WinCustomize 2009 Subscription Drive
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Monday, January 5, 2009 by Island Dog | Discussion: WinCustomize News
It’s been over a year since our last subscription drive, and with the New Year upon us, we are excited to announce the 2009 WinCustomize Subscription Drive! The drive starts immediately, and will run until March 1st. Our goal is to reach $50,000 which will in turn pay for the development of WinCustomize 2009.
You don’t have to do anything special to participate, just become a subscriber which offers many benefits over a registered user. Remember, this is not for new users only, as now is a great time to renew your subscription and keep all the great content flowing.
Benefits of subscribing:
- Ad-free browsing – Browse through the many skin galleries without seeing banner ads that regular users see.
- Unlimited downloads – Download as much content as you want without hitting any download caps.
- Premium skins – Premium skins available for subscribers
- Master skin discounts – Get 20% Master skins when you are a WC subscriber.
A subscription to WinCustomize.com also makes a great gift. Purchasing for someone else is easy, and can be given to virtually anyone. Subscribe now!
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Reply #22 Tuesday, January 6, 2009 8:51 PM
Even without that my points about graceful degradation/progressive enhancement remain valid. There is also the very high likelihood that if you code to standards and hack for IE later you'll see pages with massively reduced sizes, resulting in a nice bandwidth saving (though admittedly probably not as much as some other sites, as the bulk of your bandwidth is probably downloads). See if you can get the Slashdot guys to give you a rough idea of their bandwidth use before and after they switched from their HTML 3.2 layout to the current layout.
For a real world example if you don't know those languages: open up Wincusto in a clean Opera install. Then use site-specific preferences (right-click-->Edit Site Preferences...-->Network tab-->Identify as: Mask as Firefox) to make Opera pretend it is Firefox. Suddenly the site will work a whole lot better, not because Opera is doing anything different, or changing how it implements standards, but because the site's code is not rejecting Opera out of hand anymore. The trouble with this approach is that anyone using it then appears to Wincusto's servers to be a Firefox users – Opera's visible market-share on this site becomes artificially low as a result.
I posted that advice a day after the current site launched and included simple advice (i.e. treat Opera the same as Firefox in the JavaScript) to the authors that would be trivial to implement and improve (though not perfect) things quickly. This advice about Opera was included (although with the erroneous implication that Opera's behaviour changes with respect to how it handles the code its sent) in a post promising Opera support (which I note includes a request for Opera user to be patient, but I think I've done that for long enough) somewhere down the line but I don't recall seeing a single change designed to improve the site's performance in Opera. I then posted updated advice, which would net support equivalent to masking as Firefox, but without that copy of Opera disappearing from the server stats; I was promised this would be added to the note on Opera compatibility but it never happened so it's likely that virtually every copy of Opera bar mine used to browse this site is actually counted for stats purposes as Firefox.
If it sounds like I have an axe to grind that's probably because I do. I've waited (even offered my time to help) near on two years for any kind of promised improvement only to see nearly bugger all. Right now I won't subscribe because it seems my money will be wasted on excessive bandwidth and site code 10 years out of date. I really like Stardock as a company otherwise though, I even have an OD ultimate subscription.
Reply #23 Tuesday, January 6, 2009 9:01 PM
Yes, I know my HTML/DHTML/CSS, even some PHP & SQL
, just give them a chance to upgrade thing's 
You could always switch to IE, nothing wrong with it [did I really just say that!!
], I would never change.. if it ain't broke.. don't fix it..or..something like that 
Reply #24 Tuesday, January 6, 2009 9:24 PM
Opera maket share - 0.71% Netwide http://www.netapplications.com
Why is it even in the conversation ?
Reply #25 Tuesday, January 6, 2009 9:49 PM
Because I tried to make clear in my original post that if you're doing things right you shouldn't even need to support Opera, it will just happen naturally.
Regardless net-wide browser stats are amazingly unreliable. Example: Opera market share 4.24%. See also some questions about Net Application's stats. I especially like the one where Chrome's stats were 'fixed' post-publishing with no explanation. The only stats Stardock can remotely trust (tracking unique users is still not a trivial task, and just counting simple hits punishes browsers with more aggressive caching like Opera) are their own, but as I've already pointed out Opera currently gets the best results here when it tells the server it's Firefox.
Reply #26 Tuesday, January 6, 2009 9:54 PM
just waiting for our tax refund I D tapped out from xmas
but it was worth it lol
Reply #28 Tuesday, January 6, 2009 10:49 PM
Reply #29 Tuesday, January 6, 2009 11:27 PM
Yes you can. Most regulars around here are subscribed for several years to come.
Reply #30 Wednesday, January 7, 2009 12:31 AM
Reply #31 Wednesday, January 7, 2009 2:00 AM
No. I don't think so.
Reply #32 Wednesday, January 7, 2009 3:10 AM
Reply #33 Wednesday, January 7, 2009 3:06 PM
I remember 2008 Subscription Drive. It was great!
I want to take part in 2009 Drive too. But I have no free money for this (because of a big financial problems around me...
) However I have at least TWO SPARE SUBSCRIPTION - I subscribed until 2012! So please take these subscriptions and use them in any ways. For example as a gift for somebody...
Sorry that this is all that I can do to support WC at the present.
Best Regards!
Reply #34 Wednesday, January 7, 2009 3:18 PM
I remember 2008 Subscription Drive. It was great!
I want to take part in 2009 Drive too. But I have no free money for this (because of a big financial problems around me... )
However I have at least TWO SPARE SUBSCRIPTION - I subscribed until 2012! So please take these subscriptions and use them in any ways. For example as a gift for somebody...
Sorry that this is all that I can do to support WC at the present.
Best Regards!
This is why I subscribe. This is why this is a wonderful place. 
(make the check payable to DrJBHL)
Reply #35 Wednesday, January 7, 2009 4:53 PM
Brad changed that last year. You no longer get 2 years for resubscribing, only one. Also the cost for resubscribing is the same as a new subscription, $29.95
I'm currently subscribed to the end of next year and if it will help to keep the community going, I could always add another year to it.
Reply #36 Wednesday, January 7, 2009 5:32 PM
This is fair price. I know a lot of sites where subscriptions costs the same money and more. But nor one of these sites do not provide for their users a half of services that we may find here. So no any problems. Let's pay if we like this place and want to keep it up. 
Reply #37 Wednesday, January 7, 2009 6:33 PM
to me 29.95 is maxed out of my budget. i was lucky enough to actually buy WB... dont label me as selfish for not contributing ..just some things i cannot allow. 
Reply #38 Wednesday, January 7, 2009 6:58 PM
I'm subscribed until 2010. I'll throw 2 or 3 more subscriptions on there but I'm going to wait till I see how this pans out with the drive.
Thanks for the answers. I knew Brad changed it but I couldn't remember.
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Reply #21 Tuesday, January 6, 2009 9:21 AM
https://www.stardock.com/order.txt