I'm aggravated

Davad...
I personally do not have a web-site....I know precious-little about coding one, hence I don't have one.
I RELY/DEPEND on sites such as Wincustomize to host my 'stuff'...as for personal 'size', one of my LiteSTEP themes here is 5 meg on its own.
Now, IF I had a private site, about oh, 2 or 3 people a year might trip over it in error, but in a communal site such as this, where my 'crap' rubs shoulders with 'real' quality, many, many MORE people will get to see my junk, so yes, Wincustomize is doing me a 'service'.
It is a mutual, symbiotic service....I help provide content [and spend hours each day helping maintain Wincusto], and Wincusto provides one 'effing' huge pipe that enables literally millions of people to see and maybe appreciate my 'content'.
Of course this content is beneficial to Stardock, but it is very definitely a two-way street.
Currently, there is a Company in the US, called Stardock paying all the costs incurred by me for displaying my work on the biggest skinning site on the net. It costs me nothing [financially], and to push the point harder, Irrespective of my position here as a wizop, I appreciate their hosting of my stuff to the point that I still have bought the 2 CD compilations, and a Tee Shirt....just to show MY gratitude and support.

It is way too easy to presume that 'without the skinners there'd be no site content and no site', but please remember too that without the site there'd be no communal skin archive to attract the public, and ultimately no 'skinners' [as a collective noun, but rather just a disparate bunch of individuals].
The 'community' that is generated by a skinning site is far more significant than the sum of its parts...

Well said Jafo You've summed up pretty well what I'm sure most of us think. I still understand davad70 feelings in some way though, but I guess it depends on which perspective you see things. As Jafo said, it's the symbiosis between SD and the work of the community as a whole that made WC such a success, and this undoubtely includes davad70's great work

I, for one, agree with Jafo. Its mutually beneficial relationship. I subscribe to Wincusto because I want to make sure this site is around for awhile because I couldn't possibly find a website that generated this much traffic and is directed soley at users and skinners. Is Stardock benefitting? I hope so, are skinners benefitting, you bet.

shoot I feel a good thread coming on w/ lots of interesting POV's and stuff and me is gonna miss it tomorrow... argh!

this all depends on how you look at it...

like Jafo said: where my 'crap' rubs shoulders with 'real' quality, many, many MORE people will get to see my junk, so yes, Wincustomize is doing me a 'service' by Jafo - 5/30/2002 8:44:43 PM

on the other hand:
"IF" all the other skinning sites went under (and of course alot of ppl don't know or have the time to throw up a site to host their own skins)
wellll "then" sites like wincusto that have alil more invested in letting their customers have a nice little skin data base to choose from "might" be an issue therefore "they" might perhaps have a diff attitude and skin authors then "would" be doing their site a favor...
but as it stands right now @ this point and time no having skin hosted here is not doing them a favor...
(but you never know what tomorrow will bring)

Doreen...[Hi, BTW]...my comments apply equally to each and every skin site currently on the net....but it's so easy to remember the recent past when skinz.org was going it alone as Custo and Deskmod in particular were 'coming and going', Devart hadn't started yet, and neither had LOS, Skinbase or Wincusto.
All the eggs were essentially in one basket.
Then eFront upturned the apple-cart [and I was shot for mixing metaphores]....but now there are a selection of 'established' sites...but each of them is STILL providing ME with a service, just as much as I 'may' be helping them...

Let me make clear that I posted this to have a good discussion about what people's thoughts are on this. I'mnot trying to cause dissention (this time). I truly think that my thinking regarding this whole "skinning/community" is sometimes outside the norm and/or flawed. I just find it interesting to get other people's "take" on these issues. When I first read Brad's comment my thoughts were...I can find hosting for my skins anywhere. Even as free services are becoming less and less common on the net, there are still (and I think always will be) places that offer anywhere from 3-20 MB of free space. I doubt that I would lose much sleep over the lack of downloads, but who knows...maybe I would.

Davad...I figured you were just into an open discussion...wanting alternate viewpoints...that's why I responded...

The problem with the little free hosting places available is that they would be very 'isolationist' by nature....no 'group collective' environment as you can get at a 'dedicated' skin site....

davad70, I think you're missing a cruicial point. While many web hosts have large free hosting capacity for storage, they still place bandwidth caps on data transfer. When you exceed that allotment, you either shut down for the month or pay more for excess bandwidth. How much are you willing to pay to give your stuff away?

Davad, that was rude of you to take my statement out of context.

If you read the whole comment (it is in one of the news items), what I did was make the distinction between HOSTING a skin and displaying them. I even provided examples.

The key word, which I did capitalize, is HOST. Skin authors are not doing any given site a favor by allowing them to HOST their work.

I clearly made the distinction between hosting a skin and DISPLAYING a skin. A skin site needs skin authors to submit their skins for download. But there is no reason why the skin site has to host the skins. The example I gave, which Davad didn't bother to include, was how Talisman's site doesn't HOST any skins. It points to the themes available on other sites. It's totally seamless though to the user, they may not even be aware that when they download the "Featured Talisman theme" that it's actually quietly going and getting it from deviantART or Skinz.org or some author's home page.

I hope others can make that distinction. Certain skin authors need to get it out of their head that they run the show and that everyone else is their servant.

It is a symbiotic relationship: Skin authors, software developers, Site admins, and users. They all need one another for a community as we have to exist.

