The Story of Galaxy GUI

Subject: The Story of Galaxy GUI March 29th 2008, 5:48 am

The Story of Galaxy GUI
The Story of Galaxy GUI F_newsigm_ebc8deb

Wether you're a first time visitor or a regular member, you must've wondered how sites like these get started. The creation of Galaxy GUI does not have that much drama, but either way it was a bit interesting. Here's how it happened:

Inspiration and History

It was in December 2007, after making a few os x emulation forums that either failed because of a bad host, or because of no activity, I decided to make a serious forum, that wouldn't be a temporary one, but one that could possible compete with other customization sites.

The Story of Galaxy GUI Chat110

This all happened when after visiting a few GUI sites that had just recently been opened, so we thought, hey, why not make a general customizing site that isn't just specifically for emulation os x, or for mac themes, but something for everyone, on windows, mac or linux. We decided to go with the rest of the GUI sites and name the site "Galaxy GUI"

The Story of Galaxy GUI Chat210

Opening Day

Here it was... opening time. Galaxy GUI was opened shortly after 12:00 AM PST on December 24th, 2007 with the url galaxygui.forumotion.com . To begin with we did not have anything special, no domain name, no special posts, no anticipated events. Starting off the forum was very tough. I started submitting it to search engines, visitor sites, and making some promotional signatures to put in my signature on other customizing sites.

As the months went by and some important people

As the months went by and the name Galaxy GUI was slowly being spread around, we were getting about 20-80 visitors a day, not much, but something to start off with. This is where I met hubelial. He wanted me to help out with some skinning troubles so I said, hey wanna join Galaxy GUI and post a thread over there? That's how I get the first person that helped with the site. Hubelial was one of the biggest supporters of the site as he made tons of releases for the sites as well as promoted it with a galaxy gui signature image on multiple forums and websites.

And of course I won't forget Markoz, the main supporter of the forum. He helped out by getting the community active and always designing something when I needed help. We were good friends at the time, knowing each other from the now dead Mac-ulation site, which also like many previous forum I had before Galaxy GUI, was a Mac emulation site (hence the name mac-ulation tongue

). Markoz was one of the main staff members jumping between admin and moderator ranks over time, he is now a full time moderator and yet rarely he posts, he helps out with the sites skin.

We finally started getting members that were willing to support the forum and now make up the 4 user signature team we currently have that use the ggui signature on different forums and make threads promoting ggui. It sure was a long road towards this though, we did not get a lot of posts until the big boost in February.

"Death" of Galaxy GUI

In January 2008, we barely had any posts and any members that posted on galaxy gui. We were just about to close off the forums until some serious work which finally god the site a big boost in january, record number of posts, threads, users, topics, everything. In January the board was basically dead. We sometimes had staff post and no new members at all. We were also short on releases and topics as a whole. I had thought of closing down the site as our partner site, Plastic Aero, had recently gone down that month due to no activity, but decided to wait a few more weeks, it would not make sense to just close the site down again and start a new one when we already had dedicated members that wanted to help with the site, mostly the staff. The waiting sure did pay off, in the next weeks we got tons of new members, many new releases and a flood of posts, thanks to the hard work of our staff.

February 2008

February was probably our most successful month. We had over 1000 new posts and were brushing against 200 unique visitors a day, a big accomplishment for a site that didn't have its own domain and nothing special to offer. During the month we got 184 new members, many of whom we had to beg to post but then finally we let off that rule and some members posted, others didn't, either way things were now good since it was the beginning of the no nfr. No nfr releases began on the forums late february when we decided that making things NFR was stupid, you force someone to register at a forum to download an icon, wallpaper or other thing and not share it with anyone or risk being banned. It's like taking $100,000 dollars and going around bragging to people about how they suck and you have all the money. So we decided, lets make it free for everyone, lets make the sites "open" to all members to make it more like aqua-soft of macthemes, two very successful communites, both of which don't have NFR.

During this month, the staff, Alexandre, Marcus, Hubelial and I started working on ideas for the site and its theme, we messed with many different themes and just could not get fixed on one, we did however all agree it was to be a dark theme.

This was also the month in which we opened GalaxyGUI.com! This was a great milestone in Galaxy GUI's history since for the first time of any forums I've owned I had a .com forum and it made the site even better and more active

March 2008

Galaxy GUI 2.0

It was now March 2008 and we were averaging 8 users per day and over 100 posts per day, we where very happy with how things were turning out. Everything went great, new members, new promoters, many new releases, until near the end of february. Our posting rates started to quickly go down, we stopped getting new releases and members stopped joining. This was when I thought of a radical idea to "reopen" the site as Galaxy GUI 2.0, with a new look, forums, threads to post in and overall more professional community in which real skinners would want to post in and not look down upon as some sort of noob forum. The change was done the 2nd to last week of March, Galaxy GUI 2.0 was opened much sooner than expected due to the fact that activity sunk down even more. After the opening we saw things go up again and the forums be active and the environment was much more professional now. We cut down completely on spam, removed and renamed some forums, maked the entire forum look more friendly and professional as well as put in a new set of strict rules which would make this an enjoyable forum to stay at and post at. A new group of permanent staff was also made.

