Since Deskmod went down, traffic to WinCustomize has increased dramatically. We were already pumping out several megabits per second before then and the recent increase in traffic has simply increased it.

The irony is, as Windows customization gets more popular, the harder it becomes to have websites to support it because of the bandwidth. Since banner ads and such no longer pay for these kinds of sites, other ways to fund the site have to be found.

Stardock provides WinCustomize with a block grant each month to pay for bandwidth, IT services, contracting, etc. But clearly the site will need more than that.

On Monday, WinCustomize is going to begin selling the WinCustomize CD for $19.95. It will include virtually all the skins on this site that we have permission to include plus 2 complete, never before seen skin suites created by Alexandrie and Treetog, two of the top skinners in the community. Revenue from the CD will go to pay for more bandwidth which will benefit us all.

So hopefully, enough people will purchase it so that we can afford to add in a few more megabits of bandwidth and bring the site back to its high speed performance. Another thing down the line will be to purchase a faster file server for the skins ASP generation and such which would make switching pages much faster.