Announcing WallpaperHub 2.0
WallpaperHub has been rebuilt from the ground up with a new look and new features and is available today!
Over the last several months I have been working on rewriting WallpaperHub to improve the website’s performance, refine the UI and offer new features — today I am pleased to announce that I am making it live! It doesn’t come on it’s own though, there is a new logo and new wallpapers too.
Before the year is out I want to share this with you all! Check out the new WallpaperHub now!
New Logo
With such a big change to the site I wanted to bring about a refresh of the site’s logo too and here it is!
You might recognise the main element of this logo, its a “Fluent” version of the Surface Pro 6 default wallpaper that has proven to be one of the most popular wallpapers on the site (there is a downloadable version of this). The logo also reflects the new look homepage, which is detailed below, with a carousel over a full screen wallpaper.
New Homepage
Let’s start with the new homepage of WallpaperHub — it now has a full screen image of the most recently added wallpaper. You can see a carousel of other new additions to the site, no longer do you need to navigate around the site to check out the latest wallpapers.
The Featured Wallpapers and Popular wallpapers remain on the homepage but are now joined by lists of Tags, Top Collections and Top Creators, the Creator list even shows which people have new wallpapers. All of this should make discovering new wallpapers easier with fewer clicks and less exploring of the site.
Search
Finally, I know!
The first new feature is the ability to search all of WallpaperHub, just use the search box in the header on every page. You can even share the URL of a search if you have found a number of wallpapers that others will enjoy.
New Views
When viewing all Wallpapers you now have a choice of views; Small Grid, Large Grid and Studio (yes, like Surface Studio 😉). You can see more of the wallpaper before clicking it or downloading it. In Studio View you can even use the arrow keys to move left and right.
New Download Button
The second new feature I want to talk about is the Download Button.
It offers you a way of specifying across the whole of WallpaperHub which is your preferred download size. Now when you click “Download” you get the wallpaper at the size you want.
With the old site the “Download” button would only give you the largest resolution available for a wallpaper which means you’d end up downloading a large 4500x3000 image even if you had a 1080p resolution.
If, for a single wallpaper, you want to download a different size you use the new drop down menu that presents all available resolutions.
By default this new button will still offer the largest wallpaper size, once you’ve set a different default value you’ll get that size instead (or the largest size if your choice isn’t available). The default download size is specified in the new Setting area of the site…
Settings
In order to make changes to your WallpaperHub experience, including using the Light or Dark Theme or specifying your Default Download Resolution, there is a new Settings area that can be found in the top right of the page.
On mentioning themes Dark Theme is still the default, don’t worry.
UI Improvements
You might have spotted some UI improvements in the screenshots already but every element of the site has been recreated and refined from the existing design.
Carousels now have improved controls to scroll left and right on desktops but remain touch friendly. The Acrylic effect is still there (some browsers don’t support it though), mobile UI has been completely changed and there’s even a new design to indicate when multiple versions of a wallpaper are available and even a flyout effect when you hover over it
New wallpapers
To mark the launch of WallpaperHub 2.0 I am also releasing a number of new wallpapers, here are some of them! I have made a couple of new Fluent inspired wallpapers, one you can see in the new logo and the other is of the original Surface Family wallpaper (Family, Pro 6). There’s an imagining of what it might look like if Microsoft made a physical impression on the Bliss Hill and finally I’ve turned the lights off of all the new Surface 2019 wallpapers for all you Dark Theme lovers!
Supporting me and WallpaperHub
Now we get into the business end of this article, for the first time I am advertising that people can support me and therefore WallpaperHub by putting a link to a new Patreon page on the site. Earlier in the year I was grappling with spiraling bandwidth costs that at one point was costing well over £100 a month. That’s been resolved but it did draw my attention to just how expensive running a wallpaper website can be. You will also see a few more ads on the site to help with the running costs.
WallpaperHub has always been free to use and it will continue to be, but if you are able to then any amount of support will be greatly appreciated.
I still have plans for new features on WallpaperHub but equally I wanted to share what I have done so far with you all. I hope you like and look forward to your feedback!
Thank you to everyone who helped with this, especially those that beta tested and gave me feedback.
Before you ask, I do not have any news about bringing this to the Microsoft Store but it is a PWA so you can install it.
