BlogSkins.com News

I need a new Featured Contrib

2007-03-09T21:41:00.000-07:00

Help! Send me your write-ups from contact page.

Timezone Change

2007-02-11T12:10:00.000-07:00

I've never been very good about timezones on this site. For a long time, all the times were in Pacific (US) time. Then for a couple months now they've been in Central (US) time. In both cases, sometimes the time would change for things like Daylight Savings Time. That's not good.

As of about 5 minutes ago, however, all new times going forward will be in GMT (also known as UTC). That should be much clearer. Also means that the time won't be jumping around by an hour for Daylight Savings Time. Please report any problems here.

Good Free Font Site: UrbanFonts.com

2007-01-18T11:23:00.000-07:00

The following is a paid review, but is 100% honest:

Need fonts for your skins? Don't want to pay for them? Good! Then you probably know that doing a Google search for "free fonts" results in, well, a lot of not-so-good results. It's rare to find a high quality, free font site.

That's why I was very glad to be introduced to UrbanFonts. The site features well over 6,000 free fonts, which you can browse alphabetically or by category (a good place to start might be with the famous fonts). You can also view the most popular fonts, the newest fonts, or the site owners' favorite fonts. Every font features a live preview capability, where you can type in any text you like and see what it looks like in a given font, before you download it. You can also change the color of the font. Very, very useful for quickly and easily finding the perfect font.

So many of the users of BlogSkins live in different countries, and speak languages other than English. For you, the foreign language fonts could be extremely valuable. Patriotic Americans would probably enjoy the USA fonts. Or if you have a specific font in mind, try the global search or browse the list alphabetically.

For those of you who are font/design nerds, there's a font blog where interesting (I guess ;-)) facts and information about fonts are discussed.

And of course, for when you get really, really serious, the site has a good collection of fonts you can buy.

So go out there, find and download yourself some high-quality free fonts, create some killer skins, and submit them to BlogSkins.

Preview Errors Fixed

2006-12-14T11:18:00.000-07:00

That was stupid. Sorry about that.

Email Problems

2006-11-25T11:50:00.000-07:00

Ok, since the server move, we had a problem with sending emails. That meant that validation emails, lost password emails, etc were not being sent. This has now been fixed.

So if you registered sometime in the last week, I've gone ahead and validated your account. All 1,500 of you!

Everyone else, please try again. I'm sure it will work this time ;-)

New Release

2006-11-21T10:59:00.000-07:00

A couple new features went out today:

Banned users' skin ratings no longer are counted in the overall skin ratings. Also, their comments are ~~struck-out~~ so that you can tell they've been banned.
I'm doing a better job of tracking users who should be banned, but aren't. Hopefully I can catch them faster.
Skin contributors' comments have a different background color than the others, so you can quickly identify when they have commented on their skin.
I'm doing some things to track "shared" accounts. As-in, people with multiple accounts. If you have multiple accounts, and are rating/downloading/faving your own skins with those accounts, stop. Those actions no longer are counted in the skin of the day calc, and if I see people doing it a lot, they'll get banned too.
Finally, I've made some security changes to how logins are done, which necessitated logging everyone out. Sorry about that, but it means your accounts are safer now.

Update: We now have a Featured Contributors queue, with enough in there to last until February. But! I still need more writeups. So if you have some, send them in please.

We're Moving!

2006-11-17T16:30:00.000-07:00

BlogSkins is upgrading from one server to two, hopefully this weekend. In the interim, I appreciate your patience regarding the currently very slow site.

Update: And we're done! If you're reading this, you're on the new servers.

SOTD Change

2006-10-27T09:40:00.000-07:00

The Skin of the Day algorithm has been changed -- you have been warned. It's also likely to undergo lots of changes in the next few weeks.

