Weekend stats

from WinCustomize Forums
We expect things to return to normal in the next couple of days -- or at least close enough to normal that we won't need to require accounts to download skins.

But some itneresting stats:

Over the weekend the website got 13,000 new accounts. To put this in perspective, on Thursday the site had a total of around 6,000 accounts (so we have about 20,000 accounts total).

DesktopX got 47,000 downloads over the weekend just from download.com. These users naturally came somewhere to get more skins and themes which was here.

Very soon we're going to upgrade the server so it can handle more traffic. Bandwidth is only part of the issue, it's purely quantity of users hammering the database. By next week at the latest you should be able to notice a fairly significant performance boost.

5,682 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I don't understand why not remainning requiring to be a registered user to see the skins.
Since it's free for register I think WC should continue riquiring registration for that.

Anyway, just my 2 cents
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Some people are concerned about giving email addresses etc to wincustomize because they are afraid they will be sold to other companies.
Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
And it's mainly just a convenience thing. We don't want to have to force people to create accounts just to check out skinnining for the first time. We are implementing a system in which if you download more than say 5 megabytes that you have to create an account. That's a lot of skins though.

We wouldn't sell people's email addresses. Not just because of principle (we hate spam too) but just isn't worth the time. If we had 6 million email addresses, that might be something but we're talking a few tens of thousands here, not really that valuable. Heck, Stardock Magazine has over 100,000 subscribers to that, that would be worth far more but again, we don't mess with people's private stuff and we consider email addresses to be private property.
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I agree with others that requiring some kind of registration is desireable.

Perhaps there could be a line right about the request for email address stating explicitly that you will not sell, spam or blah blah blah.

My two cents... NEXT!
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I don't worry about spam. I use Yahoo and Hotmail for my accounts.
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top
It's great to hear there's an upgrade coming! Thanks for all the effort going into keeping this site accessible... I truly appreciate it.
Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Requiring people to sign up would create a threshold. Depending on what one wants to do with the site, one could favour such a system or not.

/me has achieved a new height in saying nothing with lots of words
Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
"craeonics has achieved a new height in saying nothing with lots of words "

I think that's my area of expertise!
Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Many of the skins available are Stardock products - not a bad thing, just the way it is. No attempt to resurrect an old, hopefully dead issue.

It's just that most of the people accessing wincustomize are I think, using ODNT anyway. Restricting downloads to subscribers isn't a big jump and might go a ways towards solving bandwidth problems. Even with a new server, this may be a problem again in future.
Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I was going to spell-check crae, until I realised he hadn't said anything....
Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top
i don't use ODNT. just windowblinds mainly and try out the other things now and then.