Paul got his Christmas Time Suite done. The frustrating thing is that WinCustomize is pokey due to the decrease in available hardware from the recent server crashes. This has affected JoeUser a bit too but not nearly to the level WC has been affected. So we've started a subscription drive to try to buy some new hardware. The goal is to get 500 people to buy premium WC subscriptions. It's a really good deal for all the stuff you get. But even if you didn't get that stuff, it's amazing how most people won't spend a dime helping contribute to something they take a lot from.

WinCustomize gets over 2 MILLION visitors per month. 500 new subscribers out of 2 million is such a tiny percentage and yet there is doubt we'll reach that goal. Which would be a shame because it would mean an end to WinCustomize as we know it today. For starters, non-subscribers would be put on a very tiny pipe.  Normally you can download skins and wallpapers and icons at 200K per sec if you have a cable modem.  That would all change though because WinCustomize IS going to get those new servers no matter what. The question is whether the users will pay for it in subscriptions or whether Stardock will foot the bill. If Stardock ends up having to pay for the servers, it's going to come out of the bandwidth budget.

I think it'll make it but I guess deep down somewhere, I really imagined that when the site says "Hey, we're hurting here, we lost 2 servers, we could really use your help" I pictured thousands of people stepping up to the plate.  In 2 days we've gotten about 50 people.  To put it in perspective, 70,000 unique visitors came to the site today. 24 of them today bought subscriptions. Which is much higher than normal. But many of those users are good people who actually subscribed twice.  So you have incredibly generous people helping out the site way beyond the call of duty and then the majority who could care less.

Sometimes I feel like I'm in the middle. We have people internally at Stardock who would love to see WinCustomize be purely a Stardock portal and eliminate any sections that are seen as being drains or competitive in nature.  But WinCustomize is also the place where most people get their Sysmetrix skins, Litestep themes, ICQ Plus skins, NeXTStart themes, and a whole host of other programs that few people would know about otherwise. I'd hate to see it become a purely Stardock site. But supporting the other sections is basically a form of corporate charity. And if we can't even manage to get 500 people to help the site out in its time of need then that'll really show that there's very little good will.