Paxx, Thank you for your reply. I love computer art, but I am graphically challenged...I have done 2 Talisman ports to Windowblinds, but I don't think they are good enough to post(even if the original author gave his permission). I am an OD subscriber (since 6/2000) and I do a lot of downloads, but I don't have much to contribute to this site except to say that I enjoy it.

Well, still just keep posting on the board, contribute, get your name known and you'll climb the ladder.

Listen to paxx...

I was curious as to, how the latest growth and recognition, will affect this site. Being mentioned on The Reg, and other well known sites, draws alot of traffic...Me thinks??
Building product ties to the new XP Release, and MS, will greatly increase the traffic, if not in sales, then exposure and product trials and general curiosity. Is this not being taken into account, by SD proper as an operational exspense? I view this site as a direct extention (sp?) of SD, and do not even try to differentiate the two anymore. When the site launched, I purchased OD, to lend support, and try to post as often as possible, comments and critisizms, and what not. I think with the States entering, a recession, things are going to get tight, for alot of folks, and we can only do what we can. I guess we'll have to see how things line up, for WC and SD and hope a mutually agreeable descision can be met.

Copy-paste for D'mer (who can't post here, hope I picked the right thread):

------------------------

here's my two cents:

1.) Renato and Johanne charging people to download their skins is totally acceptable to me. and in my opinion it is well worth the $8. Any site charging users to download others work with no fee paid from the site to the artists would be wrong. I am not saying this is what any site is doing. Just showing the difference between the two things being mentioned.

2.) OK, WC is claimed to be a separate entity from StarDock. WC is having problems paying for it's bandwidth. yes, something needs to be done to ensure the site stays online. From what I have pieced together from posts at WC there are several options they are considering for implementation. The option getting the most coverage is to limit amounts of downloads/megs to particular types of users. The user types that will be exempt from limits will be split up by people who have "contributed to the site". examples of "contributing to the site" that have been mentioned are commenting on skins/message board, uploading skins, helping users and finally, purchasing Stardock products. This last "user type" is the one causing the hullabaloo. let's break it down:

A.) OK, if the site is a separate entity from SD, then how is supporting SD supposed to support WC? The main reason given for including this "user type" is that if someone is downloading 100+ MG of WB skins even though they have not paid for the app, they are obviously just a leech. OK, I can accept that. But what about people who are downloading 100+ MG of HVD themes and have a registered copy of HVD? Or any other non-SD app such as the Box series of programs? If the site is going to say. "Your access to this site will be limited unless you support the developers of the applications that are featured on this site," then it needs to include all apps on the site, not just the apps from one company. And what about LS and other freeware apps? If a user goes onto WC and downloads 20 LS themes in one day (approximating 25-50 megs) can they be considered a leech for not paying for a freeware app?

B.) The second problem that people see with this is that it comes close to being interpreted as "you have to purchase something to get full access to the site; hence someone other than the artists are profiting from their work."

a.)In my opinion point B is not an issue due to the fact that they are not forcing you to purchase the software; because they give users other options to follow that will lead them to the same access as if they were to purchase ODN. Point A, I believe should be considered as a reason to not implement the "purchase SD products for full WC access."

Will someone please be kind enough to copy/paste this on the WC board for me since I still cannot log in to the site?
Thanks,
Deven Stephens
D`mer

And there's more where that came from:

--------------------------------

OK, I messed up big time in my post. I could have sworn I saw HVD and Box series apps sections on the site yesterday while I was looking at all this. I never go there since after all this time, I have still not been able to get my login problem solved. So I'm really not very familiar with the site content. but oh well. my points are still valid since they do have NS and LS.

Craeonics could you copy paste this there as well, please?

Thanks,
Deven Stephens
D`mer

D'mer, could you email alexandrie or T-man ([email protected])? I'm sure they can straighten out your account.

As for the issues you raise, ultimately doesn't it really boil down to a simple "Who is going to pay for the bandwidth?"

