Thanks Jeff for that comment - Nice to know how 'that side' of the dnn community thinks - and yes - I failed because the support infrastructure, compared to the 'compensation' attitude of most of the DNN people at the time.

Let me also clarify a few things here Jeff foryou so that you might get a better idea on how it worked for me -

I had about 180 people sign up - at $160.00 AU & $80.00 (most were at 80.00)  - at the time the exchange rate was signficantly different, that today - if it was today's value it would have been even more difficult.  That was split between three people so.  I based that on hoping to get maybe - 1,000 or so people subscribe over the year , so I could pay people to this work as i knew it was a job that required paying staff or having assistance to do.  I had two partners in the picture, one of whom bailed out due to other work committments - this was difficult, but I kept trying.

I was also on back of still recovering from a dispicable company who is a sponsor here who owes me thousands and thousands of dollars in work but never paid after I had diligently given them the files - afterall, it was a church group - you can always trust them can't you?  The never paid many people in the DNN community, and what was more distressing, the guy who worked for me had been killed in tragic car accident - I was so terribly sad for his family and the fact I'd spoken to him just hours earlier ...... it was very difficult, I had to train up new people, I was struggling because I spent so much time supporting the black hole of open source, and my unfortunately generous nature in general just got me ripped of so many times by the DNN community.

In all this time, I've still felt that I had something to offer the community, but I found it hard, and I tried my very best, and it haunts me and this post of yours has distressed me signficantly because of the tone you have used without having anything decent to say about the other contributions I have made to help this project.

I have been ripped to the tune of thousands and thousands of dollars by developers and skinners selling their crap on snowcovered - yes I still buy there, as there is no where else to buy, but I don't broadcast this publicly since I have such a large following of people and developers who have benefited from my comments about their products and services, along with using my FREE work, some of which has been used and sold and copied... what can I do about it - I have to accept this as part of the journey.

Let's also take the timing - between dnn 3 and dnn 4 - which was worse than the dnn 2 & dnn 3 times as we had more people involved at the time - DNN was growing, unlike now - it's in more a decline mode, if you look at the Alexa Traffic ranks - snowcovered gets more traffic to their site than DNN.

Let's also look at the fact that DNN has been a dog to skin for years, we've got a menu that has never EVER been compliant, and now been replaced by menu that is just not finished, there were less plugins than there are now. Without changing the core you virtually couldn't make a skin close to compliant - and unfortunately, even today - close to 1/2 if not more of our developing time when we create skins that are cutting edge, is spent on fine tuning and tweaking - however, thank goodness we ditched solpart menu and nav menu and just use the snapsis menu - I'm not even interested in doing skins that have solpart any more.

But back to the point of my failures Jeff - I'm disappointed that you wrote my name here - you could have easily written that it was tried before, and left my name out of it, but it shows your ongoing resentment towards me for publicly stating this, making me feel I have to spend my time here defending myself for those who come in new to DNN and may not know the whole history of this 'closed open source project'.  Perhaps you've not benefitted at all for free from my other contributations, posts, videos, websites, comments that would justify you pointing me out in this manner.

I have in all my times, tried to maintain a passion for this project - DNN nearly cost me my business because I tried to sustain something that was unrealistic and I did relay that in my forums, but perhaps you would have felt better if I'd just shut up shop, removed all my sites, and simply disappeared like LOTS  of other people - because I made a mistake.

You have no idea how much I wish I could find a group of people to work with and do things like this - but even today after so many years, to get anyone who's prepared to put in the time it takes initially is virtually impossible to find.  Look at template monster - you'd think they'd put some DNN skins on their site for sale, but they don't - they can't make money out of the deal - it's  not subscription, but wouldnt' it be great to have a selection of skins to buy of the calibre in design and funkiness that Template Monster offer.  These are big companies with money behind them to research - that to me is the killer of time in my DNN ventures - it's the research and testing that there is no money in.

Back to the original topic of Subscription - there are a couple - but they could be better - you can't compare to something like Rockettheme - which I also am a paid subscriber of - but they have about 2,500 subscribers I think - it's huge - it's a big business for them and they have a team that works together well - although not all their designs are really useable and practical - they deliver some eyecandy which is sensational.  Look at all the free tools and addons they have for creating something cool - however, I have tried to work with Joomla - I've said it once, I'll say it again - it's like Avon perfume - you put it on and people don't say - I like the perfume - they say - 'Arent' you wearing Avon' - it's all the same and very stylised.  I like it but can't do as much with the management of Joomla as you can with DNN - that's my opinion.

Nice to feel the love sometimes Jeff - let me know where I can send a Christmas card to say 'glad to see you're perfect too' and who knows - the boys now have their Christmas organised with their funding  - here's some more reading on the concept of open source.  it's a tough job!

Nina
 

Boy, did I touch a raw nerve.

Nina, I apologize if I've offended you, and I'm not looking for a refund.  The subscription price was less than you probably deserved for all the free work.  And I do understand the problems you went through, and the reasons that Skincovered failed to live up to expectations.  It's hard work and I'm not faulting you for having trouble.  My point was more that you were an example of developers who have found that subscription services usually fail to deliver for either the buyer or the seller.

Personally I'd love to see a decent subscription service available.  Except for AllDNNSkins I don't think there are many developers out there with a large enough inventory to justify the value.  And now that I think about it, they do have a subscription service of a sort, a fee to access all the skins and then a monthly fee to keep it active.  Seems to work for them.

Again, apologies for offending you, it was far from my intent.  And thank you for all your help over the years.  Next time we meet in Seattle, lunch/dinner/drinks are on me.

Jeff

Go to snowcovered.con and enter 'subscription' as a search keyword and you should find some entries like dnncovered. I never used them and would like to know how their skins fare.

I am also surprised that DNN doesn't come with a few good skins prepackaged. Among all the skin developers in the world, no one donated a quality skin to DNN?

Or how about converting one of the free ones to DNN?