Davad, if you truly feel that you're doing us a favor by allowing us to HOST your skins, let me disuade you from that by providing us with a LINK to where your skins be be downloaded. On our admin page, we can make any skin, icon, or theme be downloaded from anywhere in the world.

Let me give you an example. Your skin "Alias" now points to your Alias skin over at skinz.org. When you download Alias from here, it's actually downloading it from skinz.org right now. (I'll change it back in a bit). To the user here, they have no idea. It's totally seamless. But instead of using our bandwidth, it uses their bandwidth. This is what other companies do all the time.

Do you see what I am getting at? Hosting vs. displaying? Let me know when you checked out Alias so I can change it back to downloading it from our server.

Btw, the link to Alias is https://www.wincustomize.com/skins.asp?SkinID=2331&library=1

In case you missed it Brad, I did link to the news item so that everyone could read the entire discussion. I didn't feel like cutting and pasting the entire thing.

I do understand the difference between displaying and hosting. You've used the Talisman example many, many times in the past for us all to understand the concept.

What's with the reference to "certain skin authors" thinking everyone shoule be their servants??? Was I asking you or anyone else to serve me? Or were you referring to someone else?

Maybe you should consider giving skinners the option of linking to their file somewhere else (on the upload page). Anything I can do to help.

It would be hell of a maintenance job to NOT host the skins. A whole bunch of skins would end up with dead links all the time... No it would be nightmare. And in the end, the site wold loose its credibility and nobody would ever come anymore.

No, NOT hosting the skins is not even an option.

Good point about the dead links paxx didn't think of that.

BTW davad70, if Adni's skins displayed here were hosted at one of the free hosting companies, they would shut him down in half a day with all the bandwidth he uses by himself. With an average of about 1.5 Gigs of transfer per day, Adni's skins couldn't never be hosted anywhere for free, be sure of that. I could say the same for Treetog or any successful skinner here.

More good points paxx. I'm sorry to admit that it probably would work for me though, not being successful and all.

Hello Jafo!
yes I know what you're saying and as it was & should always be... "one hand washes the other right?" you cannot really wash your hands if you only have one? hehe
(funny thing to watch when someone tries to do that)

A script can run to verify the link every few hours to prevent broken links so that wouldn't be a problem.

I don't want it to sound like I think not hosting the skins is a good idea. I don't think it's a good idea. But if it was a choice between shutting down or migrating to a linked skin mechanism, I'd choose the ladder. It won't come to that precisely because of the work we're doing to make the site more self-sustaining.

I can't imagine any user being comfortable with the thought that sales of WindowBlinds are what pay for this site basically. What happens if WindowBlinds sales decline over time? Between now and that point, this site has to at least pay for its bandwidth (and ideally make enough to be financially independent).

That would be good for all users. If the site's generating revenue based on getting users and skinners here, then it becomes in its best interests to support mroe apps, do more things for skinners, etc.

Getting back to Davad's point - yes, I'm talking about many skinners aroudn the various websites. You've seen them as well as I have. The ones who reek of elitism. The ones who see skinners as being above everyone else. I happen to be in a bit of a unique position - I'm an admin, I'm the #4 skinner on this site, and I help write the software that people use to skin. So I kind of see things from all the perpsectives and I clearly see it as a co-equal thing. We all need each other. There's no "some are more equal than others" here.

Nothing worth anything can come from an "I" as most if not ALL of you know, it takes a TEAM. And I for one think this site, and ALL the people that work it and give to it are THE BEST. Thank you all for the great, GREAT work.

"An OLD man with too many computers"

Well said Mike, and thank you for the kind words!

Yeah well, on the other hand, if I ever make a skin again (who knows), I probably will not upload it anywhere except on my own site. I'll finally have some content and a false sense of control then.

/me basically only visits the sites to poke around on the boards. The skins are of little importants, but then again, he is not an average user

~impotance, jesus...

Bytheway, Dave, that first post _was_ somewhat inflammatory. I was expecting to see a flame.

@#$%, importance. My god, I swear someone is filtering my posts, removing random characters in the progress...

Frogboy - There's no "some are more equal than others" here

Yet some have personal icons...and others (willing to pay for them) don't....

"Bytheway, Dave, that first post _was_ somewhat inflammatory." - craeonics

thanks for pointing that out crae... I didn't feel like even responding to this thread...

Scripts don't works that great. Problems happen: some sites are slow and time out, some links may change, servers crash, temporarely or permanently. For example, the link to a nice wallpaper displayed here may be replaced by a picture of Britney Spears naked, or even worse: a pirated copy of Windowblinds, and the script wouldn't think anything of it!! Of course, you could have the script to check for changes in file size, but then that means authors couldn't update their stuff. You would need a team of humains to daily check to errors reported by the script.
Or the links may still be good, but some skins may be hosted on a really slow site, downloading at 0.3k/sec. That would reflect on this site here.

A small site such as Talisman may take the chance and only link the skins, but a big site such as Wincusto will never have a choice. Oh, if it ever comes to it, try it, you'll break your nose.

I speak from experience. About 4 years ago, we provided links to a major portal, and we had a script that verified the links. Every day, I had to manualy check about 200 links reproted by the script. We eventually dropped the contract, after a while, when we had over 50,000 links to web sites, it was too much.