The nuts and bolts go something like this:

Stardock reserved a server and X megabits of bandwidth for WinCustomize.

WinCustomize needs a lot more than X megabits of bandwidth and so in June Stardock provided an additional Y megabits of bandwidth.

But that situation cannot go on indefinitely. Stardock is willing to pay for X megabits of bandwidth. But it's not willing to pay for the additional Y megabits indefinitely.

So as a website, we have to either find a way to pay for that extra Y bandwidth or try to lower our overall bandwidth useage so that the site runs fine with X megabits.

Stardock's bean counters have long concluded that the site is "worth it" if the site uses X megabits of bandwidth. That with X megabits, the fact that this site is the world's leading skin website (in terms of where people actually download skins, icons, etc.) it generates enough sales and "good will" in the skin community for it to be worth it. But the bean counters say that the additional Y megabites the site is using is total waste. That the money being spent on that extra Y bandwidth is money being thrown away.

We knew this back in June. So in June we did two things:

1) We did a lot of analysis on where the bandwidth is going.

2) We looked at ways we could generate additional revenue to help pay for the site.

We discovered that it's really a tiny minority of users using up a huge chunk of the bandwidth.

Each day, this site gets 55,000 downloads of skins, icons, themes, and wallpapers. Each day the site gets around 20,000 unique visitors.

But it's really only around 1,000 of those unique visitors that are using significant amounts of bandwidth. The other 19,000 come on, download a skin or theme, maybe comment a little, browse a bit and leave. But those 1,000 heavy duty users come on with a cable modem and a download queueer and download many dozens of skins and themes per day.

Surely you guys have looked at a skin section and seen some horrible wallpaper or skin or theme and seen that it still got 40 downloads in a given day. Haven't you ever said to yourselves "Why in the heck would anyone download that crap?!" That's because some people visit daily and literaly download everything new on the site.

It is our belief that by targeting the users who use massive bandwidth without giving anythign back to either WinCustomize or the guys paying the bill (Stardock) that we can get the bandwidth use down to that X megabits per month.

I think it may be accurate to say that presently (until DA upgrades anyway), WinCustomize uses more bandwidth per day than all the other skin sites do combined. I could be wrong on that and it's not a fact to be proud of because look at how active DA's message boards and news boards are and how dead ours are by comparison. Heck, LotsOfSkins message boards and user activity is nearly as high as it is here and it's being run on Chaz's parent's cable modem. So it only makes things worse that many people, when they want to interact, will go to DA or other sites but when they want to leech hundreds of megabytes of stuff they come over here.

As a person, as a user, as a skin author and part of the skinning community for a very long time, that bothers me a lot. It bothers everyone associated with the site. It doesn't bother the bean counters (they just want the bandwidth back to X megabits) but it does illustrate the bigger picture pretty well -- we need to get people who want to download fractional gigs of stuff from here to either buy the CD, become activity in the community, register a product or go away.

Phew!

For most sites, whoever pays the bills should be aloud to make the rules. However in a site such as WinCusto there are many people who contribute to the site yet they don’t “pay the bills”. Whether it is through buying products/software, or posting quite a bit of their own work on the site (all classes above citizen), They should not have a limit, or at least should have a fairly large limit.

If I understand correctly, this is exactly what’s going to happen. If that is true I see no reason for anyone to be upset. It’s the “evil” people who seek not to give, but only to receive tons of skins who are being restricted, and rightfully so. Who knows, some of those people might decide then to contribute to the site (or buy a product) so they have unrestricted access. In fact, nearly everyone on this message board (as Brad stated) are in fact being _rewarded_ with a faster site if this all goes through. Forgive me if someone has already posted what I’ve said, I just don’t have time to read everything.

Did I follow this rather long thread correctly?

btw, I'm glas u decided to stay, snowman

MooShoo....yes you followed it admirably...
...except it is 'allowed', not 'aloud'....

