StickPage 2.0

StickPage is a classic website that hosts a variety of Flash animations and games which feature simple stick figure characters. The website has its origins in the early 2000s and is a part of the Max Games network of websites.

While working for Max Games, I was tasked with rebuilding the StickPage website from the ground up. The goal was to modernize the website and add new features to make it more engaging for the community, while porting over the existing content and userbase.

This project served as my first major foray away from PHP into NodeJS, and eventually Vue on the frontend. I had been experimenting with Node for a while before this project, with the scraper for Viral Videos being my first real production experience, but I had not yet built out a full website driven by Node. This project was a great hands-on opportunity to learn the ecosystem and best practices early.

I also learned a valuable lesson about what kind of support I ought to have in a role like this. As the sole developer on the project, I was responsible for everything from the database schema to the frontend design and aesthetic. It was supposed to be modern technologically and appealing visually. This was a lot to take on, and I found myself struggling to keep up with the demands of the project and set reasonable expectations. I learned too late that it’s important to communicate when you’re feeling overwhelmed and to ask for help when you need it. This project was a turning point for me in my career, and I’m grateful for the experience.

The project was cancelled at the start of 2018 due to a loss of faith in the website as a whole. The landscape for internet animation had changed drastically from the start of the decade and development was dragging on. It didn’t seem like we would be able to recapture the popularity these kinds of sites had in the 2000s. We decided to part ways and Max Games shifted to primarily focus on mobile games.

Key Features

• Flash animation and games portal with shared authorship, community ranking, commenting, and related media collaborative filtering
• Feature system for content moderators to highlight community works on the front page
• Content browser with multi-faceted search and filtering
• Sponsored content system to compensate talented content creators that post their work