The 9 megabit problem (please read)

Make it so you have to signup for an account(free) to download anything at all.

Then limit the number of downloads per day per account to say: 10 a day or something... that should get rid of a large portion of the freeloaders straight away.

They just won't be bothered to keep registering new accounts just to download 10 more skins, and this way everyone can get a reasonable amount of skins each day, and no-one can be too greedy - it should also encourage interaction between users, since everyone would have an account, and feel more a part of the site.

... and who really downloads more than 10 skin per day anyway? That should be more than enough in 95% of the time.


It might work, it might not... just an idea really

Let ehm pay 2 cents for 1 download, 1 cent for wincustomize, 1 cent for the author.
When you create a account here, the subscribtion is 15 dollar, 5 for the subsribtion, 10 for the download, if you download many stuff your money is running out very fast, and then you need to update you money.
if people download my skins my money will raise, and i can download more.

How does that compare to the other half. It amazes me that they can use that much bandwidth and not have bought the product. Thats a lot of downloading of walls,logons and whatever other program thats free, or a lot of warez Object desktop programs.It seems that if a visitor is downloading windowblinds, icons, cursors and so forth then he must be using a warez program or he would be a level 3. So to free up bandwidth, limit the number of downloads to these works to visitors. That way the ones that are using the shareware version can see if the like the program enough to but it. Hope this makes sense.

Now is when I annoy people, unfortunately.

What are the freeloaders downloading? Is it the same thing as paying customers, or is it peripheral items, the condiments, as it were? Are there any sections here that are done better elsewhere? Any sections that also tend to have files of a large size?

Is each section doing a substantial service for the app in question? Would, Winamp be helped or harmed by the loss of a section here, as compared to SysMetrix? Wouldn't it be best to support the apps that *need* support, instead of ones that have a corporate machine behind them? Stardock is a given, it's their dime; but I'm not sure why we need pay for added AOL exposure. These are also sections that have huge freeloader interest, and substantial sections on *every* skin site. Would skinning be bettered by replacing Winamp with a more in-community application with less rush-hour demand?


Are any sections are out-of-focus? I felt really crummy uploading a wallpaper file that was over a meg in size the other day. ~70 such downloads tap out someone's 100 megs. Are we struggling to pay for a task that is done better elsewhere? Is there a shortage of wallpaper sites? If you want your subscription dollar to better skinning, is the wallpaper section where to put it? Should it be put toward the kind of people who flit from site to site anonymously sucking wallpapers from their modem straight to their recycle bin?

If the question is having a more focused, specialized site, or no site at all, you *must* pick what you want to do and do it well.

You still want my opinion? Really? okay.

1) do away with anonymous downloading immediately.

2) remove the Winamp and WMP7 sections. Skinning, Microsoft, and AOL are not gonna be harmed by the drain, and other sites do the job very well. Replace them with smaller, lesser known apps. By doing this you better the community and lower the thankless demand of the unwashed masses.

3) Do away with the wallpaper section. Completely. Okay, if you can't do that, have a contest once a month. Make the section hold 30 papers, and pick the top 20 or 30 uploads, then completely switch out the section every month. Give away a carnival prize, who cares what it is. Logged-in people aren't gonna kill ya downloading 20 wallpapers.

I know people will hate the ideas, but gosh-darn it (self censored), you can't be everything to everyone. If you claim to run the site in the interest of skinning, you will *harm* skinning wasting resources on interests outside the focus.

Bakerstreet: Excellent post!

If they stop anonymous downloading, they wouldn't need to get rid of any sections.

However, this would seriously hurt the guy who dl'd the trial version and wants to try out some different skins. However, maybe the trial versions of skinned apps should come with a small variety of skins. (maybe they already do, I don't know).

I wouldn't want any sections deleted because this site is about skinning my entire desktop and all the stuff I use on it. I seriously don't want to go to winamps site for skins

You raise interesting discussion points

It's mostly DesktopX, WindowBlinds, and Wallpapers. Some iconpackager. The rest is fairly modest.

