We just finished the structure of the downloads system which was I think 90% of complicated code on the site. So im hoping about 2 months.
Downloads now have a host of new features:
- tags
- merging file types (so you can view all "maya -> downloads" without having to go into melscripts or plugins individually).
- every file has a forum tab
- every file has feature requests
- every author has their own blog which if activated each file has its own category on the blog and blog posts are pulled into a tab
there are major navigation changes which includes drop down menus and a new way to find things. So now you can navigate two different ways:
Resources - Tutorials - Maya
or
Maya - Tutorials
Because of the new navigation system its going to give us the ability to add many new software applications to the site, and break software up by type "3d" "compositing" which is in a menu. There is also a "favorites" and "popular" menu under the software so that you can easily find what you are looking for and save all your favorite apps to show up first in your menu. This ultimately is going to allow us to merge software from fxshare to highend3d and expand both adding things like photoshop, houdini, modo, and anything else that might come up in the future.
We are keeping category structures but with tags finding things should be much easier. The combo gives users the ability to use whichever way they prefer or combine them for a mix, like going to maya -> downloads -> melscripts -> character and then using tag "forward ik" .
We have also built the ability to handle multiple authors on one file (though that feature probably wont be available during launch) and built the backend to support cvs.
the whole system is completely rewritten using ruby on rails. I've done about 6 sites in ruby on rails and its great finally highend will have a more solid structure. It has also been written to support licensing. Electronic Arts and DreamWorks are both interested in using it as internal system. With that we've added features that they can submit files internally and also "upload to highend3d.com". I believe this will really help in building up areas like tutorials/articles because the studios have internal training that they do and most will be capable of being public.
we are also moving the entire backend to amazon webservices. this move will allow us to start doing a lot more without me worrying about having to buy new servers. I've been really limited in the last 2 years due to bandwidth and cpu. I will be free of those things now and we will be able to add all kinds of new things to highend much easier and i'll have to spend much less time dealing with all these spam bots bringing the server to it's knees. With the new system I can move mail and web and downloads all on separate cpus.
overall v6 will allow me to grow highend3d where i was stuck before. most users wont find a great deal of new features but things will be slightly better and give a super solid structure to do more things.