Aqua-Soft ForumsErr, Duckie you skipped over a section or 'era'
Skinz.org was not the first popular skinning site, you forgot "Customize.org" (under original owner, and mod team) was there before Skinz.org and the little popularitity war that went on for the first year. Skinz.org when it first came on the scene was just a personal site for posting skins for the little program they created for 'skining' windows, eFX (they had been devs working on litestep and wanted to bring the freeform to win9x). This was in the fall of 1998 (I think Nov)
After the sale of Customize.org by original owner/owners (gllen) the site went thru some bad times and skinz.org was now #1 and sceenphuck.net was brought back from the grave to come back and try to take the place of customize.org (this didnt go over to well)
Then next up was the birth of deskmod by a group of the customize gang, to try and fill the void let by the demise of customize.org. The opening and closing, and reopening and closing again over the years are a story all itself.
Up next was the birth of devaintart.com (this being one of the coders and co-site operators of sceenphuck.net, trying to get away from the bad things and bad karma of that site)
This post was a very brief part of the start of the skinning sites history, but I had to mention it, as I was around and part of the scene (under different nicks) when everything started and wanted to make sure some things didnt get passed over or forgotten about.
So dont forget to mention the gllen's, the mian's, the toasty's, the Gorman's, the tfboc's, and tpk's who were very much part of the scene and whom with out, Aqua-soft would never have had a birth.
-The Bug "ZUM" aka Misery Inc. "lick my crusties and gargle my sack!"
.... it's still cool to see where this whole community came from, though. keep up the good work!