TEKNIDERMY - ISSUE 7: November/December 2001

DeskMod Rising
an interview with Dave Gorman
by kenray

Dave Gorman is the man behind DeskMod, to put it plainly. We had the opportunity to interview Dave in the very first edition of Teknidermy Magazine. In that interview, Dave said of himself and his history:

"...before DeskMod, I had worked on screenshotz.net, which did pretty well at the time. Looking farther back, I've been on the internet since 91, and have always been interested in the technology behind things. I have had small web sites in the past, had my first domain name in 1994. Seemed like a big thing then :) I got into coding about 2 years ago, and server administration around 1995 or so. I've done quite a bit of consulting work in the past for different companies, a good deal of it web work. I first got into skinning when Winamp became skinnable, and was very addicted to Customize when it first came out. When Custo started to go downhill, when it got sold, I started looking at Skinz, but it didn't seem like a perfect fit. Ever since then, I was pretty sure one day or another I'd start my own site."

And that he did.

After some tragic events in May of this year, DeskMod was closed, apparently forever. So it was a great pleasure (and none to little a surprise), when Dave contacted Tek about the imminent return of the site.

I have been fortunate to be a miniscule part of the testing team for the site. I really beleive it is going to be a great asset to the skinning community, and a pleasure to be part of.

Gorman was kind enough to take time out of his very busy schedule to talk to us about the site and the people who have helped him resurrect it...

Gorman: DeskMod was closed back in late May of 2001, so 6 months now.

Teknidermy: I remember writing a eulogy for DM...what was it like for you, specifically, not having the site as part of your life?

Gorman: When DeskMod first closed I didn't know what to think. For the past year and a half I had devoted my life to it, and suddenly having it ripped away from me was something I couldn't yet imagine. It took me about a week or so to really feel the effects of it, but when that happened, I was very depressed for quite a while. In fact, at that point, I became physically ill for 2 weeks or so.

The closing of the site hit us all very hard, to say the least. However, as I started reading through all of the wonderful e-mails from our users, and the articles within the community, I started to feel a lot better. The support we received from everyone was simply outstanding, and it really made this situation a lot easier on us all. It was amazing to see how big of an impact we made, and how we were able to positively effect many people's life. All of this support really made our work worthwhile.

Teknidermy: lets talk about the evil "B" word (bandwidth)...that has become the number one challenge to skin sites continued survival...what plans are you making to prevent bandwidth form being a problem for the new DM?

Gorman: Ah yes, the word bandwidth has put all of the skin sites through hell, to say the least. We've all been working hard to try and find solutions for how to either make it more affordable, or how to use less of it. Unfortunately, as you know, a skin site is one of the most intensive sites you can run. Both in terms of server requirements, and definitely in terms of bandwidth. Many sites have been forced to close or cut back due to it, and it has made expanding at all very hard. It use to be that you wanted to get as much traffic to your site as you could, and now that's simply not the case. In fact, some sites have even had to have other sites remove links to them. It is a very sad situation, and one without an easy answer. We've seen some sites try and find ways to justify the costs, but that brings up an entirely different point.

Making enough money off of a skin site to actually afford the bandwidth is extremely difficult, mainly due to the horrible ad market. So, with that in mind, sites have tried to find other ways to produce revenues from their sites, such as selling merchandise, but this hasn't proven to be very effective. As time goes on, hopefully other ways of producing revenue will be found, or the ad market will improve. Either way though, financially, it is very difficult right now. Now, to your question about DeskMod, we are very lucky. Thanks to some very wonderful people, we have been able to get a server which will perform very well for a good amount of time, and we've been able to secure bandwidth for prices we can afford. I can honestly say that financially, DeskMod shouldn't have any problems. We've got a number of different ways that we will work to produce revenues as well, so I think we'll be okay.

Teknidermy: so, will the new DeskMod be a "part" of Kulao, or a completely separate entity?

Gorman: DeskMod is separate from Kulao entirely, except for one key point: DeskMod is owned by Kulao. The reason for this is that we have to have some sort of a company behind the site for financial and legal reasons. Having a company behind the site makes everything a bit more legitimate, but more importantly it gives us some advantages for dealing with other companies. It is a lot easier to get things accomplished when you're speaking on behalf of a company, instead of just a website. Other then that, the two projects are totally separate at this point.

Teknidermy: so, is there anything specific you can tell us about Kulao at this point? What is it? what does it do? we are all just dying of curiosity...

Gorman: Ah yes, the question everyone seems to want to know the answer to! What is Kulao? Does it really exist? Well, first off, yes, it definitely does exist. The entire process has taken much longer then we had ever expected, and part of this is due to the economy. It is extremely difficult to get any sort of funding for anything Internet related. However, we have worked countless hours to seek out the funding we need to properly pull off the idea, and we have in fact had some luck. We hope to be able to finally get out some more public information over the next two weeks, and launch shortly thereafter. Once we do get this information out, everyone will have a much better idea as to what Kulao is, and why it has taken so long. Until then, I'll have to keep you all wondering.

Teknidermy: okay...i guess we have to accept that & just be thankful for DeskMod's return.

Having seen the new DM site, I must say that it truly reflects the art...it is the most "Configurable" site i have ever seen...can you tell us, in layman's terms, a bit about the code behind it?

Gorman: When I first started work on DeskMod v2 way back in winter of 2000/2001, I came up with this idea on how to build the "core" of the site. When I say core, I mean basically the code that controls the entire site. This idea I had would allow us to have some amazing site customization features, as well as introducing the whole idea of site-skinning to DeskMod In addition, the problem with DeskMod prior to v2 was the horrible load times. I must admit, when I first started working on DeskMod back in 1999, I wasn't exactly that great of a PHP coder. Much of the code I had written back when the site was first getting going was still in use prior to the launch of v2. With all of the features that we had added to the code base, and the extreme amount of traffic the site was trying to handle, it was just simply a mess.

There was no other option in my mind then to totally rewrite it using the knowledge I had gained since then, and the results were great in my opinion. We went from a load time of about 20 seconds (and in some cases over 100) down to around 2, sometimes even under a second. It was clear that the rewrite has been successful in fixing the speed problems, and it was also clear that it was a wonderful code base for expanding upon. The way it was written was extremely open-ended, and very flexible to work with. I was very happy with the design choices I had made, and the v2 code base served the site perfectly from launch until the site was closed.

Now, when I first figured out that we were going to relaunch the site, I had to make the choice between just cleaning up the v2 code, or doing a full rewrite. I started going through the codebase I hadn't seen in months, and realized that a rewrite was probably the best answer. I had some ideas on how to make it even more open-ended, and how to really expand on the core ideas I had with v2. That said, I spent the next few weeks designing and writing the initial core named ModWorks v2. Backing up for a second, I should note that DeskMod v2 was running ModWorks v1; DeskMod v1 had no real core to speak of.

ModWorks is basically the set of core scripts that drive the entire site.

So anyhow, after spending a good amount of time getting the initial version of ModWorks v2 completed, I started to build the first few "plugins" for DeskMod
Gorman: This started with the news plugin, then I worked on the chatterbox, and then some of the more DeskMod specific features of the site. I was writing nearly 200 to 300 lines of code per day at this point, and the site was starting to take its initial shape. However, as I expected, many of the lines of code I had initially written ended up getting rewritten quite a few times. In fact, I'm not sure any of the initial lines of code I wrote for DeskMod v3/ModWorks v2 still exist in the codebase.

This is how things typically end up, and its a good thing. It means that everything is a lot more fine tuned in the end. This time I had the luxury of time which I didn't have with v2, and I've taken full advantage of it. Whereas I got DeskMod v2 completed in 17 days, I've been working on v3 now for a couple of months.

I'll say this much though, the difference between v2 and v3 is greater then the difference between v1 and v2. In terms of load time, the codebase is at least 80% faster then v2. There are huge improvements in terms of speed, features, usability, and every aspect you can imagine. With v3 we didn't want to just recode, we wanted to rethink and redesign everything. In my opinion DeskMod was always fairly hard to use, and not organized very well, so that was a huge thing we focused on this time. I'm thrilled with the work we've all done for this version, and I hope everyone else is too.

Teknidermy: so, is "ModWorks" technically a "product"? (could it be sold/distributed if you so chose?)

Gorman: Yeah, ModWorks is in no way tied to DeskMod In fact, you can run multiple sites through the exact same codebase at the same time. We don't have plans to let it be used outside of our sites though, but that could change. However, we are in fact working on other sites which will run through the same code. You can expect to see these launch very, very soon. We're definitely going to put the engine to good use.

Teknidermy: I am currently using the "Deepsmooth" site skin, which is very nice, as are all of the available DeskMod site skins. I must say, from a "skinning" standpoint, your new site is a bit more complex than the other "skinnable" sites I have seen around the net...care to give a "shout out" to the artists who have been working on those site skins?

Gorman: We've worked very hard to come up with a good site skinning format, and its great to see the artists taking advantage of it. The format itself is XML, and is fairly similar to the formats of Winamp 3 and Sonique 2. I can't thank SOOPRcow, kinwashi, Dreden, and of course DeskMod's own fathom enough for helping to produce skins for the site. Hopefully we'll get some more people to work on skins in the very near future, and maybe we'll even release a skin builder for the site at some point soon.

Teknidermy: care to introduce us to the entire DM crew? who ya got with you on this one, in addition to the artists mentioned above?

Gorman: Ah yes, would love to. First off, Jay "fathom" Shaw is the DeskMod co-owner and lead designer. He has worked extremely hard on both the design aspects of the site as well as the day to day operations. Expect to see him very active on DeskMod when it launches.

