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Thread: Members and Contributors

  1. #31
    Join Date
    Mar 2015
    Location
    Virginia
    Posts
    1,206
    Quote Originally Posted by Keith Outten View Post
    There is no danger of us shutting down SawMill Creek. We may have to eliminate visitor access though which would free up the majority of our resources. I am not a fan of this approach but since the majority of the people here (Members and Visitors) who use free access are using blocking software there is no gain for our advertisers and they pay for the free access. Let me explain how bad the situation is...advertiser banners have dropped from over one million views per month to just 40 thousand each month per advertiser. Access here continues to grow but banner views have dropped to the basement.

    Obviously we cannot sustain these kinds of numbers any longer. I promised to keep SawMill Creek online for everyone to enjoy as long as I have your support. Free access has been supported by advertising up till now but that is changing based on the majority here using blocking software preferring not to see any advertising which was not what people told me in 2005.

    There is another option. I receive offers from companies who offer to monetize our advertising who offer very attractive rates. The down side is that I doubt anyone would like this change, you can imagine what a professional advertising company would do here if they had control. I delete these offers immediately, just don't like the idea and I don't do this for the money as my income from The Creek is minimal. You donate 6 bucks per year via PayPal, they get their percentage, then state and federal taxes take a bite so there is very little left to pay the bills and save for hardware, software, bandwidth and pay our monthly maintenance costs.

    If you review the threads from 2005 when we discussed how we would pay the bills here an overwhelming majority wanted free access via advertising....and I was against the idea because I preferred that we remain self funded. The majority won the argument so here we are today facing another change that I have not caused.

    You see the red text below....that is something our Moderators and I are investing a huge amount of time to create. We hope that this will be a very popular attraction, you will enjoy the presentation and it will help us maintain a reasonable number of advertisers. I am working for you, believe me after 15 years I am still willing to go the distance to keep The Creek alive and well but I cannot do it alone.

    I did did not realize things were tight. There is an option to turn the ads on in account settings. I have turned mine on, and will be renewing shortly.

  2. #32
    Quote Originally Posted by Pat Barry View Post
    Is blocking software effective at blocking ads for you tube? I suspect the answer is no. Assuming I'm correct, why won't the you tube approach work for SMC?
    Yes they are.

  3. #33
    Thanks for the update Keith. I suspect that a significant percentage of the folks who favored 'free access with ads' in 2005 no longer frequent SMC.

    I think we will lose many darn helpful members if we require contributions. I think the flavor and quality of the site will change.

    But at the end of the day, there aint no such thing as a free lunch. You cant pay the bill without income.

    Perhaps a new survey would help you decide on a way forward.

    Best regards,
    Fred

  4. #34
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
    Location
    Hayes, Virginia
    Posts
    14,759
    Fred,

    There will still be free access for registered Members. We will most likely cease to offer access to unregistered visitors in the near term. We are not in a critical situation and I don't expect we will be if we just make a few adjustments. Currently unregistered visitors cannot view any pictures or other file attachments, they can only read posts but they do consume a substantial amount of our resources. Note that we consider those who post and ask questions and those who answer questions to be Contributors. We always have allowed Visitors to read posts here because they were viewing our advertisements but since that is no longer the case there is no benefit in supporting visitors anymore. The good news is that I expect everyone will notice a substantial increase in speed when visitor access is removed.

    I am planning on opening the new Hall Of Fame (HOF) to everyone on the Internet and we hope to be a able to stop those who are using blocking software from being able to view the HOF so our advertisers and our Inductees will benefit from the exposure. I don't know if we can setup blocking software for SawMill Creek at this point in time. Since we are about to switch over to Xenforo its probably not worth the time to consider any changes to vBulletin.
    Last edited by Keith Outten; 12-13-2017 at 2:32 PM.

  5. #35
    Join Date
    Jun 2013
    Location
    Neither here nor there
    Posts
    3,829
    Blog Entries
    6
    Quote Originally Posted by andrew whicker View Post
    I can pose for a woodworking themed nude contributors' only calendar shoot if it helps. We just need 11 more.
    I wish I hadn't been drinking something while reading that! I almost choked. I will pose, but only topless. I've got morals.

