According to what I've been able to dig out of the Internet Wayback Machine, today is WinCustomize's 7th birthday! Originally launched on March 13th, 2001 in the aftermath of the dot-com bust that took out many popular skinning sites, specifically the original Skinz.org, WinCustomize is now the largest site on the Internet dedicated to GUI Customization with over 1 million pageviews per day, serving visitors from all over the globe.  Today, our combined galleries hold over 75,000 us...

When new submissions slow down in a gallery, it's always fun to see what was uploaded in years past, or what is the most popular content of all time.  Today I was skimming through the IconPackager gallery and decided to check out which packs have the most downloads of all time.  I assumed that it would all be stuff from 2001, 2002, 2003 since they'd have been on the site the longest, but they jumped around in terms of date. Here are the top five downloaded IconPacks of all time on W...

As DeskScapes 2.0 draws nearer (it's been available as a beta to Object Desktop subscribers for a little while now), I thought this would be a good time to highlight some of the great Dreams the community has been creating and uploading lately.

It's almost that time again, time for a refresh and a new snapshot of Object Desktop for 2008.  This year, in addition to the regular refresh to the suite of customization tools, we're splitting it up into two separate groups: Object Desktop and Object Desktop Ultimate. The Guided Tour explains exactly what that split means, and talks about new tools such as Impulse, an updated DesktopX, the new MyColors and more. It's a great read and should give you a good idea of what to expect ...

1: //This is a test of the codeblock plugin for Windows Live Writer 2: using System; 3: public class HelloWorld 4: { 5: public static void Main() 6: { 7: Console.WriteLine( "Hello World!" ); 8: } 9: } This is just a quick test of the " Insert Code " Plug-in for Windows Live Writer.

JoeUser Tags: blogging , misc , politics Do the tags from LW work?

Tutorial articles showing you how to use an application through screenshots and blurbs of text can be very helpful in learning your way around a tool, but often even with screens and text, it can be confusing on how exactly to access a given feature or option. To that end, Island Dog has been working on a series of Screencasts, narrated video walkthroughs of several skinning/customization applications, focusing on specific features within the applications His Screencasts so far: Win...

As we've worked on updating the look and feel of the forums, we realized it was finally time for some new emoticons/smileys.  Our previous set, designed by CerebroJD had served us well for many years, but it was time to look to the future for something new.  Since we have a community of incredibly talented visual artists, I turned to you seeking a new smiley set. While it got off to a slow start, you pulled together some terrific smiley sets.  Here's what we had to choose from:...

Last week's poll was a surprise.  People actually voted against the idea of a brand new gallery on the site, and when I've talked about other new galleries in the past the general response seems to either be "meh" or "no" so it raises a question in my mind.  Does the community on the whole want the site to expand in its coverage to cover new types of skinning?  With the advancement of cell phones, PDAs, and web-based applications, the world of skinning has grown drastically pa...

Polls are interesting things.  Sometimes you ask what you think is a no-brainer, a question that could only have one reasonable outcome, but then you're surprised when it turns out to be the exact opposite.  Last week's poll worked just like that. Last week I asked if users would like to see WinCustomize add a cell phone theme gallery to the offering.  My expectation was that everyone would be up for more customizable content on the site.  More skins = more users and that...

Ok, this time change is wreaking havoc on my body.  The alarm going off at what felt like 5am just wasn't the way to start the week.  But my grogginess and lack of sleep won't get in the way of rounding up the best skins from the last weekend.  So while I go for my 5th cup of coffee for the morning, you all can feast your eyes on some great skins...  

My ePenis is huge...  I just got this new PC on Tuesday.  Complete with a 24" widescreen monitor and an nVidia GeForce 8800GT video card.

Stardock sites are based on a very complex and detailed articles system that has grown over the years.  Basically, imagine one gigantic forum.  Hundreds of categories and subcategories containing thousands upon thousands of posts.  Each site (WinCustomize, JoeUser, TotalGaming) takes a subset of that master list for its own forums.

We've been working on cleaning up our system the last few months.  Cleaning up data, optimizing the database etc.  This week we've been working on the master forum category list.

Today, andrew_ printed out the category tree for two sites, WinCustomize and JoeUser....

Skinning is the focus here.  We're always talking about individual skins or suites.  A cool WB skin here, some great cursors there and so on.  Rarely though do we talk about how great different skins look when they're mixed and matched in combinations even the authors never anticipated.  Our Screenshots gallery exists just for that purpose though. Every now and then it pays to wander through the gallery to see what people are using and how cool it looks. Here are some ...

This week just flew by!  Well, to help you wrap up your work week, Island Dog is here with a fantastic selection of skins uploaded over the last week.  So far this year we've been seeing week after week of great work being submitted, and this week is no exception. Check out the article for the full list of skins, see what you might have missed.