Why? That’s got to be the first question in everyone’s mind. Well, because there is no time, interest, or motivation from the owner (me) to get this site done right. After several stalled attempts at a new codebase to organize the mass of old content, I’m doing what I should have done long ago. Putting this site up as an archive of historic mac gui content.

I believe this content has value to a certain audience. It’s a little piece of mac history.

So, feel free to browse and take a trip down memory lane. The old resexcellence.com is the new resexcellence.com. Enjoy.

Questions? owner@resexcellence.com

Happy Veterans Day.

Is the old “snapshots” stuff worth keeping and moving into the new site? (photos of systems and setup)

I know no one is interested in anything but results, so any updates posted will be short and sweet.

Work is in progress. 12gig of content is being organized into a new structure. A design is being worked on. (I suck at that however)

Just a post to show a twitch of life here and see if anyone notices it.

So, after investing time into some new back-end technology for the past month or so, Slava stayed up pretty much all night a few nights ago to completely start over in PHP. This is a Good Thing™ for the site in general. We were excited about playing with new technology, but the learning curve was slowing things down too much. We hope this change is going to speed up our schedule significantly. We do apologize for the delay, but we’re determined to get this right. We’re not going to repeat past mistakes and open something that we’re not totally satisfied with.

Thanks for hanging in there!

So it’s been a while since we posted to let you know what’s going on. This post is meant to detail what we see the site becoming as we move toward re-opening.

Our main goal is to provide a central repository service for all things related to mac graphical user interface. To do so, we’ll focus on providing some basic site services in the following categories:

News
Downloads
Forums
Articles
Profile
Submissions
Search

Obviously, each of these will have sub-sections and the big one is Downloads. Our main focus will be to provide a source for all of the main gui content that is popular today. Namely, icons, desktops, themes, cursors, sounds, and a few others. Each of these will be able to be rated, commented on, and the download numbers will be visible. We know that people who create this stuff thrive on feedback. So we hope to provide a great way for the end users to interact with the authors and for those authors to see and read what the users like in their creations.

One of the biggest questions we get is “will you host the old content?” and “There was this nifty thingamajig that I found on resex, I want it again!”. Well, the big news for fans of the old content is that we have decided to host it all with the full features of our new ratings and comment system. (we had considered just putting a giant torrent file or simply hosting it in a directory style fashion) So that means that not only will you be able to download whatever old goodies you want, but they won’t be second class citizens in the new resex, they’ll have all the same fun features as the current and new content.

Obviously one of our big challenges is organizing this content. There are A LOT of files that we need to sift through, edit, upload, categorize, etc. We also have the challenge of designing an interface that will get you to what you need in an elegant way. Lastly, we have the challenge of designing and coding a backend that will handle this task. The good news is, it’s all underway. The bad news? Well, it’s not finished and we are going to pull an Apple and say “it’ll be ready when it’s ready” rather than give you a release date.

We have Unsanity programmers Jason Harris and Slava Karpenko hard at work on the technical end of things. Many of you know them from their other projects. Those who don’t know them…. rest assured that these two have a great deal of experience in pulling off fantastic work on big web projects.

But, unlike our favorite fruit purveyor, we’ll keep you updated with the progress. We have gone through 3-4 design drafts and we should have something to show you in that area soon!

3 Design Mockups:

A couple weeks ago, we asked you guys if you had questions about the new Resexcellence. Many questions were asked, and I’ve tried to answer as many as I can. Hopefully these answers will provide a clearer idea of what we’re trying to accomplish.

Danny Cohen: Need any help?

Not for now, but we will definitely be needing full community support once the new site comes closer to completion. Stay tuned.

Digital Corpus: What features do you folks plan on laying out for us in the New ResExcellence?

The feature set is still a work in progress, but one thing you can definitely expect is a totally revamped archive system that is extremely easy to use and much more powerful than the previous archive. This means comments, ratings, user favorites, searching, and more.

Tim-Hannon: Will we still have access to all the old submitted extras? ie: Icons, bezels, menulette replacements, etc?

Yes. We are still debating the best route for setting up the old archive, but rest assured there will be some way to access all of Resexcellence’s original content.

Eskander: To submit stuff, will we need to get it approved like before through a moderator or will it be automatic, as in a script?

The submission process will involve moderation (as a basic screening process), but there will be a new, much more automated system in place that will result in much faster response times.

pimpzofspades: I would realy like to know when it will be done.

We do too, and we can’t give a solid date yet, but the site’s engine is well in progress by experienced Unsanity programmers Slava Karpenko and Jason Harris (you’ll be hearing from them soon), and a full design refresh is also underway by the excellent interaction designer Renn of Atacama Design.

Ben Perry: Need someone to help with PHP, MYSQL, HTML, CSS, or to just bounce ideas or concepts off? Or just an extra head to do some brainstorming? NDA’s fully respected as well.

