Y have big issues with the ratings system, which is now completely out of service and inactive.

Matt and I are planning to implement a new rating system that we will place in single entries pages. This would be similar to a plus one or the like button on Facebook, with which you say if you dig or not the blend entry. Should we implement negative points? I don’t like negative points, I think they can become a demotivator for users.

Also the new server is running at full capacity with all your downloads but we are becoming really concerned about the site reaching the end of the month, because we have a bandwidth limit. We have talked a lot about this and I would like to warn our users that we might close downloads to registered users only and that we may also limit downloads per day per user.

These plans are still in concept phase but they are very likely to be implemented in the near future.

We will, of course, keep all the blends open source, but we need to make sure that the site will get to the end of each month with some bandwidth headroom, because if we happen to hit the limit the site goes offline until the end of the month and nobody wants that, of course.

So there you have it, please leave a comment if you have any suggestions on the matter or any other idea. Also please feel free to contact us from Blend Swap’s contact page.

My design didn’t make it untouched to the end because the logo was designed by someone else, and so it had to be modified, but well that’s how things work. I can’t complain.

My thinking behind this is to offer BSwap users a way more streamlined User Experience and to make the site navigation much more efficient.

The bottom part of the UI has not been designed so it just doesn’t come up in this screenshot. All I want to do is a fluid layout proposal that allows some flexible brwoser window adaptation with max and minimum width. The main idea is o begin offering 36 blend per page, no featured models (because rendering them to the main index is quite a CPU expensive task on the server) and to allow for 4 and 3 blends wide indexing, allowing smaller browsers to be able to display better with the new design (this is a first step into making a mobile browser theme).

Another thing to note is that blend text based info, like the blend name and counters would not be visible at all until you hover the corresponding image, this is to force our users to make good renders as well (I think renders are weak on average on the site, I tend to download a good blend more willingly if I see a good render on the main index page).

I made this quick layout proposal in about an hou after some thought about it, there is still a lot to do, but if you are a Blend Swap user, your comments are more than welcome!

In Web D&D: another big project is coming to my portfolio, you’ll see it pretty soon.

Life is good, people.

And oh, I’m delighted!

The topics on the downloadable pdf, about the issues that Free/Libre Open Source Software and Culture has to stand and overcome, are invaluable; there are solid points of view to think about for a while and chew patiently in your spare time.

I recommend this publication for anyone interested in design, graphics and Free Culture.

Libre Graphics Magazine →

Please enjoy and link us

Blend Swap has had a tough time since we got cracked by some douche bag spammers but MAtt has been able to drive the site back to a decent level of operability. I’ve been too busy to be around on Blend Swap for too long and so I haven’t commented a lot recently, but I still check emails and contact submissions (I got to expel a smart ass user today, that was kind of thrilling lol).

Any way, don’t think I’m not interested in updating this site anymore, I’m just way bussy managing all the work I have to get done.

I leave you with a couple screenshots.

It’s been quite an experience and after a few thousand lines of code the theme finally is coming together onto a coherent mass of coolness, reimplementing everything in a better fashion, but most of all, being able to update to a new data storage paradigm smoothly and automatically.

The new Theme, Swap Gallery, is almost ready for “production”, It implements all needed code to run the site flawlessly and adds a number of new features, updates, and capabilities. Plus the styling of the site is got me really satisfied.

There is still no fixed date to make the update to the new theme but I think that after thoroughly testing the theme we’ll be able to declare it ready for user consumption. Maybe in a month or two… I don’t know really.

Some changes have to do with using a number of Regexp to extract, modify and move information from the traditional places to new places where they are more useful and allow a way more flexible data retrieval and display.

Finally, and just to tease you a little more, a screen shot of the new ‘finished’ site’s header.

And the Author Pages: