About 2 months ago we announced that we were starting on a new WinCustomize site project, a wiki to help organize all the information out there on what skinning is, what applications there are to use, and how to best use them. We chose a wiki instead of a static list of links for several reasons:
- It's a proven method for organizing and delivering information (see Wikipedia)
- It's open to all users to edit and contribute
- It quickly evolves to meet the needs of the community
A piece of the Wiki main page showing software and help links
In the past month, several members of the community have really picked the project up by the bootstraps and gone nuts adding information, developing a better layout, and working very hard to make sure the site launched with a lot of great help content. In the past few weeks, we reached a point where there was enough content already in-place to both make the site immediately useful, and packed with plenty of examples for other users who want to add completely new content.
With us launching the site today, I'd like to thank a handful of users who were absolutely essential to getting this project off the ground. If you look through the Recent Changes page, you'll see their names by most of the entries. They provided the majority of the content, article templates, and the very pretty front-page and article layouts.
| Island Dog |
BebiBulma |
CerebroJD |
| DoctorNick |
GreenReaper |
SK Originals |
A few things to know before venturing onto the wiki:
- Content is User-Written.
The quality of the content of the wiki is 100% dependent on what the community puts into it. It's already off to a great start, but there are still gaps in information. If you are knowledgeable about any skinning product, technique etc, we highly encourage you to toss in your own two cents. If you see something is missing, create a new article from scratch!
- User Accounts Are NOT Linked
If you want to edit any content on the wiki, you must login first. However, the wiki is not tied into your Stardock.net account, so you'll need to create a new, wiki-specific account. Eventually, account integration is a goal, so to make that future process simpler, please use the same username and email address you have registered to login to WinCustomize.
- The Sky's The Limit
There is no limit to the content that can be added to the wiki. If you think there's a skinning topic that should be represented, you can add it! Editing the wiki is easy to learn and we already have several great help pages to learn from. All we ask is that content stay related to the overall topic of skinning/customization.
- We're always looking for suggestions to improve
This is just the start of the wiki. Given time and feedback, we hope to continually improve it to better serve the community. We have a great opportunity here to become the authoritative help and information resource for the skinning world, and we have every intention of doing just that. But we'll always need the community's help through adding content and providing suggestions on how the system could be improved.
That about does it. The doors are now open! Go forth, read, edit and write! If you have tutorials you've posted on WinCustomize or other sites, please please please post them to the wiki too! All the resources you need to add to the wiki are on the front page under the "Contribute" heading!
I really hope everyone enjoys and benefits from this new site!