Frogboy

Frogboy

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WinCustomize CD is available! in WinCustomize News WinCustomize Forums

The WinCustomize CD is now available! It contains most of the skins on WinCustomize that we have permission to distribute -- over 600 megs of skins, themes, and icons. It also comes with two, never before seen skin suites made by Alexandrie and Treetog. The skin suites include skins for most of the se

10 Replies 13,270 Views
Reply to The perfect way to find skins... maybe... in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

Because programs like Napster are only good for stealing er I mean finding songs that you already know about. But in skinning, it's the newest skins that are often the best and people wouldn't know to search on them. Skin sites can also help filter out the crap. It may not seem like it sometiems but a lot of skins get moderated (rips mainly) that are never seen. Peer stuff works best when you already know what you're looking for.

9 Replies 6,426 Views
WinCustomize Speed Part II in WinCustomize News WinCustomize Forums

The public response to the WinCustomize CD has been so positive and the site had gotten so slow that we went ahead and trippled WinCustomize's bandwidth. Hopefully you can already tell the difference in the speed of the site.

4 Replies 9,740 Views
Reply to More bandwidth has arrived in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

It wold almost be worth uploading a screenshot of our bandwidth graph. It was maxed out for days straight and then we added it and then boom it jumped way up. That's why it was so slow, we weren't even close to having enough bandwidth. Which is amazing because if someone told me a year ago that we'd have this much bandwidth I would have laughed. It was so painful doing anything on the site though,

18 Replies 12,252 Views
Reply to More bandwidth has arrived in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

We trippled the site's bandwidth yesterday, that's why it's fast now. The site was just too slow so we went ahead and got more bandwidth on the assumption that the CD which goes out on Monday will sell reasonably well. Hopefully in a month we're not back to where we were. <img src="http://images.stardock.com/ima

18 Replies 12,252 Views
Reply to when does "my opinion" become "abuse"?? in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

I know what you mean. In fact, it was for this reason we created a visitor access class. People who register start at access group 2 (not 1). If they show they can't be decent human beings to other, they go to group 1 which can't comment on skins. Such is the case with this guy.

33 Replies 20,671 Views
Reply to Financial Support WinCustomize in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

The main problem is just the overhead in people time. Ever seen that Seinfeld episode where Jerry's getting a bunch of checks that are less than $1? Putting in that kind of royalty system or something for skinners could get painful. I think it would make much more sense to have a Skinnerz CD which has suites that can be downloaded or sent as a CD for $19.95. So instead of having a bunch of $5 sales, you have a single $20 one.

42 Replies 28,002 Views
Reply to Skinz Browser - Revisited in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

This is something we are very interested in doing. We were just talking about this. Just don't have any developer resources currently available to put onto such a project. If someone is interested in doing one -- a good one, we might be able to make some arrangements for them to do so. Email me if interested ([email protected]).

4 Replies 4,807 Views
Reply to Financial Support WinCustomize in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

Personally speaking, I would not be in favor of WinCustomize having any sort of subscription at this point. As long as there are other skin sites available like DeviantArt, there just isn't enough pressure on WinCustomize to justify anything like that. The best route (I think) is to have T-shirts, CDs, and other optional goodies that users can purchase that help support the site and the user gets something useful. Heck, if we ever had a hard drive crash and didn't have backups, maybe

42 Replies 28,002 Views
Reply to In support of the skinning community... in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

Thanks for your kind words Hoverboy and all. You don't have to worry about the site going away, it's not. As long as there's a Stardock, there will be a WinCustomize.com and as others have pointed out, the skinning community is growing which means more users to buy software and such. The worst that would ever happen is if WinCustomize CDs, T-shirts and other things weren't able to pay for additional bandwidth we'd just begin removing non-Stardock sections which would be the worst case

25 Replies 10,518 Views
WinCustomize speed!!! in WinCustomize News WinCustomize Forums

Since Deskmod went down, traffic to WinCustomize has increased dramatically. We were already pumping out several megabits per second before then and the recent increase in traffic has simply increased it. The irony is, as Windows customization gets more popular, the harder it becomes to have websites to support it because of the bandwidth. Since banner ads and such no longer pay for these kinds of sites, other ways to fund the site have to be found. Stardock provides WinCustom

18 Replies 21,508 Views