Just one small thing, when I was first introduced to Wincustomize, was said to me that it would be a skinning portal.
I, for sure, think that Hoverdesk should have a place on any skinning portal, the program is really great!

See this is why I pointed out, that this was covered before... hahahaha!!!!!
I was of the same opinion as paxx, CB and the rest. I have come to the same conclusions, as paxx, and as such visit the site, as infrequently, as I might have, given that it might have been freeform. (hope that made sense.) I stopped caring about making waves, or pointing out, what I thought was a loss of direction. This site is going in exactly the direction it was intended. Congrats on brilliant, timing, and market deployment. The only thing, I would mention is this:
You built this site to expand, Stardock, and give the Skinners a home, please accept the fact that, you have built the demand, and provide whatever it takes, to make the customer happy. Stop trying how to figure out, how to cut corners on the bandwidth. I understand there are considerations, that the Average, Joe User does not understand, in making a site like this work. Guess what the Average, Joe User doesn't care. if you make the previews, so small He cannot see what He is downloading, then He is gone. So you're killing 2 birds with 1 stone. Cutting bandwidth, and sending potential customers, out the door unsatisfied.
No disrespect intended, just an observation.
If I really knew what I was saying, I wouldn't be unemployed, right now.

While the original intent of the site was to be a skin portal, that's long since ceased to be the case. As an idea, a skin portal is a still a good one, but implementing one, a good one is a lot LOT more work than we can really take on and would require a lot of work by the various skin sites. And the situation has changed too radically. Deskmod is gone. Other sites don't have a lot of bandwidth to spare.

If someone wants to start a skin site portal, we would help promote their launch if they wanted.

Really though, everything can be summed up like this: Whatever dreams or designs we had for WinCustomize changed when the site became so popular that it requires 24+ TERRABITS of bandwidth per month instead of 4 terrabits.

You can set your thumbnails to be large in your account settings.

What paxx said.

Maybe Stardock should change the 'about' section on this site, so that it isn't a complete pile of lying crap.

I quote:
"mission Statement"
The goal of this site is to act as a general skin site to the community. There are hundreds of skinnable applications on the net. WinCustomize, however, strives to contain most of the very popular ones. It is also designed as an entry point for new users into the wonderful world of skinning. Click on the community link and you will find links to a host of skin sites, programs, and other interesting customization software sites. Through WinCustomize, you should be able to download skins and themes and icons that will let you customize every part of the Windows operating system.

I would like to emphasise the line that says "It is also designed as an entry point for new users into the wonderful world of skinning." , which has already been proven as a lie, since allowing people to discover HvD on here, isn't gonna happen.

Oh boo hoo, no HvD. Go over to MS and complain they don't host Linux or MacOS while you're at it.

Lies! All lies! Face it, the world is based around ambiguous statements.

Is WC an entry point? To an average Joe Blow it is. Can they find links to other sites? Yes, they can. Can they get skins to change their desktop, yes they can. Where's the problem? Oh yes, no HvD.

Mack: Microsft constantly faces charges of antitrust, I'll remind you, so using MS as an example is not in Stardock's interest...

I was talking to a friend of mine last night and I was able to finally come up with a really good analogy.

Pretend me, Alexandrie, and the rest of the Admins have nothing to do with Stardock. Pretend we're just a few very active skinners in the community (which we are).

Now, skinz.org goes down and we decide we want to set up a site to help act as an anchor for the community. But man, bandwidth is expensive and so are all the other associated costs.

Now, along comes Stardock who says "We'd like to over you a deal. A really good deal. We will give you a set of high powered servers and the same amount of bandwidth that skinz.org gets. You would be free to do whatever you want with the site with one exception - since we're paying for the site intotal, we request that you do not put up sections for apps that directly compete with ours. Somewhat competing is fine. But if it directl competes, we ask that you not put it up there. We don't want to send tens of thousands of monthly visitors to a site that we're also paying for that also promotes our competitors."

Now, I'm sure some skinner here (who doesn't run a site) would say "I wouldn't take those terms." But I think most reasonable people would. No solution is a perfect solution in this world. But it works out pretty well.

I'm confused. If stardock sat by and did what most of these programs here do, the precious 'community' would be f*cked. stardock would just link to Deviantart and the others and they would have to handle the traffic this place gets. But if they did nothing nobody would bitch because it's the same as what the others do. But because they help you gots people bitching because it's not enough. Hey stardock your bending over nicely, bend over a little more now. No good deed goes unpunished.

If HVD were freeware I could see some of the angst. But it's a commercial app no different than DesktopX. Has Hoverdesk even sponsered a skin site yet? Do they even have a skin library for their own stuff? No. So Stardock is supposed to do for them what they won't do for themselves. Marvelous.

and away we go!!!! I ain't climbing on this merry-go-round again. Ya'll thrash it out.

/me does the kicking-in-the-open-door stuff

I wouldn't accept those terms, but my feet are firmly grasping the soil beneath them (even though my head is in the clouds), so I wouldn't even dream of starting my own skins site.

Life is filled with imperfect solutions. But I would submit to you that the average joe coming to this site finds 20 sections more than enough.

You can have a pretty well positioned skin site by simply having:

1) WinAmp
2) ICQPlus
3) WindowBlinds
4) ICQPlus
5) IconPackager

Everything from there (statistically speaking) is gravy.

Is ICQPlus really so popular that you need TWO sections for it?

Doh-eth.