So anyway...I wanted to do some moderating and cleaning up of the sections but unfortunately the site was just too slow to dig into it.

That got me to thinking...

What if we had a certain hour of the day in which the libraries were closed for all but level 3/4 and apprentices? Like 11pm to 12am EST each day or something. That way, there'd be at least an hour each day in which moderators and and others could go through the site where it's at near maximum speed.

What do you think?

Don't have WindowBlinds but curious as to what it does? Even though it uses very little memory, it can do a lot of really cool things besides just "skin". Check out this guide...

WindowBlinds 3.4 is a program that lets you completely customize the Windows GUI. The title bars, the borders, the buttons, the Start bar, scrollbars, radio buttons, etc.

WindowBlinds makes Windows 98, ME, and 2000 into fully skinnable operating systems. On Windows XP, it extends the native visual style engine to have new features and support thousands of WindowBlinds visual sytles on the net.

Version 3.4 is a significant update to WindowBlinds that includes the following new features:


1) The ability to inverse the colors of a window

2) SmartColoring(TM). Can now intelligently color visual styles that weren't designed to be colored. (enabled in the "advanced" dialog in the appearance tab).

3) Installable fonts - skins can include fonts now and WindowBlinds will install them for you.

4) GUI controls can now paint different different versions of that control depending on the size

5) Taskbar pop-up group menu skinned (Windows XP)

6) Mouse over states on radio buttons & checkboxes

7) Taskbar button has a flashing button state

8) Spin controls are now skinned

9) Start menu selected item can have its own background (rather than a solid color)

10) Display properties now skinned by default

11) Users can opt to skin only the title bars on non-theme aware applications

12) Microsoft Instant Messenger now skinned

13) Tree-view +/- buttons skinned

14) Windows Media Player now skinned (Windows XP)

15) Fixed compatibility problem with nVidia nView that caused WindowBlinds on certain Geforce cards to be very slow.

WindowBlinds 3.4 is part of Stardock's Object Desktop suite ($49.95). Users can also purchase it as a stand alone product for $19.95

Plus numerous other tweaks.

Screenshots:
https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/wbcolor2.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/wb3/wb-perapp.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/wb-smartcoloring.jpg

Free Download at:
http://www.windowblinds.net

Most people assume that it's just bandwidth that makes a site slow.

But there are other factors, especially here at WinCustomize. One problem the site faces is that indeed the bandwidth is maxed.

But another problem is that when you have 700 people on at once (like when I type this) accessing the database, the CPUs of the servers can get creamed.

Solving that is a trickier problem. A website like WinCustomize has two major CPU hogging processes:

1) You have the SQL database itself.
2) You have the scripts being run.

There are solutions to all of these things but the problem comes down to time. And as they say, time is money.

One way to solve problems is to have the SQL database on one machine and the scripting on another. This has been the way WinCustomize was and will probably have to go back to doing that. The problem with that is it that creates some database latency when you're going to another machine, even on a 100 base T. So we may have to go back to a 3 machine setup (machine 1 for SQL, machine 2 for scripts, machine 3 for files). And acutally there's a 4th machine involved for handling your Stardock.net accounts.

On scripts, if you can convert them to being DLLs rather than on-the-fly scripts, you can reduce things dramatically. Of course, that makes it tougher to modify them in the future and takes work.

A really effective way to reduce CPU usage is to rely less on dynamically generated pages. WinCustomize could reduce this quite a bit by switching to this in more areas. For example, if we took away the option to let users pick how many skins they see per page, that would let us generate the page once and everyone else would just reload it somewhat easier. Throughout the pages if the material was just generated once when it changed and then just read that would help. But on the other hand, it would make having the site itself "skinnable" (you can customize the way WinCustomize looks) much harder.

WinCustomize itself has evolved over the months to be much more efficient than it used to. And more and more users have come to visit the site since th site's popularity seems largely limited to how many visitors it can handle before it gets too slow.

To become faster, the site will have to continue to be modified so that it hits the database less and the scripts use less CPU power while somehow either getting bandwidth use down or increasing the amount total.

OSNews (www.osnews.com) has a report in which Steve Jobs has publicly indicated that they are seriously considering moving to the x86 for the next version of MacOS. Check out the link...

WinCustomize browser 0.99 is now available.

The WinCustomize browser allows users to directly communicate with the WinCustomize database. This means instant access to skins, themes, news items, message board posts, etc. It completely transforms the WinCustomize experience.

The new version has an integrated chat client that will automatically connect you to the WinCustomize channel where you can talk to other users. It will use your handle from your account here automatically. Because it's a full IRC client, you can join other channels, send messages, etc.

