Site Revamp Suggestions

[lithoop]

Good afternoon!

Although on a new account, I briefly played CS as a kid and only recently picked the site back up again. As such, and experiencing a lot of things like new again, I have a few ideas and suggestions. I would like to preface that this comes from a place of respect, but as someone that wants to see this site keep going!

More Items+Shop Issues
Although currently there are quite a few free items in the shop, with how encouraged the Dress up events have been I think more options are very much needed! When I picked up the site again in January I noticed that many of the current free options either 1. Do not fit with the theme given for the month's dress up contest and 2. Are all unrelated and are not fun to pair together in most cases. From my viewpoint, dress up contests seem to be an important event announced every month and new players or returning players with very few items are excluded from entering.
As far as I am aware, there are only 1-2 item artists currently, and I do think CS would benefit from taking on more and also releasing more items monthly alongside the creatures.
In addition to that, the shop where said items can be purchased is a bit confusing to navigate as it is now! Although by carefully scanning through each page I was able to find the free bundles to nab, separating items into free and paid pages would be one of the easier fixes. I believe the UI overall could do with some updating for accessibility purposes and otherwise.
TLDR; More fun/easy to use items, and shop UI update

Announcements
When announcements threads on the forums are made by staff, I believe it would benefit the site for it to be mentioned on the announcements on the HOME page. Though this site is still largely forum based, for anyone that is not as active in those spaces they can miss things. For example, I was happy to see the recent announcement thread from Nick about pound changes, but there was no communication or announcement on that for people that did not check. More general check ins with the site users would be appreciated, and links to threads every time they are made would help with more opinions on new and proposed changes!

Mobile Site
As a primarily mobile site user, sometimes the UI can get a little confusing! If you want to link back to your profile page, you have to click the very tiny place where your username is next to Home.
Ex. Home > lithoop > my pets
Adding a "my profile" button would fix this problem! Currently you can choose "My account" but that does not necessarily send you to your full profile that you can send to others.

Updated Wiki

The site as it is now is pretty confusing for new players. Though the newbie helper groups are lovely, the site's wiki and resources similar need some updating with recent info! Although the player base here is pretty active, it would invite new players to get into CS as well as provide accurate information in one place for older players as well.

Oekaki
I find the Oakaki drawing program super cool! To open up more motivation and initiative to using it, repurposing or opening up The Official Oekaki Challenge forum in particular would definitely have large participation with CS being made up of many artists. In fact, with the community being both artists and art appreciators, any artsy contest would be enjoyable! My assumption is that weekly contest were hard on the staff, which is understandable, so a few per year could potentially make that easier on everyone.

Again I just want to say that I have been enjoying the site again as an adult, and thank you for reading! <3