Secondly, Mike "iMike" Pacific is one of the two head admins. Wow, I could go on for a few days about how great Mike is, but I'll try and keep it short. Simply put, without Mike I don't think DeskMod would be coming back. He is the most dedicated, most caring, and best person I have ever had the pleasure of working with, and he deserves more credit then he'll ever get.

Next up is Kris "chimi" Fernandez who is the other head admin. He is responsible for keeping our news up to date, and has always done an amazing job of doing so. In my opinion, he is the best community news writer out there, and his professional manner has always been a major plus.

John "adonai" Smith has been with us since the launch of v2, and his efforts and dedication have been amazingly helpful. He has always been there to help out, and I can't thank him enough.

Kyle "Dreden" Dreaden first started with DeskMod as a beta tester for v2, just as adonai and others did, and has been extremely supportive of the site. His energy and excitement for DeskMod has been awesome, and I'm thrilled to have him with us.

Andrew "enigma" Collins has been with us since the days of v1, and although he hasn't always been very vocal, he has done an amazing level of work. Not only has he constantly helped us out, he has provided us with ideas which have been very helpful.

Ryan "grafxboy" Fielding, now known simply as Ryan, has also been with us as a beta tester since v2. I knew when I first met Ryan that his love for DeskMod would lead him to working on the site, and I was thrilled to add him to the list when that did happen. He has been very helpful, and has always been there to help us out.

Derek "HaGeShiKu" Hom has been a major asset to DeskMod for quite a long time, and his help and dedication seems never ending. His professional way of doing things, and his positive attitude have always been helpful for DeskMod, and the amount of work he has done is simply incredible.

To sum it up, I am convinced we've got one of the best teams of people of any website, and I don't think we could have gotten as far as we did without them. I love them like family, and I can't tell you how thrilled I am to be working with them all again.

As you can imagine, due to the amount of work we'll have to put forth to relaunch the site, we will be bringing on a few more people. As we haven't finalized the list, I won't go into who those people are yet, but you can look forward to seeing them on the page at launch.

Teknidermy: excellent

Teknidermy: so, in regards to the content, will the new DM be "all inclusive" as in, skins for every-damn-thing, or will you be picky about the sections represented there?

Gorman: This is a great question. Many have asked if we'll have art categories or if we'll limit the number of categories to the more popular apps. The answer to both of them is simply no.

DeskMod is a dedicated skin site, and we won't venture into the realm of art. We'll leave that to our wonderful friends of DeviantArt, who have done an absolutely amazing job with that site. We feel every skinnable application should have equal promotion, so we will constantly be working to keep both our application list and application information database current.

Teknidermy: any little surprises, site wise, you wanna tell us about?

Gorman: Well, most of our surprises are kept top secret, but there is one I'll comment on a bit. DeskMod isn't all that's returning on our launch date. And no, I'm not talking about Kulao either =)

Teknidermy: ooooooooooooooohhhhhhhh...juicy!

Teknidermy: so, i gather we will all be returning to "www.DeskMod.com"?

Gorman: Yep, DeskMod.com/net/org.

Teknidermy: and do you have a date that you are shooting for?

Gorman: Just so we're not under extreme pressure to get things up on a specific date, I won't say exactly. However, a general time frame is very early in November.

Teknidermy: and should we take it that you will start at statistical zero? no-skins-at-all? or will there be some"early" stuff in the databases when the crowd arrives?

Gorman: We will open up an upload page several days prior to launch so users can get their work in before we launch. However, unfortunately, besides that we're starting fresh. There are quite a few upsides to starting fresh though, as we can finally implement some features we've wanted to for a while.

Teknidermy: well, to be sure, we are all looking forward to it!


Gorman: We all are too, to say the least. This is the best thing that has happened to most of us in quite some time, and we're very overjoyed about it.
I hope everyone enjoys what we've been working on as much as we do!

Teknidermy: Anything else you'd like to tell us?

Gorman: First off, I just want to mention that we will be having a launch party when we do release the site. However, this will be quite a bit different from those in the past. We've got someone who is going to be DJing a live shoutcast show, and a few of us will be on the show answering any questions people have about the site. In addition, we'll be giving a way quite a few items; however, this time it'll actually be organized properly so there is no delay in people receiving their prizes. This night should be very cool, so I urge everyone to be there if possible.

Finally, I just wanted to tell everyone how much I appreciate their support of not only DeskMod, but the team itself. You guys have been there to comfort us when the site closed, and you have been there excited about what we're working on next ever since.

This is what has really gotten us through the hard times, and we're so happy that we'll be able to once again give back to the community that we love and care about so much. This community is like no other, and I am thrilled to be part of it. You guys are amazing, and I look forward to talking with you all again and seeing you at DeskMod and around the community!

Teknidermy: we'll all be there!

Teknidermy thanks Dave Gorman for taking time 
out from his very busy schedule to talk to us