Featured Contributors Help

2006-08-06T08:58:00.000-07:00

It's really, really obvious that picking Featured Contributors isn't going well. Unfortunately, when I do get time to work on this site, I often have to work on performance improvements and bug fixes -- not the kinds of community-building efforts that I'd like. I do plan on adding in some functionality to allow moderators to add Featured Contributors (among other things), but that's a long way off.

So what I'd like to do, for at least the short term, is take submissions from the users. Not just "So and so should really be Featured Contributor, la!", but full writeups of Featured Contribs. I'll take the ones I like, queue them up, and then we'll have a proper feature. So if you're interested, please pick someone you think is worthy (not yourself :-)), write up a "review" of them in the same style as the Featured Contributor above, and use the contact form to send them to me. You'll of course get credit for the writeup.

Any questions, please post them in the comments here. Thanks!

Goodbye Categories, Hello Tags

2006-06-25T18:26:00.000-07:00

Long-time BlogSkins users will know that we've had tags for a while (about a year), and categories for even longer (about 4 years). The truth is, tags are much, much better than categories because they allow you, the user, to create your own categories. They're like categories -- but better! And when you think about the fact that I hadn't touched the category list in, oh, I dunno, forever, you realize that the categories here were completely useless.

So out they go.

I've removed all references to categories from the UI, and enhanced the tag support. I strongly encourage all BlogSkins Contributors to tag their skins when they submit them and allow users to add their own tags. BlogSkins browsers should also tag skins on their info pages where applicable.

Other changes that have gone in recently are:

No more My Blogs section -- it never actually worked (whoops!) anyway, and was kind of dumb. In its place we now have My Favorites.
Three new user profile fields: url, locality, and country. Please fill these out in your settings page, and they will be displayed on your profile.
Speaking of profiles, I fixed every broken link to a profile that I know of. So if yours wasn't working, or if you were trying to rate someone and it wasn't working, please try again. If you see other broken profiles, please note them in the comments.
The full skin comments pages are now broken up into pages of 20 comments each, instead of one big page with (potentially) hundreds of comments on them.
The Skin of the Day should start working properly again tomorrow.
BlogSkins is now publishing all ~340,000 user profiles and ~318,000 skin comments as microformats. We're also pinging Pingerati with updates to those, so they're searchable in Technorati's Microformats Search.
A few small bug fixes and UI tweaks.

Enjoy!

Updated: If your skin had categories before, your skin has automatically been tagged with those categories -- by you!

Aaaannd... We're Back

2006-06-18T21:32:00.000-07:00

A rare, but catastrophic technical problem (crashed database table) coupled with one of the only times I've been without full, reliable internet access resulted in some pretty bad problems this weekend. These manifested themselves in non-working browse and search pages as well as skin download counts and rankings resetting to zero.

The problem has been fixed, and I think there was no data loss. Thanks to the many, many people who reported this problem -- and if you notice any more, please don't hesitate to contact me.

New Features

2006-06-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

A couple of new features have gone up, quietly, in the last couple weeks that I wanted to point out to everybody:

All images on the site are now served up from Amazon's S3 Service. This means that everything from stock site images, to user avatars, to skin screenshots, to cached skin images should be served up faster and more reliably. Some of this has been in place for more than a month, but I finally finished up everything last week.
Speaking of images, you'll now see user avatars in more places, like the comments lists on the skin info pages.
Speaking of images again, BlogSkins will now cache your images for you for skins that support previews. That means you don't have to worry about going over your bandwidth allowance at Photobucket or where ever. Also, BlogSkins lists the images it knows about underneath the skin download link, so users can download your images from here instead of somewhere else.
By popular request, I now allow the ~~strikethrough~~ tag in the forums, and support [url][/url] tags for making links.
I'm finally doing something with user ratings. Users with ratings less than or equal to -3 (there's currently 13 of them) may not post comments until their ratings rise above this level. I'm flexible on the rating limit, and may adjust it up or down as I see fit.

As always, there's more to come!

BlogSkins Singapore Gathering

2006-06-01T19:50:00.000-07:00

BlogSkins user li0nheart is organizing (suggesting?) an outing for Singaporean BlogSkins users. If that means you, check it out.

