WinCustomize in 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011 by Island Dog | Discussion: WinCustomize News
Tomorrow (Monday) begins the official first day of 2011 work for many of us here. Aside from having my wisdom teeth removed last year, I didn’t take much time off so I tried to make the most of this break and stay offline for much as I could. I was able to do that because of the great staff we have here – Jafo, Hankers, WOM, DrJBHL, HG_Eliminator, Snowman, Lantec, and the other names who are escaping me right now. They truly are the best to work with and I personally appreciate everything they do for the site and skinning in general.
Getting back into work mode one of my first goals for 2011 is to make WinCustomize even better than it is. Site traffic has declined over the last year or so as skinning is moving back to its niche “roots”, and getting more people involved here and download/submitting is a top goal. Looking back at Win98 and WinXP when I first got involved into skinning, Windows was terribly bland and skinning was almost a necessity. Now that Windows is more physically attractive skinning has also gone from just changing the look of Windows, to changing how Windows looks and how to boost ease of us and productivity. This is not a bad thing in my opinion, and an app like Fences is the best example of what I’m talking about.
Taking lots of things into consideration I made a short list of things I’d like to address in the first half of 2011.
- Address lingering site issues. WC 2010 is brand new, but there are still some issues that need to be worked out. Yes, the delete skins button is one of them.
- More/better tutorials. Skinning isn’t necessarily the easiest thing to do, but it’s definitely not impossible. We need better tutorials and a better way for new and old users to find and use them.
- More contributors. We have a great core group of skinners that submit to WC, but more would be even better.
- More content. Mobile wallpapers maybe? Any other apps that can be skinned that should be added? Let me know!
Community is important as ever, and looking at our user groups here it was a fantastic decision to bring on board DrJBHL as our article/news poster for WC. He has been doing a phenomenal job at keeping WC users up to date with the latest tech and PC news, and I think doing this is a great move to broaden appeal to new users. In trying to address the tutorial content we definitely more people to contribute. Over the years I have written what seems like a countless amount of tutorials, but many are outdated and there are many others on WinCustomize that are more “experts” at specific apps than I am. If you would like to dedicate some time to helping update/write tutorials, once again let me know.
Getting more people over to submit to WinCustomize has been more difficult. Many just don’t know about the site, and others I have spoken with just don’t have the time to submit to multiple sites which is understandable. We “recruited” some people this year who are well known on other sites like DA who just didn’t realize that WC gets millions and millions of visitors each month. WinCustomize is a great way to expose yourself (no pun intended) and since we do obviously focus more on customization, it can be easier to get your work noticed. I’d like to see what the interest is in some type of referral program. Introduce an artist to WC and once they become a regular contributor a reward is given. Thoughts on this? Would you take part?
Well I think I have rambled enough, so let me also take this opportunity to thank you for your support in 2010, and I know 2011 will be even better than last year was!
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Reply #22 Monday, January 3, 2011 10:52 AM
Thoughts on the referral idea. Would anyone take part?
Reply #23 Monday, January 3, 2011 6:54 PM
I always encourage fellow skinners/artists from especially, DA, to take a look at WC, SkinBase and other art/skins sites but it seems some people just prefer to hang out at one particular site or another and nowhere else. Don't know if it's personality, age, interest or site related or simply fitting into a specific "clique" but that's the way it is. I'll be honest, back in the day when I first came here from DA, my first impression of WC was, what a bunch of arrogant a**holes but after awhile, the site (and members) grew on me and here I still am. (a "sometimes" arrogant a**hole too!) I suppose kidnapping is always an option but they always seem to get away somehow... 
Reply #24 Monday, January 3, 2011 7:36 PM
Meanwhile I'm trying to recruit noobies among the people I know around town. I show off my laptop and when they see some of the toys I play with some do get interested. Whether or not they do I couldn't say but it doesn't hurt to try.
Reply #25 Monday, January 3, 2011 9:18 PM
Perhaps a native phone app could be created to view and pull content. I'm also an Android developer in my spare time and even wrote (then sold) a home replacement app that was skinnable and was toying with the idea of animated wallpaper, but Google beat me to it by creating live wallpapers. I currently run my Asteroids Dream on my Android phone using the Video Live Wallpaper app that plays video as the wallpaper.
