Themers -Beating the Competition-

I know this will sound totally conceeded of me, but I am prepared for this.

My themes I have spent hours on… perfecting… because I am obsessive complusive about what I do. I constantly work on them, making them better etc etc.

It stinks someone can go make a new theme and the Theme Creator pushes my theme back for a theme that took 5 minutes.

The themes I have done, all of course revolve around Bleach. Like I said I am a nut, it is like my Star Wars or something.

Anyway, was wondering if users would be allowed to start rating themes? Or perhaps the more layouts it produces will cause it to be bumped to the top?

Hey, so I know.. What determines the order the Theme Creator lists themes anyway? I notice it is kinda strange how it does it. Certainly it is not by date created.

Oh by the way, CoolChaser rules.

I think the themes are listed by the most popular in the last 24 hrs. So it’s not ordered by the total number of layouts made or by date made, it’s by popularity.

Here is a little tip:
Create a second myspace profile for testing out your themes and layouts.
Use it to make layouts with your Bleach themes. Search for a background that is a popular Bleach-like keyword so others will find it easily. Or if you have a background on your computer you would like to use….make sure you enter a good keyword for the title. If it’s really cool. Lots of people will find it and use it. :)

• This method can be used for any theme. Just pay attention to the keywords you are using to search for the perfect background. Using good keywords will help others find your awesome themes and use them!

Heather is almost right but we change the algorithm slightly due to performance issues:
The “popular” tab shows the all-time most popular layouts for now. The “recent” tab shows the most used layouts in the last 24 hours for all themes created in the last 3 days.

As you imagine, showing these themes is one of the most popular activities we do on CoolChaser, so it’s extremely resource-intensive. We’re trying to balance between “cheap” sort orders and showing the right themes that most users want.

We’re also looking to allow users to “add as favorite” themes they love, which would also factor into deciding which themes to showcase first.

Icyvoid: you have ideas to improve the sort order? Do let us know, we’ll see if we can incorporate the idea – and minimally we’ll let you know why we can’t.

yeah I’m not so happy about the popular themes either as lots of them are either broken (bandwidth exceeded) or just transparent themes LOL Really! People LOVE transparent themes! I think I mentioned this already somewhere els :P But you know icyvoid, I think people don’t really go through the popular or the recent themes one by one, I think they just search right away. so like Heather said, tagging it right will definitely help. I think we were still working on showing the search results by popularity but not sure what the status is on that. It’s just that there are so many things we can do right if we weren’t so popular :D

Okay… so I think I understand what you guys mean.

Here would be my suggestion:

When a themer uses the search… it pulls up all of the relevant layouts but sorts it by layouts made from the theme.

Of course someone who wants to see the newest ones would have to keep going to the back of the list. All the while you can see the most popular ones, rather to the ones that have been there 10 months and only had a few layouts created. ;)

This may have already been addressed, I don’t know. =)

So how are the searched themes ordered anyway? I still haven’t quite figured out how the system works. I know mine were almost all front page, then I did an update on my themes and they were pushed back second page. It confused me.

Wait.. I had a better idea.

How about a sort by column or similar in the search theme part?

Sort by:

Created
Updated
Layouts

Oh no! I didn’t mean to ignore you icyvoid, this thread somehow got buried :( I think we had an idea about showing the most recent including the updated ones, but then we thought people will abuse it by making no change and save and getting their place on the first page :P I mean I’m sure not many people will do that, but just in case. I’m kinda at loss at this search theme though, as it looks like we can’t get it to behave any better… :( I’ll ask Chao one more time.

These sorts won’t be too difficult to do, it’ll be a bit resource intensive, but if not set by default should be ok. I’m more worried if we can present it in a way that won’t clutter up the UI. As Sachiko knows, I’m especially proud of her very simple but powerful design. Sachiko, thoughts?

I like this sorting idea too if it can be worked out technically. I don’t think it’s worth it if it will affect the usefulness of the site in general. Myspace slows it down enough as it is!

Yes I like it too. I think it has been suggested several months ago, or was that layouts? Anyways, it would help eliminate some of the search time.

OK, better late than never! If you’ve not noticed, we’ve started to introduce “sorting” on various parts of CoolChaser. Of note, icyvoid’s original suggestion for allowing sorts on Step 1 of the Editor itself!

You now get “sort by popularity” based on your search keyword. It’s not a “pure” popularity sort, but a blend between the relevant search and how popular the theme is. Let me know if this works for y’all!

wow, this topic was posted quite some time ago! i never knew i was going against a 6 out of 5 star competitor! i guess i’m up to it. i’m a Bleach Fan too. i’m not all that good at making themes, but i can make some kinda good ones. hey icyvoid, what’s your profile URL (or w/e they call the website addresses). i wanna check out your theme. maybe i can learn something from you. mine profile is: http://www.coolchaser.com/user/profile/3816406

i didn’t make much, but still check them out and see if your better. by your posts i’m guess you’re are really…really good. O.O

Hey Kon nice to meet you. Been a while since I’ve logged in here. Anyway yeah I made several, I posted in the ‘Show Your Stuff’ Forum on some of the things I’ve done.

I meant to finish doing all the Bleach characters but I am in no position to do that right now, but for a while I was working real hard on some themes.

I am a big anime fan and was going to tackle some good DBZ themes eventually, but all in good time.

I would theme a-lot more if I could find the time to do it.

Sup icyvoid, nice to meet you too. ^_ i actually kinda stopped making anime themes and started to make car themes instead. i’m probably gonna make some Bleach themes sometime in summer break cuz i got a lot of Bleach pics. =) i got a good amount of car themes and could get much more if i had the time. since summer break is gonna give me lots of time, my themes and layouts are gonna popping up really fast. =D i’m planning to be nominated in September. =)

Hey icyvoid! where ya been? Hope you get to make more themes soon! :)

Good to have you back, Icyvoid.