Art Uproar

Chaz (Lotsofskins owner) has something up his sleeve for the skinning community and it's called ArtUproar! now to get the scoop…

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Tek: Hello Chaz thanks for your time for this interview and Of course before we begin believe it or not, there might be two people who don't know who exactly is Chaz so would you share some information about yourself for the readers of this interview?

Chaz: Well, I am a typical kid from Lancaster Pa, Just finished high school, and I am about ready to enter the college scene. I am 17 years of age, about to turn 18, and there really is nothing that grabs my interest more than computers.

Tek: okay now on to business… but before we get to the topic of ArtUproar let's cover a little bit about LOS since LOS is where most of us have become to know you (myself included) and I'm very sure alot of your LOS members will want to know why the transition from LOS to Art Uproar? Soooo lets begin… What prompted you to even start LOS in the first place?

Chaz: LOS was started as a “Training Ground” for my learning of the php programming language. The main reason I created the site was help myself learn how more advanced web sites work, and are able to interact with the users.

Tek: Then why a skinning site and not something else to practise on?

Chaz: Well, I started LOS back around when the big thing on the internet was mp3s. However I wanted the traffic from the sites, I wanted to keep a legal site. I saw that a lot of the MP3 sites were linking to skin sites. So I saw an easy way to create a high traffic site. At the time I was un aware of the community behind the skinning scene.

Tek: and now what? you love us in the skinning community and can't shake us right? hehe

Chaz: Correct ;)

Tek: How did you find the whole experience of Designing and creating LOS and bringing it into life?

Chaz: Creating LOS was for me the neatest thing I have ever accomplished. To form a site that people would actually visit a few times a day, and actually interact with. Every comment left on the site, and every skin uploaded to the site made me more proud of how the site was doing. It is one of my favorite bragging rights. =)

Tek: Let's get all sentimental on this for a moment— (you know me) what will be your most “favorable” memory from LOS? your personal card, icons, or the friends you've made, what? hehe

Chaz: Wow, that is a tough question. Probably the reaction I got from the “LOSers” when I released the personal icon feature. People were pretty happy with that feature, along with me being happy I was able to code it.

Tek: What will be your most “unfavorable” memory from LOS?

Chaz: The worst part of LOS was the unstable code. I still have to continue to update the code. That is mainly why I branched off and rewrote the entire site.

Tek: Good I thought for sures you were gonna say me and my bouncing cups! hehe

Chaz: hehe, no everyone liked them ;)

Tek: And how does it feel for you now that you are putting LOS down? I'm sure even though you have another project at hand there are some things about LOS you will surely miss right? or will this be an easy transition for you?

Chaz: More than anything else about the site I will miss the name. I am pretty sure the whole section of the community that hung out at LOS will navigate to AU, but the name is not as cool as LOS :)

Tek: I know once you get settled down into a site everything becomes home even the name

Chaz: Yea, it will just take time

Tek: What will become of the LOS Skin & Wallpaper Data Base?

Chaz: Well, up until today it was going to be deleted, and start fresh. However, with a simple script I am able to transfer it all over to the new site. I believe that is how we are going to go about saving the data. Because of this the member database will also be transfered

Tek: That is good news! is there a way to save their comments that they have accumulated on their work?people tend to get attached to them…

Chaz: Well, artwork comments should also be able to be saved. The forum, chat box comments will not be saved.

Tek: Okay last but not least question regarding LOS, will you have a redirect for your LOS members that may come home looking for LOS after it is gone?

Chaz: LOS will stay up for at least a month after the launch of Artuproar. However we are hopeing people will easily make the transfer to the new site. Hoping…

Tek: interesting so some will have one foot on LOS and the other foot on ArtUproar… I think that is a better idea for a good transition… =)

Chaz: Yep :)

Tek: Alright now on to the business at hand “ArtUproar” When did you decide you wanted to Design and create a totally new Web Site?

Chaz: Honestly I foget when we decided, it was so long ago :)

Tek: What was involved with the beginnings of this new project? such as more php training etc?

Chaz: The major parts of starting a new site is building it for the ability to be expanded in the future. We had to gather ideas of all the features we wanted to include, and add. We tried to make the site as stable and fast loading as we could, and I honestly think we fully acheived it.

Tek: Did you have any outside help? If so who?

Chaz: No, there was no outside help at all for the site other than bug testing. The only people that worked on the site directly were admins.

Tek: How long has it been since you began putting ArtUproar into play?

Chaz: ArtUproar was worked on pretty steady for about four to five months now.

Tek: So you've been cheating on LOS for 4-5 months! no wonder you're members never seen you home!

Chaz: I guess you could say that ;)

Tek: Why the name "ArtUproar" your choosing or someone elses?

Chaz: It was actually a group choosing in the lotsofskins IRC channel It was one of the many names I threw out there, and a few people just agreed on it.

Tek: What will be the differences between LOS and ArtUproar?

Chaz: One of the main differences is what the site will host. ArtUproar currently has plans to host game skins, application skins, many forms of photography, and many forms of artwork. Some other differences include a highly customizeable profile, and a totally recoded site skin system. ArtUproar also compiles in about 1 forth the time LOS does. There are a lot of other inhancements you will have to wait to see :)

Tek: Are there any future features you have in mind that are not yet implemented for this version of ArtUproar?

Chaz: Yes, however I can not talk about them :) We do have one huge feature that we want to release but we need to get some things set up before we do.

Tek: even if I try to black-mail you?

Chaz: Well, it depends what you try to black mail me with hehe

Tek: uh ohhhh me thinks really really hard for something to use *sigh* can't think of anything… hehe so When will ArtUproar kick on live?

Chaz: The date that we plan to launch the site is this Saturday night. We may post pone it, however at this point I dont see why we would.

Tek: What is your personal goal and dreams for this new site compared to your last site?

Chaz: My hope is to heavily increase our traffic to the new site, which in turn will introduce more people to the skinning scene. I just want another family atmosphere like LOS had, only larger :)

Tek: Okay we hear over and over again about sites going under because of cost factors, do you see this happening to you and your new site? or how will you overcome the expense of running it should it become very successful?

Chaz: *Knock on wood* but currently we can quadroople in size and still pay for expensizes with banner adds. If we get larger, we do have a back up plan, but I am not sure if we will need to go to that.

Tek: Any other projects you have going on at the moment?

Chaz: Nope, not right now =) One thing at a time.

Tek: what you mean you're not superman I mean supercoder!

Chaz: lol, yea that would be nice :)

Tek: Anything else you would like to share with the readers or members that may read this?

Chaz: Well, I hope to see everyone at ArtUproar, and I am sure it will live up to their expectations.

Tek: Well then this is a wrap, and we look forward to the grand opening of ArtUproar! thanks again Chaz for your time.

Chaz: No problem :)

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And here is the key to the front door to ArtUproar: Key to ArtUproar; but it won't open the door until after August 12th 2002…

— Doreen, August 6th 2002