What we're going to eventually have is in your user profiles you'll be able to see the threshold (rating wise) on a section by section basis. Ratings are definitely an imperfect tool but they do work reasonably well in some sections, particularly wallpapers (in my view anyway).
WinCustomize Forums
I couldn't help but be a little bit offended by this issue. To Quote Kenray: "With the loss of Dmod and LOS, and with the passing of Skinz.org a while back, we are left with only one Major Player in the skinning world: Deviant Art. Notably, we still have Skinbase.org and Wincustomize.com, for which we are thankful. But as far as sites with the kind of activity and data that we are all so handsomely accustomed, we are down to one" This site has over 2000 skins. Each day, th
Here are this month's website results: Contrary to what we believed and said at the end of last month, traffic increased significantly this month. Traffic was up an additional 26% this month to around 170,000 unique daily visitors and 351,000 total visitors (up from 271,000 visitors in May
Stardock has released a new version of its popular GUI customization software, WindowBlinds. WindowBlinds allows users to completely change the Windows GUI to look however they want it to look (like another operating system or something completely different). The program also allows users to add new bu
I hear the rent prices are sky high!
If the top skin were being downloaded to floppy, it would take over 1000 floppies per day to hold it. If it were a file on C-net's download.com, the world's most popular program download site, it would rank in the top 100 worldwide. The 10th most popular skin download would qualify as being one of the top 20 desktop enhancements on Download.com (which has skins on it). The top 10 downloads would require a dedicated T1 just to handle those 10. The number of peo
Just to get an idea of how much bandwidth skin sites need nowadays, consider this: The #1 download here by itself - WinXP V7 icon package would require 3 56k modems running at full 56k full time in order to satisfy the bandwidth for it. It would overwhelm the bandwidth of a site running a full ISDN line (128K). In fact, just to handle that one skin (icon package), the site would need at least a fractional T1. It would use about 5% of the bandwidth skinz.org ha
Hi gang! Writing this from New York at PC Expo! When the end of the month gets a bit closer, we'll do a statistical analysis and put up the results. Overall, the CD has done pretty decently. Not quite enough to pay for the new bandwidth but I think once we add in shirts and hats and mugs we should be able to pick up the difference. If the CDs and other goodies can sell a total of 300 units per month that would do the trick. I think roughly speaking we're on track to do abou
WinCustomize Forums
Just a little pragmatism - if you put an XP logo in your wallpaper or make a good XP icon package or skin, it's likely to get more downloads than others of similar quality. However, it's likely to get a lower rating. That has nothing to do with the rules at all. That's just an observation from watching the site. There is no rule stating that an XP wallpaper is going to get a low rating. That just seems to be what happens. As for what I said about how peop
WinCustomize Forums
Just to clarify, the "about" link is rather oudated. What we currently have is a per section threshold. To save on bandwidth (and it does work, we've experimented with it considerably) we have have a PER section rating threshold. For most of the sections, guests see all the skins. But wallpapers have to have a 3 rating and up to be seen when the user BROWSES. You can still do a search on the skin and it'll show up and it'll still show up in the new additions and top download
I want to! I surfed to my various favorite sites to gather good news and kept running into bad news.
Yep.
WinCustomize Forums
Aqua skins tend to get moderated because Apple has made it pretty clear that they're not supposed to be around. I'm not sure if that's what happened to your particular theme or not, the moderation of them tends to be haphazard some times.
I really like Skinbase. I've spent some time uploading some DesktopX objects and themes over there. It also has brought back why it's so hard to get a site going -- uploading skins and themes is a pain in the butt (at any site). With so many sites going down, the thought of the hours it takes to upload skins is a real pain. It's a pity that there isn't a distributed (between sites) skin database so that a skin author could upload once and have it display on multiple sites at once. Maybe that w
I really like Skinbase. I've spent some time uploading some DesktopX objects and themes over there. It also has brought back why it's so hard to get a site going -- uploading skins and themes is a pain in the butt (at any site). With so many sites going down, the thought of the hours it takes to upload skins is a real pain. It's a pity that there isn't a distributed (between sites) skin database so that a skin author could upload once and have it display on multiple sites at once. Maybe that w
A cool little flash series is about to begin that looks pretty good. For all you martial arts people, this is a cool thing.
Stardock has released a free massively multiplayer space action strategy game called Stellar Frontier. In the game, you take command of a star ship and must help the empire you choose to side with conquer the galaxy. As your exploits grow, you gain in rank which gives you access to bigger and better
It appears that eFront finally pulled the plug on skinz.org. It's gone.
This isn't completely new news but the full story from the Admins of Litestep.net have put up news. Litestep.net is down and looks like it'll be down for awhile. Visit the link to find out more.
Great! And yea, we would still highlight sections. Heck, i think it would be nice if over time we re-highlighted existing sections (especiall lesser known ones) to re-expose them to new users. This feature should show up in July.
With the end of the month fast approaching, we're coming to where we need to make some decisions. As some of you know, the original goal of WinCustomize was to feature mainly the apps that had already become fairly popular. But last month with Deskmod going down, we decided to open things up a little more and added sections that we might otherwise not have added. This month we added 5 sections - Graphics, KewlPad, CoolPlayer, Beatnik, and Colorpad. Coolplayer and Beat
Note to all moderators, you don't have to approve everything that's uploaded. I know I haven't approved any of the XP wallpapers. I'm definitely pretty tired of them too. We do have a filtering system in the works where you'll be able to filter by rating on a per section basis. Few XP wallpapers have gotten a high rating. But I think the time has come to lock down on the XP uploads. Yes
Our plan is to create sopmething called WinCustomize (a progrma) that would not just browse the sections here and handle the message areas and comments but let you apply the skins directly from the program.
The owner of LS2K.org reports that he may have to close his site in the coming weeks.
I'm running the metalic skin for WinCustomize. I was wondering how many people feel that WC should change its default look to be something different? If so, which one would you choose?