Reply #26 Monday, January 3, 2011 9:22 PM
Quoting Island Dog
" I’d like to see what the interest is in some type of referral program. Introduce an artist to WC and once they become a regular contributor a reward is given. Thoughts on this? Would you take part?"
I think that is an awesome idea!!
Reply #27 Monday, January 3, 2011 10:25 PM
Any other apps that can be skinned that should be added?
Rainmeter?
I would love to see a Rainmeter gallery here!!! I'm an admin for the rainmeter group at dA http://rainmeter.deviantart.com/ and in one year, our group page has had over 369,000 views, 1,800 new members and 2,900 watchers.
I always put a blurb on my profile page at dA whenever Stardock has sales and have gotten a few people to join up and one person has submitted icons a couple times but nothing recent.
One of the things that I think would help draw more people here would be a profile page that people can customize and make their own and where other people can visit and leave messages on, but I guess that's too late now that the revamping is done.
I would love to see more tutorials and templates, cause I keep thinking that someday I'm going to be able to skin something!
Reply #28 Monday, January 3, 2011 11:19 PM
Rainmeter's popularity has increased immensely over the past couple of years and it's certainly worth considering a gallery for contributors. Hopefully those who put up skins may become interested in other applications.
Phone wallpapers are also popular and worth consideration.
What about a gallery for 'assorted media player' skins..........AIMP, VLC and CD Art Display skins?
Now Brad's got a Mac howabout some mac skins? 
ONLY JOKING...............!!!!!
Reply #29 Monday, January 3, 2011 11:37 PM
Oh, CD Art Display would be awesome, just started using it recently!
Reply #30 Tuesday, January 4, 2011 10:45 AM
I like the Rainmeter idea. Did a few of them when I first started.
Reply #31 Tuesday, January 4, 2011 11:27 AM
OK, Rainmeter seems to be a popular choice. Let me see what I can do. 
Reply #32 Tuesday, January 4, 2011 11:29 AM
I like the Rainmeter idea as well. A Gallery would be great. Maybe rethink the Galleries also...
They might have links in them to the WinWikipedia...to strike while the iron is hot, so to speak.
If folks can come up with medical logons and themes (k10w3 has done one... Dr GUI) which I use
and show to MD friends, I'll be glad to show them around. I also "market" the Hanukkah Dream by
CarGuy1 as well as k10w3's WB Hanukkah and friends at the Synagogues...
Hard to know if there's any success, though.
Reply #34 Tuesday, January 4, 2011 1:31 PM
(using your knife and fork or paws, Uvah?!?!?)
Reply #36 Tuesday, January 4, 2011 10:21 PM
If a bit more consideration was given to existing and long time skinners who have put a lot of time and effort in supporting other skinners, the site, and the software they skin for...some of the other stuff would just happen on it's own. It's kind of a two way street. 
And I know I'm beating a long dead horse here...but a gallery for "just docks" would go a long way. 
Reply #37 Thursday, January 6, 2011 10:08 AM
Are there issues with WC seach feature?
I used to be able to sort my own gallery list(s) by name or date or downloads, now I cannot. I do use the WC filters provided, and I have tried every combination to get desired results to no avail. Am I overlooking something?
Also, if I click explore / windowblinds from the WC homepage I get windowblinds. Then if I want to search within windowblinds for a particular artist in the windowblinds gallery I type their name in the search box. However, the result brings up all of that artist's galleries, not just their windowblinds gallery. Am I doing it wrong? Any advice would be appreciated.
Reply #38 Thursday, January 6, 2011 12:24 PM
The search hasn't really worked from day one for me either.
Reply #39 Thursday, January 6, 2011 1:26 PM
well using the HIDDEN filters you can have this very personal setting
Reply #40 Thursday, January 6, 2011 2:01 PM
I think an overall Object Dock Gallery with two separate sub-Galleries would organize things nicely. One for Docks and the other for Icons. The Icons and the "Misc. Icon" Galleries could then be merged. I believe this would organize things in a far more logical (and retrievable) manner.
Part of the goal of that is to give the Dock makers more "Prime Time" for their docks which get pushed out of the spotlight very quickly by single icons which could go to the "Misc. Icon" Gallery (at present).
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Reply #21 Monday, January 3, 2011 10:52 AM
Glad you liked it.