With the recent server and software update to the site we feel it's only appropriate to update you guys and girls with what's new on Blend Swap, what's still here but different and what's gone. Here's a quick list with the changes.
For the most part, the new stuff is speed and reliability. We re-wrote a lot (if not most) of our server-side and browser-side code, and had the help of a professional sysadmin to setup our brand new server, which, as I'm sure you have noticed, is incredibly fast and reliable.
Some workflows, like responding to requests, collecting blends, sending private messages, reporting bugs and even uploading new blends are very different now. All of these actions now use modal windows, which makes sharing and creating new entries a click away.
One of the most dramatic changes is how the For Hire marking works now. For Hire marking is now available to all Associate Members and to trusted Uploaders with 10 or more blends on the site. It is very important for us to get our Trusted Uploaders some promotion tools, since they upload quite good work and they deserve to get more exposure in the 3D jobs marketplace.
Image Portfolio management is accessible to everybody now, but only paying members will display their portfolio on their profile.
We've had some issues with people uploading in the last days since the 5.5 update was released. We will be publishing an in-depth guide about how to report bugs in a way that helps us help you with your site issues.
For now we've found two main causes for issues:
We still have a 90 MB cap for uploads, that means that our server will not process any file bigger than 90 MB. If your .blend file is too big, please pack it into a .zip file and upload that. If your file is still too big after zipping you probably will have to make a decimated version of your file for sharing on Blend Swap.
We have some very cool plans for the next year that will keep us busy and improving the site little by little. One of our projects is a new pricing style with more affordable and varied membership levels, starting at $3 a month. We will keep developing these enhanced membership plans and let you know how that goes in future updates.
We're also moving a lot of data loading to the browser, which will make the site even faster for you and us. This is a more progressive task and you will probably start to see the results in a few weeks as more and more parts of the site are moved, one by one, to this technique.
We'd like to thank the Blend Swap community, each and every one of you, without you we would not be thriving as we are right now. We hope to be able to serve you awesome assets and to enhance your Blender Community experience all around the globe!
Your ideas are always welcome, please let us know of any features you think would be cool for the site and maybe they'll get added to our roadmap.
Until the next update, happy blendering and enjoy the site!
Published April 10, 2015 by poifox