AnimeWallpapers.com redesign

[FooBarWidget]

Hi guys. I redesigned the website. How do you like it? For comparison, here's the old design: http://web.archive.org/web/20060824050447/http://www.animewallpapers.com/

[Thornwillow]

It looks the same as the old one except it does seem to be a little more streamlined which is nice. Also there aren't ads littered everywhere! Or popping up for that matter. :D And the links seem to work as well, so ... so far so good, I'd say. :)

[MistressPookyChan]

The site still isn't working for me. Do you mind posting a screen shot so that we can look at it while you are fixing it?

[veeanime]

I like the new look. I was starting to get a little worried when when I couldn't see anything there.

[FooBarWidget]

Here's a screenshot (http://images.animewallpapers.com/img/screenshot.jpg). MistressPookyChan, maybe your DNS server isn't aware of the IP address change yet. The current IP address is 72.232.29.253.

[GangstaSnail]

They say simplicity is the best ... tho, imo, it still looks exactly like the old one ... in a new shell.
Sometimes it's good to have the index on the 1st page, tho ... I think it'd work better if the first page was reserved for showing some random wallpapers that are on there. Or if you include a option to vote the wallpapers, then there should be displayed the most popular walls.

[FooBarWidget]

It is exactly the same. I only redesigned the layout. I didn't change the content.

As for displaying random wallpapers on the front page and adding a rating system: I'll need a decent content management system for that. I'm also working on that.

[Thornwillow]

They say simplicity is the best ... tho, imo, it still looks exactly like the old one ... in a new shell.
Sometimes it's good to have the index on the 1st page, tho ... I think it'd work better if the first page was reserved for showing some random wallpapers that are on there. Or if you include a option to vote the wallpapers, then there should be displayed the most popular walls.

Well while Wizzy makes some good comments about that and the response that you made FooBar about it is good, I think that if you were to do something like that, it would end up looking a lot like AnimePaper.net. And there should be some brainstorm as to how you can do it differently, otherwise people are going to think you're just copying. Which isn't always a bad thing, but I do know that AW.com does get a lot more visitors than AP.net because I've tested most web broswers and AW.com always comes up first before AP. So it would be better to do something to stick out, rather than just emulate.

Now the random showing of wallpapers on the front page is a great idea and commenting on them is even better, but I wouldn't try to get too many similarities between the two sites because it'll just seem like the same site in regards to options.

Some brainstorm concerning what kind of options or little add-ins you can do would be cool, also you can only do what is the extent of FooBar's abilities, right? :)

[FooBarWidget]

Yeah, I agree with Thornwillow. I also hate blatantly copying others. I just looked at animepaper.net. I quite like it. :) The design is nice and clean, and the way you put random thumbnails on top of a larger random wallpaper is simply brilliant. Do you use a modified version of existing gallery software, or did you write everything yourself?

Actually, the number of visitors for animewallpapers.com is only slightly higher than animepaper.net (based on the statistics from the past few days, and the "11.3 million" that was mentioned on animepaper.net's advertisement page). Animepaper.net is a typical "web 2.0" website though, i.e. it's entirely community based. A lot of wallpapers on that site is high quality. AnimeWallpapers.net is still manually maintained (which is tedious).
One thing I don't like about animepaper.net is that you have to register before you can download a wallpaper - something you don't have to do at animewallpapers.com (because it's not possible).

I don't want animewallpapers.com to stay like this though. It's too much work for me. This is what I currently have in mind for animewallpapers.com:
1. Automatic. That is, wallpapers are submitted by people. Moderators may remove inappropriate submissions, but don't interfere otherwise.
2. The focus is entirely put on the wallpapers themselves, not on the people. One should be able to quickly and easily find a good wallpaper, download it, and just leave. No comments feature. This is a bit like how animewallpapers.com is right now. This is in contrast to animepaper.net which focuses more on the community.
3. Wallpapers are sorted by quality. People can rate each wallpaper. The wallpaper that has the most votes is displayed first.
4. More dynamic front page (like what was suggested).

So animewallpapers.com will be a bit conservative. It will simply be a "web 1.0 website done well", if one can call it like that. :)

I'm not sure whether (2) is a good idea. Having a good community makes the thing more lively. But I don't think I'll have enough time to setup a community-based website by myself.

[LavaBug]

having a bit of community can't hurt...on how to establish one, i'm plainly the wrong guy to give advise about that^^°
i'm more against point 1 personally...
i dont think it's good or helpful for the site if ppl can upload just every animewallpaper they made, since, rating or not, the general quality will suffer from this and, i don't think rating will do the sorting, since many people are usually high on leeching, but rather low on participating, so in worst case you have tons of wallpapers that noone likes before you find some good ones.
(see some stuff on minitokyo for reference...)
i still think tedious or not...approving wallpapers first (like animepaper does)helps to maintain a minimum level of quality

[Piper]

Ou. That's nice. Ad-free (YAY!!!) and very smooth to surf. Great job!

[GangstaSnail]

Well, Thorn ... before saying copying AP.net, learn a bit of the AP.net wall display system ... it isn't really random as it looks ;) It's much more complicated that you think.
Also ... "random" isn't like a copyrighted term o_o;

And I must agree with Lava ... there should be some validation before showing the wallpapers on the site.

