After months of coding and testing, tweaking and rearranging, and many hours spent by our web developers toiling over line after line of code, feature request and last minute change, we are proud to officially launch the new WinCustomize.com!  A lot of time and effort has gone into the design of the new site to make it easier for users, both new and old, to quickly find exactly what they want.  We've also expanded the functionality of the site in ways that are aimed at rewarding long-time community members, and to make everyone's time here at the site more enjoyable.

The most drastic change most will notice is the completely new design and site layout.  The new look, with its glassy blacks, grays and whites is a much needed refresh to the old blue and white design users have been living with for two years now.  The new "skin" for the site looks a lot more modern and inviting.  One of the goals of WinCustomize 2007 was to make the site itself skinnable.  Our design guru, Dark-Star designed WinCustomize with this goal in mind, and in the coming months, we will be adding additional site skins for site subscribers to pick from.

On top of the visuals, a lot of time has gone into cleaning up a lot of the visual clutter from the old site.  The front page is much less busy now, focusing in more on actual content.  Where before there were scrolling lists down the side of the page, we have a much shorter sidebar.  The top of the page is focused much more on community content with items like "Today's Favorites"  the "Featured Skin" (which can be browsed to see the last three featured items), the latest poll, "Today's Hot Pages" and "Featured Articles.

Digging down further, we've tried to make it as easy as possible to browse through the galleries and subcategories under each major library.  A common complaint regarding the old WinCustomize was that it was difficult to specifically browse through a sub-category like "Holiday" under WindowBlinds.  Or that it was difficult to find a given article after it had fallen off the "Newest Articles" list.  To help remedy that, we've built a breadcrumbs system that will allow users to see exactly where they are, as well as how to get back to where they've been.

Of course we will have a guide up in the near future explaining how to use the breadcrumb system, as well as some of the other new features of WinCustomize 2007 (such as the search bar being contextual based on what gallery you're browsing).  But they're pretty easy to use.  Just try clicking around on the arrows between the section names and you should be able to pick things up very quickly.

Now, we've done a lot to refresh the site from a technical perspective, but we also had a large focus on the community when working on this project.  One of the major additions with WinCustomize 2007 is the ability for Master Level skinners in the community to sell their work directly through the WinCustomize store.  This is a way for us to help out some of the skinners who have been around for a long time and contributed greatly to the community.  Users who subscribe to WinCustomize.com will receive a discount when purchasing any Master Skins through our store.

For the rest of the community, we've opened up the WinCustomize Personal Pages to all users.  A WC Personal Page is your own little corner of WinCustomize.  You'll get your own WC subdomain (i.e. zoomba.wincustomize.com), a photo gallery to upload and store your digital photos, and a place to easily track both your own submissions (this replaces the MySkins.aspx page) and keep an eye on articles and skins from your favorite authors here at WinCustomize.  (To activate your personal page area, go to the Settings link underneath the search box, and click on the "Personal Site" tab.  Follow the instructions to create your site.)

There are a number of other new buttons, links and features tucked away for you to discover.  In many ways we've tried to make it as easy as possible for members of the community to take an active role in the site by providing quick links to submit news items for the site, to write articles of interest, and to submit content to the galleries.  So please, take your time, explore, get comfortable and give us lots of feedback!

And of course, be sure to thank the folks who toiled away, hour after hour, to bring you this great new site.  Our crack team of .net coder monkeys did an amazing job taking this site from vague concepts to what you see before you right now.

T-Man, Dark-Star, jpkylegirl, dean183 and andrew_.

Also, thank you to all of you who helped us out by submitting bug report after bug report, broke the test site in new and interesting ways and helped us really hammer out the kinks before launch.