been considering making sort of a series where I basically give my honest thoughts about the things I love. "[Thing] is great! But..." is the name. I'll go over the positives, and the negatives. Let's start with the site you're on right now, Sheezy!

Sheezy

Sheezy.Art is an art gallery website that is the revival project of sheezyart.com, an old website from 2003 that ran until 2013. It has been noted that the website has a feel similar to old devaintArt, before Eclipse and their obsession with AI came along.

I have been using this website for almost a year, during its second attempt that started in late 2023. I managed to get an account on day 1 of the second version. The first version was a short and chaotic part of the site's history, where it started in 2020, got popular, exploded, and was shut down in 2021, before being brought back in 2023.

But you didn't come for a history lesson, you came for my opinion on the site. Well, ask and ye shall receive.

What I like ❤️

• The customization features. It is no secret that I am in love with anything that lets me go all out in terms of how something looks or even functions. Bonus points if it lets me in the technical side of things. I am fawning over the near-limitless profile customization, and the extra goodies like built-in pagedolls, custom cursors, and the avatar decorations. Plus, you can decide your profile's palette! The possibilities are endless!
• The generous monetization. While this site does paywall some content behind a monthly subscription, the free package still offers a lot! Also, the cheapest subscription tier is 3 bucks per month. You don't see sub tiers that cheap, and the site doesn't even run ads! uBlock Origin can finally take a breather while I browse Sheezy, until I come across someone's profile and it has to block the third-party trackers leaking through the embeds and widgets, but that's not Sheezy's fault :P
• The Personas feature. As someone who used Toyhou.se for three years, I really appreciate this feature. Initially, I was going to use it for a select few characters to do some RPing when I got bored, but when I got my hands on it and saw what others did, the utility potential showed right at my bedside, staring me down until I noticed them. The Personas feature, which will be renamed to Sub-Profiles in the rebuild, can be customized and utilized as if they were entirely new accounts, with some restrictions in the interaction area ofc (can't stack likes with personas, mods will consider persona actions as if the main account did it). They're an open-ended feature, and a nifty one while it's at it!
• The tagging system, I like how you can go in-depth with everything about your piece and what it has, down to the pixel. It also works as a content warning system, utilizing special "warning tags" that allow people to filter out what they don't want to see. It also goes for profiles, and even serves as the basis for profile warnings! Phew! No more DNIs in warnings this time around!

Stuff I'm mixed or not too fond of 😕

• The engagement. Look, I know the site is small, there's no algorithm deciding who gets to see what (prefer it that way), interactivity depends on tags and feeds, and art shouldn't be a fame and number game, but between you and I, people seem to be allergic to the like button around here. In addition, the comment sections are usually dry, you would have to get lucky that day to receive any comments. There's nothing that encourages engagement, and the like button atm is just a glorified "save artwork for later viewing" button (try typing "<3" or "❤️" in the search bar). My personal theory is that people get nervous about having their interaction public for the world to see, as well as basically notifying the og artist of their presence. That and the glorified save button thing.
• The performance. What the fuck. I am 100% aware of the rebuild coming, and how it's going to introduce a code rewrite that'll address all of these, but holy shit the site runs like ass atm. Slow loading, site being unresponsive while it "thinks", that sort of shit. May God have mercy if you have a slower internet connection. Do not get me started on the crashes the dev has to manually restart the site himself because of a broken script relating to auto-clearing temp files. Rebuild will fix that, but still. :|
• The rules and moderation. It's a mixed bag according to experiences from other people. Personally, my run-ins with the mods have been limited to simple mod-mail reminders to add a tag I forgot, and my experience is that they're a nice in-between between the sanitized gruel modern sites are and the wild west like Toyhou.se is. However, for some people, the moderation lean more towards the sanitized gruel end of the spectrum. I want to try to keep the journal G-rated, but basically the moderation feels more punishing or less accommodating to more risqué artists. The amount of journals about this part will probably exceed the amount of fingers I have left to spare. Additionally, the staff have their infamous wrestle with how to moderate nudity on the site. First it was the nipples tag, then the partial and full nudity tags, and then the nudity tag which is just the nipples tag under a different name. Oh yeah, there was a time where the site got some new mods and early on, they ended up enforcing the rules too strictly, specifically the ones pertaining to love and the body, that it caused plenty of problems and the staff had to make a public statement apologizing about it. This has since been dealt with and I am sure there are systems in place to make sure this doesn't happen again, but the moderation ain't perfect and probably won't be.
• The Discord exclusivity problem. I despise this actually. Yes, I know there's the streams, but c'mon guys! You have a freaking blog! sheezy dot blog! There are some announcements in the server that I feel could also go on the blog. Want to know what else can also go on the rest of the site, just generally?
  • The stream schedule
  • Information about the rebuild (What to expect, the estimated release timeframe, etc.)
  • Polls for stuff like Persona renames (the decision was made). I know polls are coming to the rebuild, but when that comes, please consider getting the rest of the site that's not in the official Discord involved as well :)
  • just to name some.
• Some nitpicks like the Personas limit (personally, I don't like it very much ☹️) and some UI issues like redundant buttons on mobile (rebuild will fix that ig) and the subscriber upsell button being orange no matter what, which clashes with the default blue which I find displeasing.

Conclusion

This edition of honest thoughts came from my almost a year experience of the site, as well as the sentiments I heard from others, both positive and negative. There might be more stuff I could add to the journal I may have missed, but I think that's enough content to suffice. Hope this was an interesting read. I would also like to mention that some of the stuff in the "mixed/dislike" section will be remedied in the upcoming rebuild, whenever that comes out (slated for sometime in 2025 but we'll see).

Also, there's an issue about the site just being boring, not having enough fun features to keep it engaging and just being barebones overall. I agree, and will pull out the "the rebuild will fix this" card. There will be new stuff coming with the rebuild, like QoL features and maybe something fun. The goal of the rebuild is to make it easier to add new features and improve the maintainability of the site.

Ok, I think I spoke enough. I suggested to the staff to add a thing in the rebuild where you can provide feedback directly so they can see what's working and where the room for improvements are. The staff is very receptive to feedback from my experience, and I'm confident that they'll take what everyone has to say seriously, all in the name of improving the site 👍