Staff Arguments

During the end of March we also got into extreme arguments with another customizing site and the staff members. There was much flaming going on and we were close to a breakdown of the staff when a moderator almost got banned. The other site accused us of doing the same thing of what they did to us which started this entire argument. Luckily we were able to sort things out and keep all of the staff we currently have without getting in to deep into the issue.

Professionalizing and Cleaning Up

During the last few days all we have been doing is cleaning up the site and forcing new rules, especially upon staff members. We have decided we are going to use a new warnings system with temporary bans as well as use tags on topic titles to optimize search results. No more IM Speak or one word posts are going to be tolerated on the forums. Neither is swearing which is why filters have been put up to remove any swearing posted into new posts so it does not make it look like the user is just spamming. All of the staff has to act professional now as well in order to make this a friendly community. We also decided to open up the forums to all guests to ensure no one is "Forced" to register at the site if they do not want to. We will continue improving the forums throughout the month and through april.

Well, thats basically the story of Galaxy GUI, hope it was interesting to read xD

Look of ggui over time

January 2008
The Story of Galaxy GUI Galaxy10

February 2008
The Story of Galaxy GUI F_news10

After many, many different looks to the site, some which weren't posted above, we finally, on March 28th after months of changing, settled on our final theme.

Veteran Member From : Florida OS : Mac OS X Leopard

wow u must have been extremely bored this morning to post ALL of this

Member OS : XP :(

wonderful story

Subject: Re: The Story of Galaxy GUI March 29th 2008, 11:38 am

all of those shots but one i think is mine xD thats back when i was a noooob at modding. pretty cheesy story there tongue

Senior Member OS :  Snow Leopard

interesting.....Extreme GUI LOL i would spell that wrong every time..... tongue

Senior Member From : Washington OS : Mac OS X Leopard

I don't understand how extreme is so hard to spell. oh well. smile

Well that was rather interesting. Nice to know you guys finally are successful.

Im not sure if this relates by my blog is ranked 4th in the activities category! I am happy! That means people are coming to my blog!

Subject: Re: The Story of Galaxy GUI March 29th 2008, 6:26 pm

ehhh, slightly succesfull tongue

i almost always spell extreme extream... i have horrible spelling skills ^_^

ive added a text based screenshot for your enjoyment wink

Member From : Duluth, Minnesota, USA OS : Mac OS X Leopard

It was now March 2008 and we were averaging 8 users per day and over 100 posts per day, we where very happy with how things were turning out.

You made a typo. Sorry, but I'm a bit of a Grammar Nazi. I notice these things.
tongue

Regular Visitor OS : Vista and OSx

I never knew how intense your story was WOW!! surprised

Subject: Re: The Story of Galaxy GUI May 6th 2008, 6:23 pm

sonin77 wrote:: I never knew how intense your story was WOW!!

lol, well let me addon recently markoz was removed from staff, IP, username and email banned for various things

Resident Pixeljunkie From : Frozen Acres OS : Buggy XP

Hey... I just found this thread !
Interesting read wink

Subject: Re: The Story of Galaxy GUI July 1st 2008, 7:53 pm

wow! It seems that was hard to become a stable forum... But now here is the result! A very successful forum! happy

Subject: Re: The Story of Galaxy GUI July 1st 2008, 10:56 pm

it really is amazing that a couple of teenagers could do this eh?

Regular Visitor From : Lyon, France OS : Windows Vista

yes it is, i like the look of the site on the first screenshot

Subject: Re: The Story of Galaxy GUI July 3rd 2008, 9:00 am

this should be updated methinks

Kid Sister From : NYC OS : Mac OS X

aahh i love it.. the story of ggui smile

you guys rock... i'm glad that i found this forum. happy

through tough times and good times...we will make it!

Subject: Re: The Story of Galaxy GUI July 3rd 2008, 12:54 pm

wewt! chekkz made me get rallied up a little bit... enough to must a wewt outloud

Subscriber From : Brazil OS : Windows 7

a wonderful story smile

I am proud to be part of this forum happy

Subject: Re: The Story of Galaxy GUI February 23rd 2009, 10:31 pm

Im gonna read this to my kid in the future before he sleeps...as a bed time story crying

Nicee story gets me all inspired to do something... happy

Subject: Re: The Story of Galaxy GUI February 23rd 2009, 10:33 pm

Davi wrote:: a wonderful story
I am proud to be part of this forum

Haha, thanks.
I guess this should be updated sometime tongue

Premium Subscriber OS : XP

great story i am proud i am here

Subject: Re: The Story of Galaxy GUI February 24th 2009, 8:21 am

this deffinantly should be updates sometime xD

Resident Artist

Nice story smile

Senior Member From : England OS : XP/Ubuntu

Where's the part about me joining Bish! surprised

Premium Subscriber From : Italy OS : Mac OS Leopard

Very nice story! I think this is the most friendly and cool community I've been so far smile

GGUI FTW!