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. This forum is not for asking programming related questions.
Has Jason or whoever "owns" devnetwork.net...has he ever been asked to sell DN? Would he and more importantly, the community accept a buyout under the right circumstances?
Personally I would not care if the web site was monetized with an ad banner at the top of screen and/or Google ads gently sprinkled throughout. With ad blockers being as common as they are, if you really didn't want to see banner ads, you could just hide them.
I am curious though, if Jason or whoever would consider selling the site? What criteria would have to be met?
Nothing wrong with the way it is now, but I see little wrong in commercializing it as well. In fact, if funded properly hosting would likely be improved and downtimes would be less of an issue. Which would be nice, seeing as I go nutts when I cannot login and read new threads.
I can't speak for Jason & whether he's ever received a buyout offer. I can say though, that the mods & Jason are loath to include ads in the site if at all possible.
Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
Yea I've heard many talk about their hatred for ads...but again...could you not just block ads? Or have an option where mods did not see ads at all???
Personally, I don't mind ads, especially if their relevant -- how else do you find out about new products or services?
What I do hate is popups or really flashy banner ads that promote <span style='color:red;text-decoration:blink' title='Alert a moderator!'>grilled spam</span>, etc...but if it's for say Zend Studio or a web application I wouldn't care at all.
I would prefer seeing ads over having DN crap out every so often.
Hockey, why are you asking this? Do you want to buy devnet?
And why would you like to see ads here? I really don't see the point. Ads just take up valuable screen estate and distract from the content. They would have absolutely no value at all.
The sitepoint forums have this big ad that takes up the top half of the screen. With each new page you have to scroll past that before you see what you want. That's so annoying.
I've considered it...but I wouldn't know what to do with it after I paid for it...besides I'd likely go the cheap route...start my own forum and build a community organically.
I don't think ads are annoying or do they distract from the content...in fact...proper ad placement and selection of advertisers actually add to the content. Like I said, I don't like seeing <span style='color:red;text-decoration:blink' title='Alert a moderator!'>grilled spam</span> ads on a programming site...but a banner ad for a hosting company like Peer1 or RackSpace would be completely appropriate and even welcomed by me if they were offering a special discount or something.
I don't get it. If you're looking for cheap hosting there are enough other places to look (google?). These forums are about a community of people sharing and discussing PHP stuff. How does adding an advertisement help that goal? It only distracts. I mean, a nice daily recipe for dinner is also nice. Or a daily McGyver quote would be funny. But all those things don't add anything positive to the goal of these forums.
The only reason I could think of, is having some income to support the hosting costs. But that discussion has been here before and the consensus was that A) it is not needed and B) if it were, many people would prefer to just donate a small amount of money instead of having to look at stupid ads
If you're looking for cheap hosting there are enough other places to look (google?).
I am looking for cheap hosting but that has nothing to do with this thread. LOL
These forums are about a community of people sharing and discussing PHP stuff. How does adding an advertisement help that goal? It only distracts. I mean, a nice daily recipe for dinner is also nice. Or a daily McGyver quote would be funny. But all those things don't add anything positive to the goal of these forums
Advertising wouldn't distract from that goal...sitepoint, codeguru and codeproject are far lager communities and both are ad supported. So obviously for the majority -- ads are not a big issue. This community on the other hand...I'm not so sure.
The more popular members anyways...I'm still sure most wouldn't give a hoot.
Advertising in proper context (ie: Zend IDE or other related software or service like template designs, XHTML/CSS, etc) are something I wouldn't mind seeing.
But Hockey, you haven't answered my question. You keep telling that ads wouldn't distract or bother you very much. But saying that the negative consequences are not that bad, doesn't mean it has any positive consequence. And that's my point. Ads do have negative consequences, so the only reason considering them would be if there were enough positive consequences.