Alas, it's a bit of a trip for me, so I can't make it this time. But I would like to see more of this -- and pictures!

Skin of the Year Award Winners!

2006-05-27T08:56:00.000-07:00

*yawns, stretches, looks around sleepily*

*glances at watch*

Woah, woah, woah... it's May? May 27th? 2006? So I guess you guys want to know who won Skin of the Year, eh? Well, here they are:

User's Choice Award, voted on by BlogSkins users: my l0ve f0r y0u ` ` t0ngt0ng ((: by, well, t0ngt0ng.

Computer's Choice Award, determined programmatically using the same algorithm as the Skin of the Day: Evone - 01 - The Lost Memories, by, well, Ev0nE.

Congratulations to both skin designers! They have been contacted and awards are in the process of being distributed. I'm still digging through my email to find the best award design submission, and will announce that in the next couple days.

Thank you very much to everyone who participated -- either through voting, or submitting a skin, or by downloading, commenting, rating, or favoriting any skin in 2005. This was fun, and I hope to do it again next year -- but with tighter timelines ;-)

SOTY Contest Ending

2006-02-25T16:15:00.000-07:00

The BlogSkins Skin of the Year contest will be ending February 28th at midnight, Pacific time. No new votes will be accepted after that date. Soon thereafter, I will announce the winners of all three contests here.

Until then, don't forget to vote!

Announcing User Ratings

2006-01-29T14:40:00.000-07:00

BlogSkins now has a basic user rating system. Any logged-in user can rate any other registered user. Ratings are a simple positive or negative and require a comment. All ratings are public. Right now, each user gets a green flag if most of their ratings are positive, and a red flag if most of their ratings are negative. They get no flag if their ratings even out. This will change slightly in the future. Flags appear next to users' names in the skin comments sections and the forums. You can find the link to add/view user ratings on their profiles.

For now I'm simply tracking and displaying average user ratings. In the near future, I hope to use this information to give problem users "time outs", bans, delete their comments, highlight highly-rated users, etc.

Skin of the Year Voting Now Open

2006-01-04T11:02:00.000-07:00

The voting for the Skin of the Year is now open. If you are logged in, and viewing the info for a skin that was submitted during 2005, you will see blue button in the upper right hand corner that says "Vote for this skin for Skin of the Year!". Clicking this button will register your vote for that skin. You may vote for as many skins as you like. You may only vote once per skin. You may vote for your own skin. Enjoy!

BlogSkins Skin of the Year

2005-10-26T09:14:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite BlogSkins features, like, ever is the Skins of the Day. So in continuation of that theme, and the fact that we're approaching the end of 2005, I'd like to announce an idea I've been thinking about lately: The BlogSkins Skin of the Year.

Here's how it will work:

Some time after the end of this year, I will open up voting for the best skin submitted during 2005.
I will also use the same algorithm used to pick the Skin of the Day to programmatically pick the best skin of 2005.
Both skins (the users' choice, and the computer's choice) will be given prominent awards on their skin info pages, and the contributing users will receive $50 Amazon gift certificates.
The awards displayed on the skin info pages will be designed by BlogSkins users. I will pick the best one, and the designer of it will also receive a $50 Amazon gift certificate, and a permanent acknowledgement on this site that he/she was the creator.

So, obviously there's some time left before voting begins, so why am I telling you now? The first reason is that I want to give skin contributors time to submit skins before the end of the year. The second reason is that I need designs for the awards. My only criteria for the awards design is that they be clear that they are awards (so, like, trophies or stars or something) and that they look good at large sizes and small sizes (you may design 2 different awards, one big and one small, if you like). Please send all your entries in the awards design contest to blogskinsawards@mylesgrant.com.

Any other questions, please leave them in the comments.

New Featured Contrib Needed

2005-10-08T09:40:00.000-07:00

Hey, I need a new featured contributor. Please leave suggestions in the comments.