It would be interesting to shut down the wallpaper section during the day for non-customers (i.e. during peek hours) and see what that would do.

I find myself in complete agreement with bakerstreet.

Right now we let people download something like 5 megs before requiring an account.

Maybe we need to lower that to 1 megabyte.

If DX and windowblinds are getting hit hard, then they have the trial version or a Warez, otherwise they would be level 3.

Lowering to 1 meg wouldn't work...There are individual files that are larger than that.

I agree with werewolf

Although I feel the same way about the Wallpaper section as bakerstreet does, I don't believe that it should be destroyed completely. Supposedly, that section exists to assist the skins, in which case, a wallpaper should only be allowed to exist if it has an accompanying skin. I also think that the Winamp and WMP sections should stay though, considering that many of the skinners in this community usually make a version of their skins for those two products.

Wincust has a sort of a sister site, does anyone know the name of it?

Frogboy: that is 5 megs per session, though, right? Couldn't a person with a dynamic IP come back with another IP and get another 5 megs?

I would just do anything I could to add a layer of abstraction between the freeloader and the 'crimes of opportunity', i.e. manditory login, etc. Make it less comfortable to be here without being overtly *interested* in the focus of the site. As far as I can see, the only two choices are limiting the content and limiting the user.



P.S. Are there any site design issues that could decrease the weight of the HTML being transfered? The main messageboard page, with a 20 day history, is a ~450k, just in terms of HTML, not including images. This is a lot; to me anyway. This particular page was 85k. Could the code be more streamlined? No offense, but there are *appears* to be an awful lot of table information. Also, woudn't limiting the number of skins per page to 20 or 10 decrease the strain of browsing?

Webshots, another very popular site, now limits downloads. I believe it is 5 per day, unless you buy their "Unlimited Membership" which lifts that restriction. Instead of putting a size limit, maybe just limit the number of downloads. Kind of what Hell Dragon said above Then if they want to 'upgrade' to being a Wincustomize subscriber, that gets lifted.

Elvee, is it XPThemes.com?

Yes LadyWolf, thats it thanks

welcome -- i'm always thrilled when i get one right!

Now for my Question, Why not Use XPThemes for the underprivileged(freeriders) and newcummers.

Is Bandwidth shared between the two sites? If it is, Split it 70/30 in favor of WinCust, and when they are ready to ante up, they can have access to WinCust.

What do you think?

My only point on this why would people pay for downloading what you can find for free on other site like Skinbase, DevArt, Artuproar or Deskmod? I'm not against the idea really.

To eliminate Warez used. Have the registered users add their products Serials for unlimitted download. The serial can only be entered once, so no one can give their version serial to other people for usage. Now people will hate this idea

Not all people upload to other sites.

XPTheme's library has Cursors, Icons, Logons, Media Player, Visual Styles(WB), Suites and wallpapers and thats it. Pretty much keep it that way and use it as a teaser to what peaple can have with a subscription.

Three suggestions:

First and foremost, make the wallpaper section available to registered memebers only.

Second, streamline your page code! I know this is a major task, but when I've converted my sites from tables to DIV tags I've experienced a 40%-70% increase in performance.

Third, instead of a limit of 5mb, go with what LadyWolf said and go to 5 downloads.

I am one that also thinks the wallpaper section should go. Too much bandwidth, too much trouble (cry babies).
But, I understand that the section is kinda acting like a bait to get new customers here and then find out about and try the Stardock products. Makes perfect sense. So, Job, unfortunately your suggestions would defeit this purpose.

But I still think the price is too high.

/me wonders if we should'nt force a file size limit to say 350k per file. 3 JPG files can easily fit in a zip that should not exceed that.

The 9 megabits does not include HTML code. It is purely skins/walls/themes being downloaded. The HTML code comes from the Atlanta server.

I think maybe tomorrow we'll see just how much impact the wallpapers are having and disable that section except for customers/registered users. I'll let you know our findings on that.

Maybe get rid of the message board too.