For the moment, no. However, we will be asking for feedback on various decisions as they come up through the blog, so if you’d like to help influence where the site goes, be sure to keep checking back and leaving comments. (We are listening. )

Cruciarius: will the new resex require us to sign up for all new forums or will we continue to have our previous forum accounts, but maybe a new look to the forum? i’m hoping we keep our accounts. it would make it easier, on the users. though it also all depends on what forum software you’re going to be using.

We will be doing everything we can to transfer the existing forum user databases over to the new forums, but for the moment, we can’t make a guarantee.

Ian Smith: What happens to those of us who were chosen to be administrators for ResExcellence, during the sale to Phill? Will you be asking for any assistance from us anytime soon?

For the record, these administrators were chosen before the sale. However, the current plan is to start with you guys administrating under the conditions we have previously discussed.

Cameron McNab: I’m still not really sure how this is going to complement MacThemes… will it be a place to post things like DA and then we will link to them in the MTF posts?

We have plans for promoting synergy between the sites, and this will likely involve some heavy cross-linkage.

Jason: Are you going to have the same categories as on the old ResExcellence, e.g. Sony Ericcson themes and iTunes themes and the like? or are you going to have different ones.

We are reworking the categories, but you can expect most of the popular ones in the Resex archive making a comeback.

Olu: Please change the white text on black background. It’s a strain on the eyes.

To note, this blog design definitely does not reflect what the final site design will be. (And I think it’s safe to say that the final design will not be white text on black.) However, for now, we have upped the contrast to make this more readable.

Dog Cow: I hope we get some of the stuff back before the server crash back in ‘04 or whenever it was. Is that possible?

Unfortunately, no. That data has been lost, and we won’t be able to recover it. What we have is the data on the server when it went offline, nothing more, nothing less.

Dave: Take as much time as you need-not as long as the last guys, but don’t rush because of the impatience of some people. Glad to see ResEx back.

For all who have said similar things, thank you so much for supporting this endeavor. It’s been a wonderful feeling receiving your feedback.

WooHoo! That is what I said when I ran the link to ResExcellence. I had not done that in a very long time. I knew from Scott Chitwood that things were once again in limbo. This is the true “Mac-community” shining through. A group so dedicated to Mac, the Mac’s interface, and ones I would also consider dear friends have been passed the torch. This is a good hand-off and the way it should be.

(Jason Harris, Brian Wilson, Slava Karpenko, Cletusâ„¢, Michael Coyle)

Was this all written in the stars? A couple years back Michael Coyle (founder of ResExcellence) and I met up at MacWorld in San Francisco. We stopped by Unsanity’s booth. We had all corresponded via email over the years and were both supporters of each others endeavors. We felt we knew each other in a way. We even had the wives snap a quick picture or two. But time moves on and so did Michael and myself. We both went back to our personal lives and relaxation. But deep in our hearts we hoped ResExcellence would live on. Though I will not speak for Michael, I know he would agree. It was his baby from the start. Scott did an excellent job after we left. But I know it can be a lot of work, and burnout happens when it is but one person running such a large site.

I want all of the past, present and new ResExcellence readers to know that this transition is going to be good! This is what everyone will be talking about in the weeks and months to come. All I can say is hang on for the ride. ResExcellence is back and the plans indicate it will be better than ever.

Maybe Coyle will put his Bass ale down for a minute and speak about all of this. If all you dedicated readers yell loud enough it will get the few remaining hairs on the back of his neck aroused and I bet he chimes in!

I wish the new ResEx team— Brian, Jason, Phill, Slava, and others, all the best in this new effort. Remember: ResExcellence ROCKS!

Cletusâ„¢

First a quick introduction – I’m Brian Wilson. Yup, I came up with and sing all those great songs from back in the day. Now that’s out of the way, let me review a little about the last few months of ResExcellence and what’s in store.

Phill and I began talking a few months back about the demise of ResExcellence and the possibility of doing something about it. Sparing you the details, we decided to team up and acquire it from the previous owner. Unsanity was the means of that acquisition, but I want to be clear right up front that the new ResExcellence is not going to be an Unsanity project, tailor exclusively for our products, or anything of the sort.

We envision ResExcellence to be a people driven project serving the needs of the mac GUI community and not the needs of any one company. We want this thing to be what you, the ResExcellence users, want it to be and what it deserves to be. Let me be clear also and say that though it should be community driven and supportive of any needs that exist, the new founders will maintain a controlled direction to avoid some of the pitfalls of the past.

So, over the past few months, we’ve worked through the acquisition, stuck a tiny little logo on the home page to assure you all was not lost, brainstormed some new ideas, got all the old content (yes, we have it all), and have begun work on the design and backend.

So… what’s next? Well, while we’re cranking away with the technical end of things, we’ve got time to answer questions. You have a specific question for us? Ask it in the comments. We’ll choose a batch to answer in our next post.