  6. #36
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Location
    Columbus, Ohio, USA
    Posts
    3,441
    Quote Originally Posted by Mike Kreinhop View Post
    There is another category that should be added to the thread title...Lurkers. As I type this, there are 1515 users online, but only 112 are registered members.
    Are you able to tell how many are bots? last time I moderated a forum, I was able to look at the connection locations and was generally able to distinguish bots from human users.

  7. #37
    Join Date
    Aug 2010
    Location
    USA
    Posts
    5,582
    When threads contain links to sites such as photo bucket or flicker for images I assume that SMC loses contact. If those other sites are generating money by image views I suspect it's a lost oportunity for SMC.

  8. #38
    Quote Originally Posted by Andrew Pitonyak View Post
    Are you able to tell how many are bots? last time I moderated a forum, I was able to look at the connection locations and was generally able to distinguish bots from human users.
    It's been a long time since I owned or managed a vBulletin website, but I think vBulletin does not differentiate between robots and guests. Anyone who is not a registered member is a guest, including robots and spiders; however, Mods and Admin can see the difference when looking at the users online. There is an AdminCP setting that can block robots from showing up in the online count, but I don't know if SMC uses this.

    The next version of SMC, using XenForo, will show members, guests, and robots if the standard display format is used.
    Last edited by Mike Kreinhop; 12-14-2017 at 4:34 PM.

  9. #39
    Quote Originally Posted by Mike Kreinhop View Post
    The next version of SMC, using XenForo
    Sure wish that wasn't going to happen (I find Xenforo annoying), but at least it's not that Invisionboard software. That takes awful to a whole new level.

    I just tossed a little into the kitty. I've learned enough here over the past few weeks that I wanted to join, and needed to at least say i helped a little.

  10. #40
    Join Date
    Mar 2003
    Location
    SE PA - Central Bucks County
    Posts
    65,638
    Mike, bots and spiders are blocked from certain areas of SMC but not the majority...the links and search results generated by the bots and spiders are beneficial for drawing new folks to the forum, at least in some respects. And yes, Xenforo does offer more information "up front'...I've noticed that at another site I help moderate that moved to Xenforo not quite two years ago.
    --

    The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...

  11. #41
    Join Date
    Mar 2003
    Location
    SE PA - Central Bucks County
    Posts
    65,638
    Quote Originally Posted by Roy Petersen View Post
    Sure wish that wasn't going to happen (I find Xenforo annoying),
    Xenforo was developed by and is well supported by a bunch of folks that originally worked for vBulletin and got fed up with how things were going. It's also blessed with native support for mobile devices which has become very important to sites like SMC as many folks browse with their devices rather than "old fashioned computers" these days.

    Thanks for your contribution!!
    --

    The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...

  12. #42
    I'm actually familiar with all that, but just don't care for the back end of Xenforo, or the sort of "puffy" feel of the forum itself. Way of the future, I suppose, and VB is quickly becoming untenable, so I completely understand the need to move. When I last fiddled with Xenforo, the moderation tools were fairly awful, but that was a while ago. It may have improved in the interim.
    Onward.

  13. #43
    Join Date
    Mar 2003
    Location
    SE PA - Central Bucks County
    Posts
    65,638
    The XenForo general moderation tools are actually pretty good in my experience to-date and SMC will be going onto the new version that was just released or is about to be released. The changeover was actually delayed to wait for that so an upgrade wasn't necessary immediately after conversion...and so that our guru would actually have some free time to do the final work. (he's a college professor...)
    --

    The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...

  14. #44
    Join Date
    Apr 2013
    Location
    Issaquah, Washington
    Posts
    1,320
    Mahalo (thank you) Roy.

  15. #45
    Thanks, Jim. They must have improved since I last was involved. I used to moderate on a forum that switched to it (years ago), and it was sorely lacking. Clearly they've done some work on that.

    No problem, Bill. If more did a little, the job would be smaller.

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