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 .

and yes they dont pay if you're getting a penny per thousand but then you wouldnt have to deal with the middle man (ad co) so the profits would be much much higher. Also software companies would be a good target for that kinda of niche marketing.

Hehe, well if banner ads were economically feasible, we'd definitely go with them. But having an ugly banner on every page that would slow the site down for people (banners add 3 to 5 seconds to a page download for a modem user) would need to generate quite a bit of revenue to be worth it.