Why not give each class a user a sort of bandwidth "allowance". Do i know if this is possible? I have no clue. Just and off-the-wall suggestion. I would say, ok Johnny user gets x-amount of bandwidth per week. As they download theres a counter that starts dropping. It would only be seen if they were a member. So to download they would have to become a member.

Okay, so if someone doesnt use up their "class-designated" allowance it goes back into the pool and does not carry over into the next week.

Probably a dumb idea (it's been a long day).

As far as wincustomize the site goes. I've always thought of this as more of a stardock venue then its own entity. It makes sense. Almost all stardock progs are skinnable and stardocks onsite skins are now here. So its a must that this place exists for the benefit of the stardock programs. So another solution is that you might want to consider limiting what you can upload. Hell keep it only stardock products. I wouldnt be offended if ppl cant download our skins here. You do what you have to do to stay alive.

YOu might want to consider banners Brad. I know that sucks but hey, if this is eating up the company bank book i think most of u s are willing to click off a few pop ups so you guys can stay alive and well.

I'm rambling at best now, so i'll stop writing. But i think an allowance is a good idea.

cyas

Damn i just had an idea. What about mirror sites. Isnt that how tucows does it?

okay another idea. What about the non-members only being able to see the last 10 skins in each category? That would limit downloads. So if you arent in the db or a skinner contributing then you can only view the last 10 skins uploaded.

Am i going to get flogged for that idea? hehe

to expand on Jark's intelligent comment on a diff thread, why not make WB free version only cable of using the skins that come with it. That way you have had to purchase the product to download more skins. Do that for all of the SD products. They come with default skins and thats it. You want more you got to shell out the cash.

Or know someone well at SD hehe j/k

cable =capable. toldya i was tired.

The first important thig to do I think is the only allow downloads from registred members. From there you can easily track people's download count. Then, you can set up a page somewhere, an agreement of some sort where it says that download abuse is not tolerated. And if a member downloads too much, you could first send a notification email, saying that you have noticed that they download quite a lot, that they should please refer to the agreement page and stop download so much. If they don't stop, exile them.
I think that would inevitably make some people mad, but if they are doing what you say they are doing Brad - indeed downloading every single new skin on this site - they deserve to be banned and to go away. OD customers or not, Apprentices or not, they are leeches, and should go suck other web sites bandwidth.

It's 'thing', paxx, not 'thig'.....
Otherwise.....not a bad suggestion...

Paxx, already done that. If you download more than 1 meg, you have to create an account. That's one of the reasons why we're getting 30,000 to 40,000 new accounts each month now (by the end of this year, we'll have more accounts than skinz.org had when it went down). But with a 1 meg limit, at least new casual users can come on and grab something real quick without having to create an account.

And I totally agree with Paxx's statement. Everyone's seen how even the most awful skin or theme still gets a ton of donwloads per day. That's because some people download EVERYTHING.

Jesh has some good ideas but to answer them:

1) Banners - they don't pay. They're a waste.

2) Mirror sites - lots of maintainence and pain. Don't really solve the problem. Look at the volatility (sp) of skin sites as is. Imagine how volatile of mirros would be. Who wants that headache?

3) Third party apps aren't sucking the bandwidth. It's the Stardock apps doing it. In fact, DesktopX uses more bandwidth here than all the third party sections combined. Plus, this site exists to try to help the skinning community. It doesn't exist as a profit center or a marketing tool. It's just that there's a limit of altruism. If we can get bandwidth under control, then we can even look at adding more sections. I wouldn't mind seeing a Talisman section or a Trillian section and some of the Box apps for instance.

4) Discussed internally limiting what skins you could have on WB. This could harm would be skinners and such. But it is something still under consideration. Now adays, most of the skinning community already has a registered copy of WB. But again, it's not WB using up all the bandwidth really. DX and IconPackager use more bandwidth than WB (sometimes WB comes in second).

Banners: I believe with your amount of registered users, traffic and artistic niche, you could woo companies like Adobe, MS and Corel into buying space on the site to advertise their goods. Same for macromedia, winamp etc. I could be persuaded to pursue that as well possibly .