WinCustomize 2009 Preview
Tuesday, March 31, 2009 by Frogboy | Discussion: Personal Computing
This May we intend to launch a completely re-designed WinCustomize.com. The new site will be a major departure over the existing site with an emphasis on speed, ease of access, and efficiency. The site will “seem” a lot simpler because there’s a lot fewer clicks.
What you see above is an early version of it (all the thumbnails will, for instance, be re-created as high quality PNG’s instead of low quality JPEGS).
One thing not shown here is that the Library list in the Explore menu won’t say “CursorFX” of “Dream” but instead say “Moue Cursors”, “Animated Wallpapers”. When the user’s mouse cursor goes over it, the right-side will explain what it used to make it happen. This way, new users understand intuitively what they are customizing and experienced users can quickly see which programs are being used for it.
With over 3 million monthly users, WinCustomize is the world’s most popular site dedicated to desktop customization so we’re putting a lot of work to make sure it’s done just right.
Even in beta, one of the things that’s really amazing is how easy to navigate the new site is versus the existing site. For example, on WinCustomize today, if I want to read articles I have to click on”Articles” and wait wait wait for the articles page to come up. Then I get a list of top articles and newest articles along with a running log of featured articles. It’s just a lot of “stuff” to deal with.
By contrast, on the new site, I click on articles, a menu comes down that quickly lets me navigate to what I want to get to, often without having to go to a seperate page.
Same thing for the community page. Right now, users click on community which then takes them to the master forum list page which takes a good 5 to 10 seconds and then they decide what they want to read. On the new WinCustomize, a user clicks on community and the menu pops up listing the most recently responded to threads along with options to jump to a particular forum right away.
Of course, it’s in the libraries (which are currently called galleries but are being rebranded as libraries to support Sins, GalCiv, Demigod, and Elemental mods along with other mods in the future) that the magic will really come in handy. For instance, right now, if I just want to find a wallpaper, it’s a pain to find one that fits my monitor. On the new WinCustomize, I’ll be able to just search on 1920x1200 wallpapers and then download. IF I’m a WinCustomize subscriber, you’ll be able to simply press a button to make that wallpaper your background immediately (to give you an idea of the direction we want to take for subscribers).
Stay tuned for more info.
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Reply #22 Monday, April 6, 2009 6:42 PM
Reply #23 Wednesday, April 8, 2009 7:50 AM
Reply #24 Wednesday, April 8, 2009 8:10 AM
Forums have been getting more love lately as they can be squeezed in between other projects.
Reply #25 Wednesday, June 3, 2009 11:53 PM
Being 4 days into June now i was just wondering when we'll be seeing the new Wincustomize site?
Reply #26 Thursday, June 4, 2009 4:43 PM
It's obviously been delayed. More news on that in the coming weeks.
Reply #27 Thursday, June 4, 2009 5:36 PM
Thanks for the quick reply. Looking forward to the update 
Reply #28 Thursday, June 4, 2009 5:39 PM
good news....
please make ability for customizing our profiles(sites) now we can just add some links and few small previews, it's not too much
but in all new style of site is amazing!
Reply #29 Wednesday, July 1, 2009 4:21 AM
I wish I could get any good bad neutral news 
Wait seems bit pinching ... !!!
I love you guys
Reply #31 Monday, July 20, 2009 7:34 PM
I'm curious...is there a new ETA on this? I see it's been delayed, and over a month ago the official word was "More news on that in the coming weeks" -- should that statement now be updated to "more news in the coming months?"
Reply #32 Monday, July 20, 2009 7:38 PM
I still can't figure out why you all don't switch to a simple PHP or VBullentin forum setup and quit the croiss posting to other sites.
Reply #33 Monday, July 20, 2009 7:45 PM
It's in final development, and the ends are being wrapped up.
@kona0197 Forums are not being changed.
Reply #35 Monday, July 20, 2009 8:04 PM
Well then Island Dog expect more screw ups and resources wasted.
Reply #37 Monday, July 20, 2009 9:19 PM
But then there would be less "entertaining" threads to read. 
Reply #38 Monday, July 20, 2009 9:27 PM
Yeah I'm still wondering why Baldgye hasn't responded.
I was just thinking that switching to a better forum setup would cut down on bandwidth and running costs.
Reply #40 Tuesday, July 21, 2009 9:37 AM
There are reasons we have this system, and I really don't think you are aware of what the resources are for the forums.
As I said, new forums are not part of the WC upgrade, at least not in a major way.
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Reply #21 Thursday, April 2, 2009 9:28 PM