The new version also has an integrated internet explorer client so that you can surf the web from within the browser.

Full change list:
0.99
----
-New Chat section to connect you to #wincustomize
on irc.stardock.com. Functions like an irc client,
so most anything you can do with base irc functions
and commands (as far as chat) can be done there.
-New Web Browser section so you don't have to
hop out of SB when following a link.
-Fixed crash on hovering over certain skins.
-Added prompt to update library database if 7 or more days old.
-Added options to hide some sections.
-Fixed memory leak in cancelling a download.
-Fixed crash on listing some search results.
-Added option to toggle skin item tooltips.
-Removed auto refresh of thread if updated.

Check out these screenshots:
https://www.stardock.com/products/skinbrowser/sb-july02.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/skinbrowser/sb-july02a.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/skinbrowser/sb-july02b.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/skinbrowser/sb-july02c.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/skinbrowser/sb-july02d.jpg

The WinCustomize browser is currently only available to WinCustomize subscribers. If you're already a subscriber, go here: https://www.stardock.com/support and type in your email address and it'll send you a link to the new version in email.

If you want to become a WinCustomize subscriber, it's only $19.95 for TWO years (around 80 cents per month). You not only get the WinCustomize browser but premium skin suites (coming soon), unlimited downloads, text ads on the site (coming soon), and more.

To subscribe, go here:
https://www.wincustomize.com/index.asp?cmd=subscription

I was talking to people on IRC and found that they had bought Object Desktop for reasons totally unrelated to why I personally use Object Desktop. This made me wonder what parts of Object Desktop people really like.

I don't mean "I like WindowBlinds.." I mean, what specifically about Object Desktop (or WindowBlinds or any program on this site) do you find compelling enough to pay for?

Thanks in advance.

Object Desktop is a collection of desktop enhancements that together allow users to completely transform Windows into whatever they want it to be.

Over the past month, Stardock has been heavily updating some of the core components such as WindowBlinds, DesktopX, ObjectBar, IconPackager, and WinStyles. The reason for doing this is to better integrate these programs together into a unified whole.

One example of this has been the re-design of WinStyles.
http://www.winstyles.com/ws-july02.jpg

When Object Desktop 2002 is installed, the Object Desktop Theme Manager (WinStyles) becomes an effective way to control your desktop and the various components of Object Desktop.

When you buy Object Desktop 2002, you not only get all the existing programs in the suite, but everything that comes out new for it (and updates) for an entire year.

To purchase Object Desktop 2002 on CD visit: https://www.stardock.com/order.html/

If you already have a subscription to ObjectDesktop.net then Object Desktop 2002 CD is free minus a small media/shipping fee. Visit: https://www.stardock.com/products/odnt/cdsnapshot.asp to get that.

Screenshot: http://www.objectdesktop.com/odnt2002.jpg

Users who want to completely change Windows have traditionally had to use several different programs. They'd use WindowBlinds for the GUI, DesktopX for the desktop, ObjetBar or Hoverdesk or NextStart for a new start bar or right click menu on the desktop, IconPackager for the icons,etc. Throw in Beatnik, Trillian and other programs and pretty soon you've made customizing Windows something that is quite difficult to do.

The solution is WinStyles. WinStyles allows users to create and distribute suites. A suite is a collection of skins and themes and icons put together into a single file. Put another way, a suite are all the skins and themes of the above programs combined together into a single file.

So if a user wants to have an overall new look to Windows, they load up the proper suite, click apply, and it then talks to those other programs to change them for you.

Version 1.2 is a heavy rewrite of the user interface for it. 1.0 was very popular but still made it somewhat confusing for casual users. v1.2 looks very different than previous versions and supports Trillian in the enhanced version.

Additionally, WinStyles can control the individual programs from its interface. So whether you want to change your WindowBlinds skin or CursorXP cursor or MediaPlayer skin, you can do it all from the same place.

WinStyles is a free download at http://www.winstyles.com. It is also part of Stardock's Object Desktop 2002.

Screenshot:
http://www.winstyles.com/ws-july02.jpg

The poll results from last week which had over 1000 users respond showed a surprising result - Microsoft Instant Messenger has gone from nothing to a dominate player in the instant messenging market. 42% of users polled responded that they use MSN. The once dominant ICQ trailed at only 15% with AOL Instant Messenger at 16%. The popular skinnable instant messenger Trillian gained an impressive 20% share. However, its numbers may be higher since the poll was taken on a Windows customization site (WinCustomize). Clearly though, MSN has become a real for in instant messenging.