority as you can easily navigate it using “Shift + Scroll”, by scrolling horizontally on a trackpad or supported magic mouse, or by utilising a mobile or tablet, which I always check and optimise the layout for when implementing, fixing or designing new feature.
In this update, I placed a bigger emphasis on content cataloguing, which formed the basis for what I now refer to as “Creator Profiles” and “Videos”. In fact you may notice the website showing videos that recently released, this is because the creators and the video databases have not been depreciated since inception. Believe or not, snapshots as early as the 7th save (4th publish) still direct to my GG animeotaku creators profile and the very same update hub is still in use today, just with a more modern UI. To be honest it was a bit immersion breaking playing with it just now.
Between late November and early December I redesigned the reviews experience (Now depreciated) to add a “select a tag and see content from relevant tags” filtering system, as well as started and completed the replacement for vertical scrolling, pressing the next button.
I “broke” the menu on the first day of the year, with it’s subsequent return in the form of pressing the logo to bring up the menu. Looking back on it now, it was a bad idea. Whilst it better optimised the site for use on tablets (Dynamic pages were still considered new at the time, and the ability to hide certain elements easily wasn’t fully realised yet)
https://animeotaku.co.uk/creators/archive/animeotaku
And that pretty much brings me up to what you can actually see by navigating around my site. I finished developing LinkHub (Or Hub by GoMedia Group was it’s working title) around feb-march and decided after implementing it on https://www.animeotaku.co.uk/homev2 that I would redesign the entire site around it. Around then, I also redesigned the header on the page, so that you would feel at home on the new version. I also got rid of the floating menu, instead favouring a preview and go to by section approach. I do plan on the current home page to implement a top of page menu, similar to what you see on the Link Hub and Creator Pages but contextualised to the home page and with more than just 5 options.
I am also planning tag based searching and filtering to the site, but this will take time to develop and release.
Other themes are available, including Darkout (Discord Dark But Not Black and GoMedia Black features), animeotaku (as seen), Virtual Boy (Black with Red features), Sick (Yellow with Green features) and much more.
Some features (Site wide themes [Access], Link Hub [Create], Creator Pages [Create], Video BETA [Access, BETA stream only, until tomorrow], etc) may require an account to access, create or utilise,
Overall, I think that I’ve learned a lot in my 1 year of working on an EditorX site and my few years of Wix experience has taught me that EditorX is by far the best platform I’ve used EVER. Yes, it still has issue (like how the HTML block doesn’t support databases natively, I would love to be able to embed Twitch chat into my videos and allow users to do the same. It would also do to create a better ad service). I used to have my fingers in a lot of web building pies, but now that I’ve been here for years, I could never go back to Weebly. Squarespace felt like a public rest room, restrictive and unhygienic especially for a builder with no free tier and all of the smaller platforms lacked the girth that Wix, and now EditorX have. To be honest, I tried going back to the Wix builder for building my clients website, but it felt completely alien, as I couldn’t put my signature piece of design… 20px rounded everything! (though his website has a special exception of 30px and 50px on some elements)
Hope you enjoyed my brief history on developing https://animeotaku.co.uk today, and I hope to one day improve update hub to include screenshots to forever archive my journey in the future, but this post is exclusive to here, so don’t worry too much!
This was Alain Graham,
AKA GG animeotaku
Sole founder, developer and user of GoMedia Group.
Signing Off!