Happy 18th Birthday, WinCustomize!
WinCustomize is officially an adult now! Launched way back in 2001 after the dot-com bust took out some other skinning sites, WC has since become the largest site on the Internet dedicated to the customization of the Windows desktop.
Today we have over 2.3 million members, 106,240 total skins on the site, over 13,000 skin authors, and a total download count of 379,771,119.
That's a lot of downloads!
Winky the WinCustomize mascot
Here's a bit of history on WinCustomize.
The site launched on March 13th, 2001 and was originally put together rather quickly after the dot-com bust took out some other popular skinning sites. Here's a screenshot of the site back then. Love those colors, right?
A couple of years later in 2004, we did an overhaul of the site design and released an updated version. This version tried to focus a bit more on the skins, and tabs...we added tabs, too.
2007 brought us another update where we wanted to streamline the front page and went with a bit of a darker theme.
That brings us to the big 2010 update, where the site got a major redesign. It focused less on the news, and more on all the great skins we have. Although we've done some minor updates through the years, many on the code side of things, this is the current design for today.
Oh, and while we were researching some of the WinCustomize history, KarmaGirl came across this.....
How many of you remember and used the WinCustomize Browser? I sure did!
On behalf of WinCustomize and Stardock, I would like to say thank you to all our community members and skinners for your contributions over the years. You have made the site what it is, and we continue to appreciate your support!
To say thank you to our community, we are having a limited-time anniversary sale where you can get a 1 year membership to WinCustomize for 50% off*!
*Sale ends April 9, 2019 at 1PM ET