Announcing a Real Skin Search Engine, etc.

2005-09-12T11:15:00.000-07:00

A lot of work went into a rewrite of the skin search page this weekend, and that has resulted in a major increase in accuracy and functionality. It should now be considered the best way to find the exact skin you're looking for. Check it out.

There have also been a number of under the hood changes, mostly focused on performance. You may have also noticed that some of the urls have been changing to make them cleaner and more search engine friendly. Don't worry though, the old urls will still work.

Also, the front page of the site has undergone a small redesign, to better highlight the Skins Of The Day and the Featured Contributors.

Finally, for a couple months now, I have been testing the caching of images used in skin previews. This should help keep previews from being overrrun with "bandwith exceeded" errors from the free image hosting services. I will continue to cache images from the most active previews as long as my bandwith limits can handle it.

Oh, and finally finally, I now have assistance with skin moderation, so if you notice copied skins, skins that are not skins, or skins which are using images without permission, please continue to use the skin complaint functionality, and those skins will be dealt with much more quickly than before.

More to come...

Skins Of The Day

2005-08-30T19:59:00.000-07:00

Announcing my new favorite BlogSkins feature to date: Skins Of The Day.

This feature has been around pretty much all month, so you may have run into it already. However, it was pretty much in testing mode (in fact, I cleared it and started completely over multiple times), and I haven't been happy about it until now.

The Skins Of The Day pretty much exist for one reason: to encourage skin contributors to attach screenshots to their skins. Automatic previews often don't come out exactly right, and they don't work for some skin types at all, so screenshots are really the best way to go. Plus, they allow for really cool visual presentation options like this, and the thumbnail browse mode.

So please check it out and let me know what you think. The contact form is always open if you have comments.

Welcome to BlogSkins v2.0

2002-05-31T20:48:00.000-07:00

Well, it took a lot longer than I expected, but we're back. I hope that the wait was worth it.

Here is a quick list of the changes that were made while we were gone:

Skinning Specs updated/cleaned up slightly. New BlogSkins-specific tags added.
F.A.Q. expanded slightly, in part to explain some of the new features.
My Blogs section added. Allows users to manually enter weblog information in case the Blogger API can't retrieve it for them. All users will need to enter this section to re-enter their list of weblogs. Blogger users can use an automated tool to speed up this process. My Blogs is also the place to enter personal information, webcam URLS, and navigation and external links for each of their weblogs, in order to take advantage of the new BlogSkins tags.
Skin submission system now handles the new tags. It specifies that skins now must contain opening and closing "<BlogSkin>" tags, but it will automatically convert "<Blogger>" tags for you. I'm a nice guy. I also converted all existing skins to this format. By hand (kidding).
Preview, Apply, Download, and Submission now treat all tags as case-insensitive (which is how it should be, I think)
Skin information page now consolidates all three "skin actions" (preview, apply, download) into one location. Only blogs that have had the Blogger API enabled for them in My Blogs will show up in the Apply list. Info page also shows which features the skins support.
Preview, Apply, and Download now all handle the new BlogSkins tags. If you Apply or Download a skin with advanced features, and you have the information necessary to support those features entered in the "info" section in My Blogs, the information is entered into the skin before Application or Download. Try it out.
User signups no longer require a "user type" and therefore do not make use of the Blogger API. Meaning that anyone can get an account here now and signups will not crash (*crosses fingers*).
Created a new skin to showcase the new features.
Started a new poll.
Did a bunch of little things and some other behind-the-scenes stuff that I can't remember now.

So what should you do first? If you're a Blogger user, go into My Blogs, click add a weblog, and click the link at the top of the page to auto-add your weblogs. Or click here to do it in one step. Then, go to your weblogs list in My Blogs and click "info" for each blog. If you wish, enter in some personal information, webcam URLs, and links to enable the advanced features. After that's done, check out the new skin to see the new features in action. Finally, get started on submitting or updating skins that take advantage of these features.