[Astalle]

The Ad free is nice. I remember how it used to be littered with ads all the time. Seems very nice though ^_^

[Piper]

And I must agree with Lava ... there should be some validation before showing the wallpapers on the site.

Sounds good in theory.. But do you realize how much time that would take? I would volunteer to help validate. But I'm not sure there are multiple people that are willing to do it.

I'm sure AW.com has many (many) wallpapers submitted daily.

[LavaBug]

yeah, but the point is, how many you think are really uploadworthy and not only (sorry to formulate it that way) stealing bandwidth?
(and i know that lies in the eyes of the viewers...)
i mean validating walls in advance may take time and isn't a great job...but it's worth the effort

[BaBiiAnGeL250]

I like the new one it's really pretty ^^

[Hakosho]

I like the new design better, more flow and makes the site warmer when you go. The old layout was plain and kinda like non anime site.

[Thornwillow]

Well, Thorn ... before saying copying AP.net, learn a bit of the AP.net wall display system ... it isn't really random as it looks ;) It's much more complicated that you think.
Also ... "random" isn't like a copyrighted term o_o;

And I must agree with Lava ... there should be some validation before showing the wallpapers on the site.


Well, I know AP.net displays the wallpapers up top based on rating and amount of favorites and also comments. I know they take all those into consideration, it isn't just some random wallpaper plucked from the gallery. I know that, but I'm just saying with AW.com, having too many similarities between the sites is just not really differenciating between the two.

And I read through the suggestions that FooBar mentioned and I think they are awesome. I do agree with Lava that there should be some sort of validation for wallpapers, or you will have galleries filled with crap. So I don't think that should change too much. That's basically what I'm saying.

I just don't want people to accuse AW.com of taking alot of ideas from AP.net with the new change. It would just be more beneficial if the ideas were different, or at least variations of what is commonly already known.

[MistressPookyChan]

I like the ideas that were mentioned so far. I also agree that there should be more focus on the walls and not on the people. We have a little bit of community; this is it.

I've done validation in the past and it IS hard work. There are tons of wallpapers submitted daily and maybe a 1/3 are good. Pmak and I talked about this before, and he was thinking of doing an automated thing in the admin setting; all the staff could have access to it and upload them manually, no messing around with email and such.

Instead of messing around with all these ranking and comments, I would first focus on layout. Alphabetical menus vs pulldown menus vs a big list vs whatever.

[The Rebel]

Hmmm, for some reason I don't think it's working right with my comp. It lets me see one wallpaper, and after that everything else shows up with the hugh blank square.
And is it suppost to have that great big blank spot in the left side of the screen, (screenshot as referrance).

[FooBarWidget]

It's not supposed to do that. The ad is supposed to be aligned to the right, like in my screenshot here. I also tested in Internet Explorer 6 and it also renders it fine. I don't have IE7 though.

The GorillaNation ads are really causing a lot of headache. :( I'm in the process of discussing with them (a lot of things have to be taken care of, at the moment they want me to prove that I was co-owner of animewallpapers.com). I'll do my best to get rid of the intrusive ads ASAP.

[The Rebel]

Must be IE7 then, cause mine still has the hugh blank area. And I still can't figure out why I can't see the full size wallpapers. Maybe I'll see if I can use FireFox to view the wallpapers there.

[GangstaSnail]

Works fine in IE7 for me o_o; Rather slow at loading in it, but it still loads ....

[Thornwillow]

I absolutely LOVE the new interface Foobar! It is so fresh, so clean, so awesome. LETS keep it! XD I think it looks nice in my IE7 and you're doing a great job. I love the flow and the simplicity. The banner is nice too. And FYI, if you ever want a banner designed for the site, all you have to do is ask. LOL Not saying I'm the best there ever was, but I think I do ok. :) And I love doing graphics .. so keep up the wonderful work. ^^

[FooBarWidget]

Thanks all. :)

I'm in a bit of trouble right now. pmak is gone and didn't pay for this month's server bill. So his servers are going down one by one. The first one happens to be the one I hosted animewallpapers.com on. :( I already moved it to a temporary server. I ordered a new server last week but due to stupidities of the hosting provider, it still isn't online yet. I have tons of websites that I have to move, so it looks like I'll be busy for a while.

When I'm done, I'll post more about my vision for animewallpapers.com.

[Light Buster]

The site still isn't working for me. Do you mind posting a screen shot so that we can look at it while you are fixing it?
actually its working for me. it shouldn't be a problem for you unless the network isn't working properly.

[Foxxer]

Many, many thanks for finally putting up lists of new wallpapers!

One suggestion: would you please make them links when you list them, so I can go directly to the new wallpapers, instead of having to scroll through the sidebar until I find the anime and then figure out on which page the new images start?

[FooBarWidget]

That's not possible. Right now the website is more or less static - there is no dynamic content management system. I'm still working on a more dynamic site. But I always put new wallpapers on the first page of a series page.

[meawkung]

Nice design , I love it.:p