FORUM Extremely SLOW

Ye' old general discussion board. Basically, for everything that isn't covered elsewhere. Come here to shoot the breeze, shoot your mouth off, or whatever suits your fancy.
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pickle
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Re: FORUM Extremely SLOW

Post by pickle »

We really don't want to have to resort to ads - useful though they may be, they're ugly, and in my opinion, make the site look cheap.

We do have a couple moderators with donation links in their signatures. If we do any advertising at all, I imagine it would be to promote donating.
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Re: FORUM Extremely SLOW

Post by josh »

I guess. but if the decision comes down to going back to the slow version of the site (because theres not enough donations), I'd rather look at an ad unit. Personally I'd rather look at ads than donate. Google ads are actually helpful sometimes.... They're text only, so I don't see how they're ugly but to each his own. No more ugly than a forum called 'Microsoft Open Q&A' with 0 posts and no justification ;-)
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pickle
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Re: FORUM Extremely SLOW

Post by pickle »

The ads only work if people click on them & follow through. So the question is - would you (you as in a general user, not you as in ~Josh) rather give money to the forum or give money to some company advertising through Google?
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Re: FORUM Extremely SLOW

Post by josh »

It makes google & devnet money, and both. I'd rather look at ads, clicking on ones that are legitimately interesting to me, making devnet money in the process (in addition to donating here & there, which I can't afford to do on a regular basis). I assume it would be the same with a lot of users, they can't afford to donate but 1 click could easily be 0.50 in revenue.

Since the ads are contextual, its stuff related to the thread (usually). Sometimes (gasp) there are commercial products that interest me. Even though I prefer open source solutions, if someone is posting a thread about Oracle for example, why not let Oracle sponsor that thread thru the medium of google ads? Relevant content + paying off the server bills = win

Another example, maybe I'm making a book recommendation to someone. Wouldn't it be cool if the top 4 merchants selling that book had their ad on that thread? It allows people to access content they may or may not find relevant. I would be against putting it "within" the content to the point it causes more scrolling, but why not monetize boring... empty space.. ?

Users who choose to donate would get ads disabled for one month for each $5 they donate, or something like that. So if you don't like the ads, you can donate... if you're not donating, you don't deserve to leech off the people who are. That's fair.
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pickle
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Re: FORUM Extremely SLOW

Post by pickle »

Boring, empty space is never wasted. Whitespace is very important to make a site usable. If we filled all the empty space up with content (ads or otherwise), the site wouldn't be nearly as effective, because the viewer's attention would be distracted in 100 different ways.

Please note that I'm discussing my viewpoint and not necessarily that of PHPDN or other moderators. I just want to make sure no one thinks I speak for the entire mod team.

Google ads are probably the best out there - simply because they're relatively unobtrusive & targeted. So you're right - they would be effective. Personally though, I would rather we find another way to raise money, than downplay our content by making it compete with ads.
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Eran
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Re: FORUM Extremely SLOW

Post by Eran »

I agree with pickle on this - Google ads almost never look good and cheapen he look of the site. If it's not distracting it's probably not generating revenue either. The only thing I don't agree on is the effectiveness - google ads are among the least effective ads (CPM wise). We would get much better return from having a relevant sponsor or using an ad network in our vertical. Those would also have much better customization options than google ads.
Only sites that don't want to put the effort in finding the right partner use google ads as a simple drop-in. They get much worse returns though - this is why you usually won't find google ads on the big sites and blogs, but rather sponsors and affiliate networks (unless they don't understand ad monetization).

I completely agree with pickle that properly placed donation buttons can be much more effective and relevant. I don't think conversion would be much lower than google ads (in fact, it might even be better) and you get much better CPP.
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Re: FORUM Extremely SLOW

Post by jason »

Hosting is being handled through a special arrangement. Appropriate parties have come to an agreement. No need for ads to cover the cost. If we do ads, it will be ads that are, in a way, content we'd normally have here anyways, but there are no plans for that. Net result is forums get a fancy new machine, and we don't need ads or donation drives.

If we do have donations, they'll be used for something else (no clue at the moment what that could be). But hosting will be covered.

There. I think I've reached my posting quota for the year. Back into the cave.
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Re: FORUM Extremely SLOW

Post by josh »

Sounds good. Just thought I'd point out I used to make $500 a month with a text ad network, its not necessarily stupid money wise to run google ads. But if there is no need for money or donations, that is even better.
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Re: FORUM Extremely SLOW

Post by jason »

Not intending to be dismissive (because I do appreciate the comments and suggestions, and do consider them), but unless I'm positive I'd be adding value to the forums by putting up advertising of any type, I don't want them. I could have cashed out DN a long time ago, or littered it with ads and built up it's SEO, or done a number of other things to try and turn a profit. I even dabbled a few times with the idea. But honestly, it's just nice knowing that these forums are here, with the same goal from day one, not compromising, and focused on the users.

:D

Would I love to find a way to allow people to make money from DN? Sure, and I'm open to suggestions. I've considered in the past putting up tutorials and video casts teaching PHP, and selling memberships under another subdomain (tutorials.devnetwork.net) and link that together. I'd really like to do that. Allow authors to post their tutorials up for a price. Allow the members to "Tip" the authors, sort of like Flattr does, and we'd give the authors a cut. Nettuts does something close, I believe.

Really, it comes down to the idea that I don't want to run ads on the site. I want AdBlocker to be useless on this site. =) If we are going to profit from the site, I want it from truly added value or services, and not just taking up bandwidth.
matthijs
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Re: FORUM Extremely SLOW

Post by matthijs »

Agree about not having ads here. Most of the times they are very annoying. On the sitepoint forum for example you have to scroll on each page view to get past the big banner. By the way, often the ads make the site slower as well ... ;)

If there would be a need to make any money, there are much better ways. Say a partnership with a good sponsor or hosting company with affiliate deals. Or a book shop for example. So many people buy loads of programming books. if you have all those in one place (and the best recommended by the forum members) you make much more then with distracting ads nobody wants to click. Whenever someone asks about a good book, you can point them to the book shop (shop.devnetwork.net)
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Re: FORUM Extremely SLOW

Post by josh »

matthijs wrote: Say a partnership with a good sponsor or hosting company with affiliate deals. Or a book shop for example. So many people buy loads of programming books. if you have all those in one place (and the best recommended by the forum members) you make much more then with distracting ads nobody wants to click. Whenever someone asks about a good book, you can point them to the book shop (shop.devnetwork.net)
All sounds the same as ads to me. There is no difference between an ad a sponsorship. Both are paid campaigns that involve some sort of "plug" on our page. (and I'd have no problem with an ad, whether it was one for a single hosting company or ones Google is serving, its really the same thing). Also not a lot of people on devnet are in charge of large server buyouts. A forum like webhostingtalk.com is much more likely to receive a more favorable sponsorship. Not trying to be negative, but how many of actually are in the market for anything more than half a dedicated server or two? And there's forums where people talk about buying up whole cabinets. So I would think Google could do a better job finding relevant ads, if the need to advertise ever actually came up.
matthijs
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Re: FORUM Extremely SLOW

Post by matthijs »

There is a big difference between some annoying stuff on the webpage which distracts from reading what I come here to read and a separate section on the website which you don't have to look at if you don't want
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VladSun
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Re: FORUM Extremely SLOW

Post by VladSun »

The new server and the forum setup are awesome!!! Thanks, guys :)
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Benjamin
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Re: FORUM Extremely SLOW

Post by Benjamin »

Yeah, it's nice and fast huh.
mikosiko
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Re: FORUM Extremely SLOW

Post by mikosiko »

great work guys.... the difference is notable
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