New forum look, advertising, and you!

[Bitmap]

Originally Posted by Xasia

well, that's a pretty good bargain, assuming i live another 60 years; that's only a 1-cent per month subscription that I'm prepaying. But if I die tomorrow this is the BIGGEST RIP OFF EVER!!!!!!!!!!

oh and here i was thinking the united states social security tax was...

[Laodaron]

Originally Posted by Ironhide

For anyone to whom the large pink flashing banners are really fucking annoying.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10

I'm assuming that people like you enjoy being worthless shitbags? Why would you knowingly and intentionally sabotage LFG and what he's done?

[Ironhide]

Originally Posted by LFG

Which forums did you say were yours? I'd like to visit them and sabatoge your efforts there also. It's only fair.

sure, Tampaforums.com and Tamparacing.com , feel free to take a look. I dont have the same guarantee's of being able to post what ever you like that you do here though and my users will more than likely tell you to fuck off. we have alot of custom code on the sites aswell.

look at it unregistered and registered and you'll see that ads are minimal, and yet we buy about $10,000 worth of hardware a year and are able to pay our hosting fee's. Nothing left over after that but we never intended to make a profit, just have it pay for itself.

You'll notice we use adsense and we have a subscription for premium membership. similar to what your trying to do here. the key as i have said before it to do minimal ads to the people who build the site and let the people who consume it see targeted ads. We dont offer an "ad free" version because we felt that was not having them pay for value ad. instead a premium membership gets more gallery space, more PM's and access to a hidden forum that has stuff we dont allow in public.

Personally, I'd go to vbulletin.org and look at some of the adsense template mods, put in adsense at the top and adsense in the threads for unregistered members. modify the teplates for displaying threads to only let google use the info from the first post (or up to the first page) and then use the stuff in adsense to remove the urls for the content you dont like.

sure until you get them weeded out you might have some ads you dont agree with but at least they will flow with the rest of your site and not be gigantic pink fucking crap for me to calculate my love.

btw, i'm not undermining your site, i'm letting you know your doing the wrong thing (in my opinion) with your advertising. I might not always be able to discuss EQ2 raiding / content because I dont do alot of raiding these last 2 months and have never been in a "hardcore" guild .. but i do do a bit of community building and stuff with vbulletin.

[Ironhide]

Originally Posted by Laodaron

I'm assuming that people like you enjoy being worthless shitbags? Why would you knowingly and intentionally sabotage LFG and what he's done?

LFG is a big boy, he doesnt need your lips plastered all over his cock.

And by my rekoning he's sabotaging his own shit and I'm showing him there is a better way.

either way its got fuckall to do with you.

[Laodaron]

No, its got everything to do with people who have donated here. People like you are so stuck up their own asses that they refuse to accept anyone else or anything else that they didn't directly participate in.

I don't care which way LFG goes with this, but just remember that you and the few others here have been whiny bitches this entire process. Can't afford to donate, then see ads. Can donate, no ads. Why in the fuck would ANYONE donate to keep the ads there? And what extra hidden forums could you recommend?

I just personally don't like crying bitches who don't get their way trying to scream about it. That's why I pointed your post out, my response had nothing to do with LFG.

[oddyophile]

If the sight of a banner ad is going to ruin your whole day, log off right now and stay off the internet for the rest of your life. It's only going to get worse.

[LFG]

Originally Posted by Ironhide

LFG is a big boy, he doesnt need your lips plastered all over his cock.

And by my rekoning he's sabotaging his own shit and I'm showing him there is a better way.

either way its got fuckall to do with you.

Adsense is not an option here. You don't know that because you don't run a MMO site.

Again, I realize the text ads displaying have jack shit to do with this site. That's apparently the best Adbrite can do. So my goal is to find ad banners that display in those panels so that we don't have to rely upon people to click the ads to get the revenue. I want to get paid to display the ads, not based on my users clicking them.

BTW, we made 20 bucks running ads yesterday. Most people will say that isn't squat, and I agree 20 bucks isn't squat. But how much is that a year? Basically, if I just left it exactly like it is and didn't make any changes, that alone will cover our expenses and future growth.

Your forums look nice, but I don't agree that your methods will work here. I think a private section for contributors defeats the purpose of a flame board. I don't want to restrict content to anyone. All I want to do is give people the option of helping pay for the site through a small donation, or by viewing ads. It's thier choice.

And as I've announced, for those contributing at the $50 plus level, we will be implementing benefits based on hacks we've previously installed and coded. Those benefits include the ability to change user title using HTML code on demand, and per-user post editing rights that go beyond the 15 minute edit timer we have now. The reason for that 15 minute timer was to prevent newer posters from starting a flame thread here and then chickening out later and deleting all their posts from it. I don't believe we need to worry about that with users who have demonstrated their loyalty to this site by making a large contribution.

I'm gonna get better ads, make no mistake about that. But what we are doing now appears to be what's needed to fund this site and it's growth into the future.

[Ironhide]

Originally Posted by Laodaron

No, its got everything to do with people who have donated here. People like you are so stuck up their own asses that they refuse to accept anyone else or anything else that they didn't directly participate in.

see you get half the point, the content that gets people to return to a forum is user generated. why not encourage and reward those that make the site what it is? its really tough to get to critical mass with a forum, the point where you have enough users to generate enough content to interest other people to sign up and create yet more content. Its generally an idea to give people more reason to participate.

hell why not make a promotion for 1000 posts that puts you into ad free mode. then you reward the people who build the content.

adding annoying ads and driving off regular users has ruined quite a few forums, its a lesson i've learnt a few times... for the 2 big forums i have there i have 10-15 failures aswell that didnt get to crit mass or died for various reasons.

all big board admins agree, its suicide to charge for stuff that was free. always add something new.

I don't care which way LFG goes with this, but just remember that you and the few others here have been whiny bitches this entire process. Can't afford to donate, then see ads. Can donate, no ads. Why in the fuck would ANYONE donate to keep the ads there? And what extra hidden forums could you recommend?

why would anyone pay for something they used to get for free? thats not a good way to build a community.

I just personally don't like crying bitches who don't get their way trying to scream about it. That's why I pointed your post out, my response had nothing to do with LFG.

thats ok, i just personally dont like faggoty little fanbois who weigh in on conversations they have no idea about.

go back to jerking off over your zonewide and telling newbs how awesome you are.

[LFG]

BTW, I've been an active participant in leading Internet flame boards since Usenet in 1992. And I've always donated to the boards I use, every one. So I still don't understand what the big deal is about. Granted we don't have the user base of somethingawful, but our system is much more fair IMO, since we don't require people to pay 10 dollars just to register, but only to view the site ad free.

[LFG]

Originally Posted by Ironhide

why would anyone pay for something they used to get for free? thats not a good way to build a community.

I intended to put ads up when I first started the site, but just now got around to it. So this isn't really getting people to pay for something they formerly received for free - this is more like a delayed implementation of what I'd planned all along =p

I'm having trouble believing that you run ads, don't give users the ability to opt out of them, but are criticizing me for doing that. Based on the show of support I got from people yesterday in the form of donations, I'm convinced a much greater number of people agree with me instead of you.

The small minority of miltant complainers about the fact that we are running ads now are either cheap or refuse to pay 10 dollars on principle. I'm sorry, but my greater loyalty is to the contributors.

And I cannot believe you suggested that we should turn off ads just based on people hitting a 1000 post count. I'm sorry, but we already have one Calybium spam thread, and do not need several hundred others.