New Affinity website

[Chris Van Cleve]

I'll clear up a couple things. The site did go Live Sunday night around 11:00 PM CDT. We announced the site in June and put up a placeholder page explaining what the site was for. That's probably what you had bookmarked.

We did change the difficulty of MaryLou's tutorials to Beginner. Thanks for submitting the URL!

We would be happy to add more resources from you! The idea is to be a major resource for, well, resources for Affinity. If you've made tutorials, or just have bookmarked tutorials or videos let us know what they are so we can get them added. The Contact Us form is set up for this purpose. We don't allow anyone to submit tutorials or videos directly because we don't want ne'er-do-wells to post links to unsavory sites. We want to approve them.

If you make other resources, like Styles, Brushes, Icons, etc. submit them to the site and we'll show them off!

Thanks for taking the time to visit the site. We hope it grows exponentially and becomes as valuable as possible. We put a lot of effort into it, and we're still working on more features to roll out over time.

[MaryLou]

Has anyone downloaded and installed any of the styles?   There were two that I wanted but they have a funny file extension and are not recognized by AD.  I sent the guy an email to find out how to install them.  I suspect it's a MAC thing.   I found another one that I liked but they wanted money for it.  I won't pay for styles when there are so many freebies.  I would never charge anyone for mine. 

[Chris Van Cleve]

You're probably seeing .7z for the file extension. That's a 7zip file. It's a newer version of zip that offers better compression. It's not a Mac thing. ;)

Maybe we should change ours to use just plain old zip instead.

[MaryLou]

Chris, I like what you're doing.  Back  in the early 2000's, I had a huge resource site for PhotoImpact users - thus the name PhotoImpace Resource Center.  However, that program was bought up by Corel and discontinued.  Good way to get rid of the competition.   I alone had over 125 beginner tutorials. 

We started over with Serif Draw and loved it but... Serif dumped that in favor of Affinity Designer. We all liked the beta so the forum was changed to Affinity.  The PhotoImpact Resource center has been long gone and I have no intention of starting one for Affinity.  It's a LOT of work.  So we are more than willing to support your site.  There is a link to it on the top bar of this page.  I will also add a link to my PIRC web site the next time I update it. 

We have two other tut writers here who have some good beginner tutorials so hopefully, they'll let you know.   PIRC has been around for about 18 years now and has gone through a few evolutions so we are hoping Affinity is here to stay!

We do have an area here for sharing resources so check it out.  We do not charge for anything.  We like the free concept.  :)   

Am looking forward to some of those styles on your site... very pretty!!

[MaryLou]

I have to agree - just plain old Zip works for both platforms and we're all familiar with it.  Would greatly appreciate that!!

On the styles, the Dream stuff all has a DS with a check mark in the lower right corner. Not sure what that means but I was thinking that for those who want to sell their stuff, maybe you should put a little $ sign in the corner so people don't waste time clicking on the link, then waiting for it to get to their site only to find out it's not a free style.  I love those Metal ones but as I said, there are so many free ones that I don't see a reason to pay for them. 

[Chris Van Cleve]

We’re going to switch all of our files to zip tonight and remove the option to upload 7zip files because there are a few people getting confused by them. The DSV corner tag just means that resource was provided by my company, DreamScape Visionery. As we add partners more of those tags will show up.

I’ve added your suggestion of a commercial tag to our discussion board. We debated it once before and decided not to clutter up the display of resources since the price is shown right above the download button. We’ll have to revisit that.

[MaryLou]

Wonderful!  The .zip format has been around for as long as I can remember and trying to get an internet full of people to change to something that's relatively unknown can cause a lot of people to NOT come back.   Just out of curiosity, what program opens that type of file? 

I hope you reconsider on the Commercial indication. The reason is, as  said, I clicked on the image, then it presents a Download button and when you click that, you are then taken to yet another site before you find out it's commercial.  It shouldn't be that way.  An indicator that it's commercial gives one a choice before going through all the steps.  Even at that, if it's commercial, why the extra step of a download page that then takes you to their page?  Why not a direct route?  As you can see, I like things to be easy.  I was really confused because I ended up on a different site.

Good luck with your new site - I hope it thrives.  Am really anxious to try out those Dream silver and golds!!
 

[Chris Van Cleve]

All of the Dream resources are now in .zip format and that's now the only archive format we allow to keep things simple for everyone.

We're discussing the best way to indicate commercial resources.

[MaryLou]

Thanks!!  That's the best way for Windows users because the Zip compression  is included with windows and it doesn't recognize that new format.  There have been a lot of other formats over the years that have tried to replace zip, but they just never caught on.  Sort of like Facebook - hard to replace something people are comfortable with. I didn't want to spend money on something like Winzip.  That was a good decision.  Going to go get those pretty golds and silvers!

I sent you an email about another problem - don't know if you've seen it yet.

[Chris Van Cleve]

Is that about the creator who is releasing items she made in the beta? We're working on a way to show compatible versions. I have asked her to please replace the files with more compatible versions, but haven't heard a response. We're working on it though!

[MaryLou]

Personally, I would prohibit anyone from uploading resources that are created in the betas because you're going to be hit with a lot of complaints from those who are not using the beta and it tends to cause a lot of confusion.

Love the Dream Raw Metals!!   They worked perfectly! 

[Chris Van Cleve]

Unfortunately, we have no way to detect if something was made in the betas. You're welcome for the styles. :)

[MaryLou]

That's very true.  Maybe on the page where the files are uploaded you could put something saying not to upload things created using beta versions.  This has never happened with the older betas so I don't know if it's permanent or just something that will be changed for the final version.   Time will tell.

I did the same thing earlier this week.  I put some 60+ gradient styles up for downloading but I wasn't thinking and I exported them from the beta version since that's what I use (loads faster).  Had to open the paid-for version and re-export them. 

Anyway, thanks for providing these resources and making them easy for us to access.  Will have a good look at everything else when time allows. 

[Chris Van Cleve]

I just added a Discussion menu item and it includes a link to these forums. Hopefully it drives some traffic your way.

[MaryLou]

Thanks Chris!   That's how things were done in the "old" days.  People put links on their sites that linked to other sided that were related which was great!  We were able to find one another!  We all had these little "buttons" that were the same size and everyone exchanged them and put them on their own web pages thereby creating a really nice network.

That eventually disappeared when people stopped creating their own web sites and now post stuff on Facebook and other social media sites. It was easier to just create a free blog than to create your own site.  Would sure like to see "sharing" come back but for so many, it's all about making money. I don't have anything against making money but it's nice to find free things too.