Development, data updates, account deletions and more.

I've been less occupied with development of the site but we already have an update coming next week with some nice features I'll let you discover when we have them live. Beta testers are encouraged to go into the development site and have a first look at them for testing and feedback.

The current version of the site is 3.0.2. Which became active two weeks ago when we updated all the blends on the site to a new data storage paradigm, because of this we also updated our Handbook page, you should read through it (it's much shorter, I promise) because there is a number of things you don't have to do anymore.

Finally, all reported bugs have been addressed and the site is running much faster now :D

Licensing Questions.

I have noticed some of you guys are posting comments asking for permission from blend authors to use their blends in a production, or test, or school, or whatever. I just wanted to make clear that, however it's nice you ask the authors, there is no need to ask for permission. All the blends uploaded to the site are under permissive Creative Commons licenses that allow you to recycle, build upon, modify and redistribute your modifications without obstacles as long as you respect the licenses they are under. Go to our licensing page and read about the licenses we support and their implementation.

New Node Setups Category.

Some of you might have already noticed it on the upload form. Use it whenever it's due.

Legal agreement on upload form.

We added a new checkbox to the upload form with a legal agreement you must adhere to, kind of like an EULA. The reason for this is that we have had a couple of models up on the site that had to be taken down because they had licensing issues, like not making clear the licenses of textures, or models that were free of a pricetag but not of copyright. Since redistributing copyrighted materials can become horrible for Blend Swap we ask you to please take responsibility for your uploads, we can't afford to be sued for copyright infringement. By accepting the terms you guys free us from liabilities and help us keep the site running.

This is why we very insistently ask you to upload your own work only.

I'd like to thank those of you who have reported conflicting blends, you pretty much saved our asses.

Accounts deletion.

Blend Swap has at the moment 1847 registered accounts, that's a lot of people!

But guess what... 983 (53%) of those accounts are classifiable as dead: registered more than three months ago, never uploaded a blend and not even made a single comment on a blend. Other 230 (12.45%) are classified as inactive: registered less than three months ago, never uploaded a blend, never made a single comment on any blend.

All this means is that just about a third of you have been active on the site. I personally believe this is because some users still believe they have to be registered to download and this is just not the case. You don't need an account to download.

We are announcing hereby that the accounts classified as dead are going to be removed from the site on June 1st, 2011.

Accounts deletion FAQ:

Q/ Why are you deleting those accounts?

A/ because our database resources are very valuable and the smaller the database the faster the site runs.

Q/ Can I save my account from deletion?

A/ Yes, if you are among the dead users and upload a blend before June 1st, 2011, you are automatically out of the list of deletable accounts.

Q/ Are you going to keep deleting dead accounts?

A/ Yes, every 1st of the month. Accounts will become dead when you don't use it at all, that is: never uploaded a blend and never made a comment for three months after registering.

That's about it for this update, there is a lot more coming soon, we'll update you as things develop.

As always, your comments are welcome :)

Jonathan / SavageCode.

P.S. Hey guys this is matthew/mofx one thing I want to ask you guys both registered users and guests of this site is if you download a model take 5 secs after you've opened it and looked at it and come back and give it a rating it's super simple and gives the author some feedback on what you guys think of their models, even better take 10sec and write a comment. It's really a simple thing to do when you think about what these artists are doing. They're giving you their hard work FOR FREE. Isn't that worth a rating or a quick comment?

Thanks. That is all carry on.