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...

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.

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...

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....

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

~impotance, jesus...

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

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....

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.