Next Monday this site will look and behave differently. The underlying code that powers WinCustomize has been being rewritten over the course of the past couple of months based on what we've learned about running a high powered site.
When WinCustomize.com began, we expected maybe 200,000 visitors per month and the site was designed for that. Over the past several months, WinCustomize has grown and grown to over a MILLION visitors each month, making this one of the most popular sites on the Internet. The re-design takes advantage of advances in technology and technique and hence the site should appear significantly faster once we turn it on.
And while we've tried to make the interface as similar as possible to the existing one, there are features that have been added as well.
A few examples:
A theme manager. WinCustomize is already skininable but version 2 will be very skinnable giving users the ability to greatly alter everything about the site. With the font manager, users can even change the fonts of the site to suit their desires.
The message board will track what messages you've read and haven't read. The stage is set to add in additional features for subscribers (once the subscription system is in).
The new underlying engine is also suited for the upcoming WinCustomize skin browser, a Windows program that hooks directly into the database. From that program, you'll be able to apply skins directly as if this site and all its content were local to your hard drive. Even the message boards and comments are will be akin to reading MS Outlook than a web page.
WinCustomize magazine will be launched and go out to the hundreds of thousands of members (you will be able to control your subscription from the user preferences area).
Polls will be available as well as a featured screenshot. And the featured screenshot will include a link to a WinStyles suite that makes it easy for you to make your own desktop like the screenshot!
The WindowBlinds, WinXP skins and GUI Olympics sections will be merged along with the WebBlinds section into a single "WindowBlinds" section for users looking to submit and use WB visual styles. That will give us more room to display new sections.
Once the subscription system is set up, we'll be adding all sorts of personal organizing and portal features for those users who subscribe to WinCustomize.
And lastly, the new site will have a generally new look without any pop-up ads or in your face advertising.
We're really excited to bring this to you. The team has been working really hard and we hope you like it! Next Monday is the day.
