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How much is this going to cost us? Or, how many annoying popups are we going to have to deal with? Or, how much spam will I get every time I mention the word "FPGA" or "battery" in a post?:shock:
I'll chime in here as I oversee the online development for WTWH / Design World. I'll state the obvious that we are running a business, however as an example we have been running MCADCentral.com for over 6 years now, and have strived to keep obtrusive pop-overs and the like out of forum sites and work towards better software and hardware to run the sites. We have a wide network of sites for design engineers, rapid prototyping, 3D CAD and renewable energy - you can get a snapshot at wtwhmedia.com. Our goal is to truly bring valuable resources to our users and readers and matching their interests to technologies in the marketplace.
I am very open to any feedback and encourage you to contact me anytime with any suggestions / ideas / resources to make the site better. We value your contributions to EDABoard and participation.
Last time I didn't have a lot of time for edaboard.com. I started to have a lot of problems with servers and e-mails. I didn't have time to make programming job - for example now user Kripton2035 has a problem with RSS feed and this need to be fixed. Didn't have time to find good and high quality content. Also my english is not so good as you know, my native language is polish. I couldn't find people to cooperate and I couldn't find people to help. I run second site called 'elektroda' which is 10x bigger and this site is taking a lot of time. I really need help from company that know design market, need help for getting money for servers and PHP programming job - which is very very expensive last time and to get high quality content. I'm still with us, I'm not going anywhere, but looks like I can not make this board alone but I tried over last years.
One hour ago I switched board to new servers that I got from WTWHmedia company, 64GB RAM, SANS systems, I think they are very expensive.
About Ads... In my opinion no Ads should be displayed for logged users. Many users (70-80% even) browsing forum as not logged and they are only taking knowledge - not giving - so for them... even more ads should be displayed and asking for register. This is very easy to remove ads for logged users, so no technical problems. Yes servers will be located in the US. However in my opinion US have sometimes better law than here (Poland)... When I didn't have money for servers in 2003-2005, because in Poland were very very expensive, I moved edaboard.com some resources (attachments and images) to US, and nothing happened.
Currently only 3.6% of the users on the forum are registered. I am happy that the 96.4% get the advertisements and the people actively participating don't get them.
I am relatively new here, but appreciate the difficulties and costs of running a first class site. This site is just that -- very professional. It is a bit above my head most of the time, but I can still learn from it. You will continue to have what support I am able to give.
The beauty of this board is that it has been, so far, an open forum. Who, or what, was behind it has been transparent, (well maybe except for the time I got a "warning" from somebody for flaming at some poster who used a quote from Hitler.) Not to get too carried away, but there is something of a sense of 'community' here. There are some very knowledgeable people here, as well as those who post totally erroneous answers. There are the desperate university students who want someone to do their homework for them. There are the lazy engineers who can't be bothered doing an internet search themselves. But mostly there has been a very nice exchange of information. I have learned a lot just looking at other's posts, and I hope I've helped some people myself.
So, Marshall, don't mess it up!
I realize that this forum is now a business and you need to make a profit. Nobody here can complain about this, because we ALL want to make a profit. But, please, please, please don't sell our email addresses. Please don't spam my mailbox.
Here's a thought: charge a token 'membership' fee, like maybe $5 a year (nothing more). This is easily justified by any of the serious posters here, and it will keep those annoying PleaseSendMeaSchematicAndC-Code leeches away.
So, I'm keeping an open mind and waiting to see how this board evolves.
I cannot speak for Gulson but my understanding is not to make it a business but to help fund the cost of hosting it and providing the software support needed to keep it spam free. A lot of effort goes into tryin to keep the cr@p off EDAboard.
I hope it stays pretty much as it is, and believe it will, from what I currently know.
classic - my biz partners told me the same thing! We're going to do our utmost to balance - we know without world class users, there would not be a world class site, and we'll continue to invest in software, hardware, programmers, etc do to that. To your comment about email & not to get ahead of myself - but we've been running a number of editorial enews by specific topics & top notch editors (sensors, design engineering, motion, mechatronics, etc) on the DesignWorldOnline sites for the past 7 years and are very respectful of opting in /out and stringent email requirements / we make it very easy to opt out of all if so desired. As for membership fees, we have no plan to do that at this point.
I do hope this doesn't result in bulk spam email starting. It seems the world is full of companies who, once they have your email by whatever means, think it is ok to email you with the getout that they give you the option to 'opt out' even though you never opted in to begin with....
I don't think they ever opt you out. They just spam you from another direction, or sell your address as you basically confirmed your functional email address.
They just offer opt out to confirm with the law but there is no guarantees that they actually do that.
Let's see what happens. Edaboard's growth and popularity is largely due to Gulson's open policies (thank you Gulson for all your hard work - it is appreciated) and to make any dramatic changes will inevitably destroy the very thing that made it so successful. Commercial sense says don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
I ran a similar board for several years and I know what hard work it can be. I closed mine down about a year ago because it became impossible to manage and it was only about 10% of Edaboard's size. I'm happy to see how things develop under WTWH but at the first signs of invasive mailing or inappropriate censoring, I'll be looking elsewhere.
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