The new MOCpages, a better place for sharing your creations [News/Editorial]

Starting today, visitors to MOCpages will discover a whole new set of available features to make the sharing of LEGO creations a more fun and interactive experience. Going into the new year, MOCpages has undergone significant changes following the suggestions of fans over the years. The new features allow you to join groups and participate in discussion topics, receive activity updates on your creations and from your favorite builders, explore the recent most popular creations and do much more.

The new MOCpages has integrated popular features from sites such as Flickr, Youtube, and Facebook. At the same time, the website is still the only place where LEGO fans can dedicate a HTML-enabled webpage to presenting a creation. The new comments system (which previously functioned as reviews) now allows for discussion of creations, further enhanced by users being able to create a buddy icon for individualized identity.

The activities pages display comments on your creations, new creations by your favorite builders, latest discussions in your groups and more.

MOCpages has adopted an explore feature that lets you browse the most popular creations of the day, week, and month. In addition, you can sort through creations to see the most discussed ones and the most recent.

Groups bring together people, interests, and creations. You can create and administer your own or join others. Also, you can start discussion topics within groups, host contests, work on group projects, and do more.

These are just a few of the many new features of the new MOCpages. If you’re not a user yet, signing up is free.

And now for the brief editorial portion regarding the new MOCpages. As someone who has been actively using MOCpages for its past four out of five years of existence on the web, I can say that the new site marks the most significant change in the history of this community. However, in the course of the past few years, MOCpages has acquired a negative image among some LEGO fans, who have observed the quality of its showcased creations to decline; and as a result, many withdrew from using MOCpages and switched to sites such as Flickr. Nevertheless, there are still a handful of reputable builders who continue to use MOCpages for its unique feature to dedicate a customizable webpage to the display of one’s creations. With the implementation of the new features, MOCpages gains characteristics that significantly boosts its previously lacked interactive qualities. Will these changes be enough to attract prominent builders and more adult fans to its new community?

It is worthwhile to note the achievements of man running the show, Sean Kenney, who singlehandedly maintained the website during all these years. In the recent past, Sean has been busy with setting up the new MOCpages and has made revision after revision to the site following the suggestions by the testers. Having explored all the main features of the new website, I attest that the new community is ready for its launch. Sean has put down the potentials for the new MOCpages to become an even more popular place to share LEGO creations; it is now up to us builders to add our contributions.

In the course of the near future, MOCpages will continue development and implement even more features. The coming year will mark significant changes and growth. So stop by and dig out your old password or make a new account. Join in on the party while it has just begun.

37 comments on “The new MOCpages, a better place for sharing your creations [News/Editorial]

  1. Bruce

    Cool. I had taken down all of my old MOCpages out of frustration, but I’m looking forward to re-uploading old creations, posting new ones and participating in the new community features. Thanks for reinventing this great resource, Sean!

  2. Fred

    I still like the simple interface of brickshelf but, who know what the state of the site is after last year’s “outage”. You really wish the admin there made things more clear.

  3. Talon Karrde

    Having spent today getting to know the new configuration i have to say i find the new homepage rather busy, even chaotic, however i am sure that i will get used to it and no-one can say that these changes were not needed. Also, while it is noticeable that there has been a decline in the quality and an increase in the quantity of Star Wars MOCs i still like to think that there are plenty of mediocre to good builders on MOCpages using the site to improve their building skills like myself, rather than an extreme of great builders weathering the storm alongside all the immature brick-biters.

  4. Alan R

    I get 404’d whenever I go to anything on MOCpages (if it even lets me connect…)

    So… I’m not a fan of the “improvements” unless they fix that problem…

  5. Sean Kenney

    Hi everyone… thanks for taking a look at the new MOCpages (and thanks, Nannan, for the write-up.)

    If anyone has any concerns or questions (or runs into a bug) please feel free to contact me via http://www.mocpages.com/support.php .

    To Dave, above … no, there aren’t any RSS feeds. You can, however, keep up-to-date with e-mail notifications. You can opt to receive e-mail anytime your favorite builders post new creations, or if creations are posted to your groups, etc.

  6. Mark Kelso

    I’ve been one of the guinea pigs for Sean these past few weeks, and he’s worked out a LOT of the bugs that were initially present during the test phase. There’s still a bit more to do, but I’m sure he’ll be looking for potential problems (which getting 404’d might qualify, ya think?) and working hard to get things squared away.

    In the first week or two, I didn’t care for the layout (felt too busy to me personally). But as time wore on, I felt myself growing more accustomed to the site, and eventually prefering it over the old format (which during the testing period I could also access…so I had a choice).

    My biggest hope is that some of the changes he’s made will allow for more user options, while limiting the spamming and the “kiddie-bickering.” Time will tell. He’s worked really hard to make the changes, and I’m enjoying the new features on the site…hopefully many others will too.

  7. MacLane

    I would like to give MOC Pages a shot, but the load times for properly sized photos are really slow. Anyone else have this problem?

  8. Curtis

    I’ve had absolutely no problems viewing the site all day long. It seems to be working just fine for me, might be problems with your browsers?

  9. Lino

    I’m not convinced yet but that’s my nature. (it took me years to buy CDs and DVDs…or is it MP3s and Tivo now?) There are still too many low quality, haphazard, tooth marked, rainbow colored MOCs built by kids and too much kiddie bickering. I much prefer the mature builder that flickr and brickshelf seem to attract, but lately even flickr has faltered a bit…and with brickshelf going loco awhile ago they’re no longer dependable. Just like CDs and DVDs, I’ll just have to sit back ant wait and see if MOCPages becomes the “in” place to be.

