Elephantspike wrote:

" ... The idea is to make this an annual fee ... "

Surely this idea should give you reason to have serious qualms.  The host of folks which make up the Board soon to be required to cough up fifty annual bucks?
Is this wise . . . when all Boards around Sawatdee are free (always have been, as has Sawatdee)?  Why isn't voluntary donations good enough?  What IS the annual cost of running this phpBB Board anyway?

Sounds terribly iffy to me.  If one dosen't pay, will the Board go invisible to him?
(If I am wrong in my interpretation of your message above, please let me know where.  I'd glady be wrong).


Cheers ...

PS ... For the record, I have donated to Sawatdee many times in the past, so these thoughts are not motivated by sticky shitism.



Last edited by Smiles on Sun 8 Apr, 2007 4:56 pm; edited 5 times in total

I am not going to comment on this.  I wish Bob and the board all the greatest success in the world but...   I don't know....  I will put it off and think about all this tomorrow.....

Quote:

Sounds terribly iffy to me.  If one dosen't pay, will the Board go invisible to him?

How could one possibly infer this from what I wrote above? Upgrading yearly allows you to have a blog and an album, to add unlimited attachments, and to view the forum without the text ads. What is iffy about that? These are extras you can purchase if you like. If not, then don't.

Quote:

Why isn't voluntary donations good enough?

Beacause I'd prefer to be professional about my work, if you don't mind, thank you.

Quote:

What IS the annual cost of running this phpBB Board anyway?

Do you expect all services you use to be provided at cost?

i liked the other question better. Spike what is the rough annual cost of running the site?

It's cheap. Go start your own and see. Have fun.

Elephantspike wrote:

Quote:

Sounds terribly iffy to me.  If one dosen't pay, will the Board go invisible to him?

How could one possibly infer this from what I wrote above? Upgrading yearly allows you to have a blog and an album, to add unlimited attachments, and to view the forum without the text ads. What is iffy about that? These are extras you can purchase if you like. If not, then don't.

Quote:

Why isn't voluntary donations good enough?

Beacause I'd prefer to be professional about my work, if you don't mind, thank you.

Quote:

What IS the annual cost of running this phpBB Board anyway?

Do you expect all services you use to be provided at cost?

Trying to cut through the defensive stuff ...  

Look, YOU said this:  " ... The idea is to make this an annual fee ... "
Now if someone said that to you, what would you think?  You'd probably think something like:  " ... well, what does that mean? Does it mean everyone has tp pay, no exceptions.  Or, if not, what are there options if one chooses NOT to pay, or is this to become simply an Annual Fee Board? ... "

Perhaps if you made yourself more clear when you originally write these new ideas, folks would be equally as clear as to what you mean.

Cheers ...

OK, sorry, by making it an annual fee, I mean that I want to set the Golden Membership to expire after a year, but I haven't figured out the coding to automate this yet, so for now Golden Membership lasts at least one year. As soon as I figure out how to automate the expiration, it will last exactly one year. Once Golden Membership expires, you go back to seeing ads and having a much smaller upload quota for board attachments.

If you already have a blog or album at that point, (I Don't Think*) you don't need to re-upgrade to continue using them. If you want to continue to not see ads and have unlimited upload quotas on the board, then you must re-upgrade to Golden Membership after one year.

All registered members, whether they choose to upgrade or not, will be able to view and post on all forums and to link to off-site images.

Hope this clears things up.

**Edit--Upon reflection, I'm not sure if this is the default behavior of the permissions for the blogs and albums. I know you can still access them, but I'm not sure if you can post/upload after the membership expires. At any rate it is at this point negotiable what the permissions should be after the expiration of the Golden Membership, and just a matter of figuring out the coding to make happen whatever it is decided should happen.



Last edited by Elephantspike on Sat 7 Apr, 2007 9:40 pm; edited 1 time in total

Thanks for the clarification.

Cheers ...

Interesting debat.  So ES, when does my Golden Membership need renewal?  BTW, my friend Smiles, has some outstanding points.  None the less, I think I am in, maybe, up to you.

Joe, you were already in the group. For some reason, Smiles was not even though his rank insignia said that he was a Golden Member. I just added him to the group.  I know both of you guys have kicked-in more than your share over the last couple of years. Your Golden Memberships are good untill one year from whenever I figure-out how to automate the expiration of the membership.

Both of you should have full access to the enhanced board features. If anyone who has contributed in the past is not accessing those features, let me know and I'll roll you in for a year.

Every businessman, service supplier, Board Owner, Bar Owner and Go-Go Boy has the right to charge what he sees fit to make the profit they want.
Every Customer or Consumer has the right to pay or refuse to partake as they balance the value of the product with the price charged.
Eventually a balance is struck between the two groups and the "Price" is set based on the collective choices of many people.
This is called The Marketplace!

I wish everyone would stop acting as if this is some kind of Moral Decision of Right and Wrong.

Elephantspike will find out very quickly if he has a good buisness model or not.

well, the model is that its a free, ad-supported message-board. If you want to opt-in to the upgrade option, then you get to get rid of most of the ads and upload all kinds of files, so we kind of double as a data strorage site, like photobucket.

Well although I wouldn't have considered "upgrading" my membership previously, as I don't use the facilities that the upgrade gives you, I am happy to do my bit and contribute to the general running costs.

However prior to this announcement the ads were not obtrusive, at the top or bottom of the page. Since/simultaneously with the announcement, the ads seem now to be in the middle of threads, where they are intrusive! I feel that this is not a coincidence!!

Whatever, just please keep us online ES, and don't forget to play the electricity bill. There is no reason why any of us should expect you to run the board for love alone.

Spikes
I can understand your desire to maximise income from your considerable efforts to make a nice home for Sawatdee Forum Members.  I can put up with adverts, and I believe that there are a few downloads available to render them invisible  (suggestions welcome, particularly in respect of your extra google adverts after each new thread post).

I do wonder about the logic of asking people to pay to post.  Why pay to add content to the site through blogs, photo albums etc? Whilst there is a small chance that I may be be prepared to to pay to access content on a website, members of this forum will be relieved to learn that there is no way on earth that I will pay for the privilege of adding content to this or any other website!  
Michael

So do you think maybe the price is too high? Would maybe $20 or $25 sit better?

One thing that I have been meaning to do is to put us on a dedicated server, which I could afford to do if enough people get behind this. That would make page-loading times a lot faster and probably would allow us to configure it beter for people who are still accessing via proxy. Just something to consider.



Last edited by Elephantspike on Sun 8 Apr, 2007 10:27 pm; edited 1 time in total