Me? I'm taking the night off. But if anything's broken, ">let me know.

Update: Whoops. Downloads didn't work. Fixed now.

Drama! That Means We're Entering The Big Time

2002-10-08T21:26:00.000-07:00

The following is in reference to green column template - main:

Listen. If you suspect ANY skin of being a copy, use the complain tool on the skin info page. That's what it's for. Anonymously and vaguely making accusations is childish and nonproductive. Straight-out lying is even worse. I have not seen any proof that this is a copy of any skin, and until I do, I will delete any further accusations towards inez.

I've put too much time into this site to stand by and watch people be bullied into leaving. Misbehaving members, whether they have copied a skin or are harrassing other members, will be banned. I'm not banning anyone today, however, because I am way too kind. But if this kind of bullshit continues, then I'm going to have to get medieval.

inez is cool. Leave her alone.

BlogSkins.com v3.1

2004-03-04T19:24:00.000-07:00

Well, that took less time than I thought. Here's a summary of the changes:

BlogSkins supports multiple, distinct skin types. Gone are the days of converting from a basic Blogger template to Movable Type, Xanga, etc. Now all blog software types are natively supported. Hopefully this will work better for everyone.
As a consequence of the above, all existing skins have been converted to Blogger Main and Blogger Archive Index types.
You can browse skins by type, if you're looking for something for your Movable Type blog, for example, and don't want to look at all the Blogger skins.
I can't possibly write preview parsers for all the skin types out there, so there aren't preview parsers for all skin types. This means that for some skins, it's impossible to preview the skin.
To compensate for the above, you can attach a screenshot of your skin for other people to view. You can do so when submitting a skin, or when editing a skin. In the future, I'd like to move away from dynamic skin previews, and to screenshots. You can see them in action here and here.
A few layout changes to the right-hand bar.
Several behind-the-scenes changes to make things more reliable.
I think that's it... I'll post more if I think of them.

What do you all think?

New Features/Redesign

2005-04-21T18:17:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the latest version of BlogSkins.com. Here are the major features released tonight:

Redesign. Every single page has been touched in some way, so be sure to check them all out. The goal was to make the site feel "cleaner", while emphasizing the more important information. For example, check out the new skin info pages, with the skin name prominently displayed, a huge user icon so you can quickly tell who the author is, and a very large area for skin description. I hope this gets more people to write better, longer descriptions and upload user icons -- user icons are now used all over the place.
Tags! As skin contributors, you can now choose to allow other BlogSkins users to add "tags" to your skins (visit the My Skins page and edit your skins to turn this on, if you like). Skin authors can always tag their own skins. If you're not familiar with tags, they're a good, quick way to categorize a skin, without resorting to pre-defined categories. Sites like Flickr and del.icio.us use them to great effect. Try using tags, I think you'll like them -- and if you're a skin contributor, please consider turning them on for your skins.
You are now forced to preview your new threads/comments in the forums, and you can make as many edits as you like before submitting.
There's a random skin link in the footer navigation that will... well... take you to a random skin page. Good for finding new things.
The "10 Most Recent" sidebar box has been moved to the top.
Skin and forums searches are now limited to the first 400 results. I'll consider increasing that, if it's a problem.
Some skins were being "randomly" marked as disabled, when they were not. This should now be fixed.
An account is no longer required to download skins.
When editing the skins you've contributed, the categories they are assigned to are no longer lost.
You can now comment (but not rate) on skins more than once (skin contributors can now comment (but not rate) on their own skins).
If your skin has a thumbnail attached, it now appears in the thumbnail browse mode immediately, instead of... later.
There's a new "Featured Contributor" box on the front page that I intend to update often.
Many more behind-the-scenes changes that you probably won't notice, but that make me very happy.

I think that's it. If you have any comments, please post them in the forum thread I started for this, or uses the contact form. Thanks! And enjoy.