  10. Lego Monster

    My biggest problem is that I don’t have time to visit many of the sites I would wish to. I am a member of builders lounge and classic space, but spend really no time there. Just keeping up with Flickr, Brother’s Brick, Brickish Association and Brickshelf takes enough time already. I can’t help but feel that all of this is diluting the hooby. But hey, wherever the flow goes, it goes I guess.

  11. Heather LEGOgirl

    MOCpages has always been a nice little community for me, and as long as it continues down this new path to improvement, I’ll keep posting there. Lino, come over to the dark side. ;)

  12. Zepher

    I will forever be a fan of Mocpages, and I’m even more of a fan now. However, I find that my updates on the side of my creations are cutting off some of my pictures, which previously fit. I use photobucket, and do not really want to resize all my pictures. Do you know if Sean will be addressing this? Could someone who is “in the loop” ask him about it? I know it’s just one problem, but I’m sure others are having this problem as well.

  13. Sean Kenney

    Hi all.. regarding the “404” … There was a transitional server error that popped up this morning around 11am, but was corrected by 3pm. All’s well.

    Regarding load times… MOCpages actually serves out most pages in less than 0.1 seconds. Most slowdowns past that are due to the ads. I’m looking into getting a better ad service.

    Regarding the “images cropping” … unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do. The pages are narrower now than they were before and there’s a bug in Internet Explorer / Windows (which they consider a feature) that prevents the content of your pages from wrapping properly if you happen to have created pages that are wider than 500 pixels. They simply won’t fit in the new layout. The narrow layout is, again, sadly due to the constraints of managing ad space. (Most advertisers mandate their ads be towards the top of the page.)

    So, yes, it’s all the fault of ads. MOCpages traffic has nearly doubled over the past year and, sadly, I need the ads there to pay the bills. Tens of thousands of visitors per DAY. And 65,289 comments since this October. It’s crazy.

  14. Ochre Jelly

    Gak, the new clipping behavior is even worse than the old wrapping behavior. The amount of time it would take me to tweak all my existing MOCPages (which now look completely ridiculous) is simply better invested in moving it all to another site (…which won’t be Flickr because Flickr sucks).

    So long, and thanks for all the fish!

  15. legovaughan

    These upgrades are exactly what the site needed. I’m looking forward returning and re-enjoying the MOCpages experience.

    Surely RSS feeds can’t be too difficult to add?

  16. Dave & Stacy

    Stacy and I have been using MOCPages since about 2005 and this is a great update to the site that adds some much needed functionality. Even though we have seen the quality of MOC’s dwindle over the past few years with some of the builders migrating to Flickr or other image hosting, there is still a group of good builders there who are pumping out crazy, thought provoking creations.

    If you left or have never been a member, we urge to come and try the new improved MOCPages…you won’t be sorry. Tell ’em the Casual Coroner sent you. ;-)

  17. Scotty

    Its cool that they’re trying to clean it up and make it more user-friendly, progress is always good. One problem I see is that there is the stigma about mocpages, it seems kinda like the “oh em gee H4lo mocs!!!” groups seem to dwell there.

  18. Sean Kenney

    Ochre… You’re right, and I’ve tweaked the HTML a bit to prevent the clipping. Your larger images will wrap under the right side menu in some browsers, but you’re right that it’s better than clipping them entirely. (Especially since most large content occurs below the menus anyway.)

    Again, this clipping only occurs in one browser on one platform.. which I suppose is the one you use. :)

    These changes were made to help make MOCpages work better in more browsers and on more platforms. IE, Firefox, and Safari, on Windows and Mac. (99% of our users.) MOCpages is now highly tweaked to work on these browsers. It used to be written to the basic HTML and CSS standards that /should/ be supported, but too many people bemoaned the oddball layout quirks that would pop up due to visual oddities caused by their choice of browser.

    Blah blah long story short, the clipping is gone. You’re welcome to tweak your pages if you wish, but most of them look OK.

  19. Matt Snyder

    This site looks great. I’m new to all this, but I really like what I’m seeing there. I hope to upload some pics there soon.

  20. Garth Danielson

    I’m likin’ the new features and I have not had anything weird happen to my pages. They pop up fast and I live in one of the worst states for internet speed. A Big Yahoo! to Sean for making the site better and still keeping it free. I enjoy the work and company of several builders there and ignore the stuff I’m not interested in. The only way to populate the site with better builders is for them to show up and play. Now it’s easier to build a group within the group and ignore the rest. So, come on down. Let’s play.

  21. Brendan Mauro

    Sean: Looks great, love all the new features, but I have one issue that has stuck and kept me away from MOCpages for many years – if I click a picture halfway down someone’s page and then click “back” in my browser, I am always returned to the very top of the page. It sounds small and petty but I find it incredibly frustrating, especially for a site that allows users to list the images in their galleries in a long column. If you fixed this I would be sold.

  22. Ochre Jelly

    Wow, thanks for fixing the clipping issue Sean. Kudos once again for going that extra mile, and forgive my earlier rant! I guess we shouldn’t all complain that much anyway since its a FREE SERVICE.

    :)

    [ …in any case MOCPages is still *miles* better than Flickr. Anyone who puts there stuff on Flickr is simply not thinking about their audience – its the most user-hostile, hard-to-navigate, slow site ever; counter responses invited! ;-) ]

  23. Xiazeran

    Ah.. the Commander-so-and-so thing is a little annoying though. I’ve seen way too many mini Venator-class ships than should be allowed. Ah, well, people can do whatever they want with their bricks.

  24. Andrew

    I migrated from Brickshelf to Flickr nearly three years ago, but I’ve always believed that the LEGO fan community needs a usable, reliable, dedicated (LEGO-only) photo sharing site. Sean’s upgrade to MOCPages looks like it’s a huge step toward that goal. I’ve just signed up for a MOCPages account and look forward to connecting with my fellow LEGO fans on MOCPages!

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