WC2K7-Phase 2

With the recent launch of WC2K7, we have instituted changes in how the site visually looks, its feature set, as well as general user policy.

The results so far have been very positive. Our traffic has nearly (not quite but pretty close) doubled since the beginning of the year.

Much of this has to do with raw speed. The new site is just much faster and much more reliable than the old site.

So now what?

Well, there's a number of changes we are looking at which we would like to discuss with you first. Here they are:

The Ratings System...

This may go away. You may have noticed that the forums have recently instituted the system we have on JoeUser.com where you can rate articles as "Insightful" or "Interesting".

We are looking at replacing the rating system with a similar system where users who really like something can give it a "Thumbs up" or a "Love it" or some other designation that is akin to what we have on the forums.

Each time a user does that, the author as well as the skin gets points which are then added up and looked at in tersm of number of love it's (or whatever it's called) per day as well as overall number which we use to rank skins and themes.

Existing skins would be converted to the new system.

What do you think of this?

Speaking of ratings...

So on the forums you now have ability to label a response as trolling as well as give them an insightful rating.  From this, we will be able to get a ratio of the # of insightfuls to trolling to calculate a level of "karma".  We haven't decided what to do on this yet.

The Forums as you know them...

Most of the work on the forums has been to create a stable, reasonably fast forum system.  But the forums link at the top may be replaced with a new link called "Community".  This will no longer lead to "the forums" but instead a landing page that will give you a bird's eye view of what's going on overall in the community -- not just new forum posts but skins and themes getting lots of comments, active discussions, etc.  The Articles tab may be integrated into this.

There wouldn't be a "category view" like you currently have on the forums unless you selected to look at the index. Instead, it would focus on the hottest topics and the hottest categories based on activity.

Moreover, the community page would remember you -- what threads you were participating in, what skin comments you've been making, etc. and allow you to easily keep in touch with what you've been doing.

Personal Pages

The personal pages are another area we would like to overhaul to turn them into a hub for users to know exactly what's going on around here with things they've participated in and customize to make it truly THEIR page (insert custom RSS feeds, custom CSS, etc.).

The Gallery

Nearly all the activity takes place in the galleries on WinCustomize.com. And that's where we'd put our best technology so that each entry has context sensitive data.  The big old right bar we have today may disappear entirely to be replaced by a context sensitive dock that gives information on the current category you're looking at (for top authors, top skins, tutorials, etc.) which the old site had but was buried in too much info.

And individual skins and themes which would display other creations by the author and not display other galleries and such but focus just on that creation.

We'd also like to update the uploading system to allow skinners to allow ports or derivative works of their creation and in turn those deriviatives could be automatically  linked to the original skin. I.e. if someone makes a cool WindowBlinds skins and wants to make a corresponding Winamp skin or Rainlender skin, they can see if the author allows their creation to be used to create derivatives and when they upload it, link back to the original which would link back thus making independent creation of suites much more easy.

The Vista Transition

What is and isn't possible on Vista still is being probed. Animated wallpapers are quickly taking off and dynamic content is nearly here. But there's still a role for new kinds of software.

But in the meantime, what we hope to do with WinCustomize.com is create an environment where people can get together and learn how fun and interesting skinning all these various programs is and meet other people of the same mind.

Your Input

We're interested in hearing what things you'd like to see more of and which features you don't like that you think need to be changed.

There's a lot of work ahead of us, but we feel 2007 is the crucial year -- it's the slow but steady transition to Vista and we need to make sure WinCustomize gains the features, reliability, and performance to best serve users as the new generation of skinners, which have already begun arriving, get up to speed as well as support the existing skinners who have helped make this community such a success.