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Staff PickPikachu's Valentine

How do I download a wallpaper?

Greetings,

After over decade running AP we've made the tough decision to suspend normal operation of the site for the near future. Sadly there aren't enough hours in the day and it was time to make a decision on what to spend our efforts on. It's a pivotal time for our other project right now and we do not have the focus, manpower or system resources to run everything we have got right now.

We'd like to thank the community for their support over the past decade. It's been a pleasure.

Pro users may still log in below. We are no longer accepting new registrations.

Best,
AP Staff

Topics

To download a wallpaper, browse to the thumbnail, and either click on the "download" link, or directly on the thumbnail of the wall.

Please note, it does not cost any papers to download or view wallpapers. However, the number of wallpapers you are allowed to download is dependent on your current user status:

  • Guests - cannot download wallpapers
  • Members - 15 walls in 24hrs (see example below)
  • Pro Member, Community Member and Senior Member - unlimited

If you exceed the allowed number of wallpapers in any 24-hour period you will see a message telling you that you cannot download any more walls. You will now be prevented from viewing any more wallpapers for a while. Furthermore, if you continue to hit the limit and do nothing other than leech you will eventually be denied access to wallpapers altogether for an indefinite period of time.

The calculation that's made is based on time. So, if you have viewed or attempted to view 15 wallpapers in the last 24 hours (backwards from the current time) you will still be prevented from viewing walls.

Wallpaper Download Example

Its Tuesday afternoon, at 1pm.

You browse to AP and click on a link to view a particular wall.

At this point, the server looks back and checks its records. Since everything you do is recorded, it counts the number of times you've tried to look at any walls in the preceding 24 hours.

That means that it looks all the way back to Monday afternoon at 1pm and counts the number of times you viewed a wall (downloaded or clicked on the thumbnail) between then and now.

If that number exceeds 15, it shows you the contribution message instead.

To re-emphasise, this isn't based on fixed 24hr periods, nor is it some Boolean flag. It's a dynamic, time based calculation.

And it's never wrong.

Times on AP are given in "count back" format, indicating how many days, weeks and hours something was submitted. This should help you to get an idea as to how long ago it was you looked at a wall, etc.

End Example.

If you hit a limit, the best thing to do then, is wait a full 24 hours before even attempting to view another wall.

If the above message is still displayed and you have tried waiting 24-48 hours and tried clearing your cookies, then you have reached the leecher limit.

The leecher limit is the number of walls you are permitted to download given your activity level. If you never post on the forums, and you never comment on the walls it stops you from being able to see them.

So how can you avoid seeing the message altogether?

Well, the simplest way is to join in with the community - post in the forums, make useful crits on walls, get to know some of the members, upload scans and make some wallpapers. This is called contribution and if you make enough good contributions, you may even get promoted and the limit won't apply anyway!

However, spamming is heavily frowned upon. If you spam you will be banned. It's as simple as that - a policy of zero tolerance is operated.