I'd like your feedback on a couple topics: Search, Subforums, Banner Ads

this OP has a good stageing idea!
check my red color thoughts
OP =-gazz
1. Banners. I don't mind a few banners. I would suggest a scale system.
a. Platinum/dealer/knifemaker/Mods (or something similar, not sure how much dealer/knifemaker dues are offhand) members see no banners.
b. Gold see a few banners.
c. Basic see a few more the Gold.
d. Non-paying see em all and pop up pics of Roseanne Barr.
banners could be basic will see adds for fast downloads and all the other crap BUT gold and up see only adds for knife related subjects
such as Buck , Bussy, and other brand name cutleryand again at the top por bottem side adds eat reading space!
You do what you need to do to pay the bills.

2. Search. Under Search -> Add a link to the free google search maybe so you hear less complaints from the non-paying members. Otherwise, let paying folks use a better/upgraded search function with filters, etc.
this is a vote for above
3. Subforums. I admit I'd like to see a "Good deals" subforum like cpf has.
no i dont think so .. dealers pay to advertise here

Other forums...I think we have most covered but we can always lock or delete them if needed.
knife photography and a my hunt pictures thread

4. I wish folks wouldn't edit out the prices of knives when they sell them on the forum. It would be nice to have a reference of prices on knives that have sold in the past.end post
once done =
sales, trades and deals are between primary parties
prices can change with the market during A DAY
and once sold the thread should be locked
 
woodgood said:
If this means that you can not sort by date then I'd say that that is an important feature that will be missed. I thought that was a common field to sort by. I've not yet heard of Sphinx but I'm sure there are other solutions that could provide sort by last post time/date. I believe that Google appliances, etc. might be something you might want to look into.
Click to expand...

Not quite.

What it means is that when you get the results back, they are sorted by date+time, but they are sorted by date+time of the matching post, rather than the last post in the thread that the matching post belongs to. Example:

Thread 1:
Post 1a, Jan 1st. Post 1b: Mar 28th

Thread 2:
Post 2a, Jan 3rd. Post 2b, Jan 5th.

Suppose you do a search that matches post 1a, and post 2a. Under the standard vbulletin search, the results will list 1a above 2b, because the last post in thread 1 is newer than the last post in thread 2. Using sphinx, at least the standard vbulletin.org-based mod, post 2a is first in the results, because that post is newer than post 1a.

They are still fully sorted by date -- the date of the matching post, rather than the last-post date of the associated thread.

--------

The way sphinx works as typically implemented is that you do a complete index every day or two, maybe even every week, depending on site requirements. Sphinx indexes the entire post database, and you could, by tweaking the queries, get it to record the last post date of the thread for each post -- though it would slow down indexing a bit. On a ~4M post forum, indexing takes on the order of 5-10 minutes. My guess is it might nearly double if you want to include last-post-date for each post's thread as part of the indexed data for each post.

That alone is not much of a problem. 20 minutes, even an hour, is not a deal-killer if you have multiple databases. It might mean indexing every few days instead of every day, but that's easy.

The second part of sphinx is that, in addition to the full reindex that happens occasionally, there are very fast partial reindexes for posts that are new since the last full reindex happened. These typically take seconds, because they only look at posts with postid higher than the last one that was indexed in the main index.

Part of what that means is that if you edit an existing post that was indexed in the last full sphinx index, changes will not show up in the search index until the full index regenerates. Again, not that big of a deal for most purposes, particularly if the daily index is early in the morning, because members don't often go back and edit posts from the previous day or earlier.

But, if on top of that, you want to associate all posts in the sphinx index with the last-post datetimestamp of the thread, those data can rapidly change during the day. Active threads may have posts spanning the last week, and most of those will already be in the daily full sphinx index. When people post to those active threads during the day, they are changing the thread-last-post-timestamp of those threads, but that info will not get reindexed for most of the posts in those threads until the next full reindex the next morning.

One way around that would be to make the partial reindex cut-off start at a week or two before the present, so that only very long ongoing threads lasting longer than that would have inconsistent ordering in search results. But there will be a cut-off somewhere, and there's always the possibility that search results will be out-of-order unless you forcibly lock threads older than the cut-off.

Personally, I like search results being ordered by the datetimestamp of the matching post, rather than the datetimestamp of the last post in the thread which may not have anything to do with what I'm interested in.

An example of the situation above would be as follows:

Suppose a forum does a full sphinx reindex every morning at 5am, and incremental (partial) reindexes every few minutes.

Suppose then we have these threads:

Thread 1: post 1a March 21, post 1b March 24, post 1c march 27.
Thread 2: post 2a March 22, post 2b March 25
Thread 3: post 3a March 23, post 3b March 26

That's how things look in the daily index at 5am March 28th. If a search matches 1a and 2a, the search results (sorted by thread-last-post-timestamp) will be sorted 1a first, 2a second, since even though 1a is older, _thread_ 1 is "newer".

Now suppose there's a flurry of activity in all three threads on the 28th. Unless you have sphinx's incremental reindexes go back at least a week, the sphinx index will not be updated during the day on the 28th to reflect new posts in those threads. Searches that match any of those posts will be potentially out-of-order with respect to the thread-last-post-timestamps of each of those threads, because sphinx would ordinarily have no reason to reindex those posts until 5am on the 29th.

---------

caveat: sphinx can be made to do just about anything you'd want to do. What I've outlined in the first section above is the behavior of the standard sphinx mod for vb 3.x (originally by orban and published at vbulletin.org).

You could probably implement what I outlined in the second section without too much work; the only question would be what kind of performance decrease you'd experience by reindexing the last week or two of posts every few minutes. That depends a lot on how active the forum is.
 
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As a gold member I would not object to banners, if I have the option to turn off if in a hurry or not in the mood. I'm still in the knife learning busuness. LOL.
 
PorcupineMtns66 said:
About everything sounds good to me except ads. As a paying member, I do not want to see any advertising.

If I do not pay for a membership, I would expect ads and am surprised it hasn't been done already.

I think it's reasonable that non-paying members see ads to help support the site.
Click to expand...

I agree with Porcupine, there's no free lunch,we need to pay our way, one way or another.
 
If you do banner ads please limit to one across the top of the page and another on the bottom of the page a la a header and footer.

I HATE websites with so many adds that I get overwhelmed.

I hope that the banner ads bring enough revenue to make searching free.

-Stan
 
Ads are fine with me as long as they don't pop up in my face with some hidden X.

Search function...I have a suggestion, although I'm not sure how feasible it would be to implement. How about limiting the amount of searches non-paying members can do per day or per hour. If this could be coded in somehow, you can set a limit to searches per hour (or per few hours or even per day). This still gives some incentive to become a paid member just on that basis.
 
Sounds good to this newbie to the forum. However, as a computer technician, could I give a suggestion about the ads: Make sure they are all virus free! 95% of my customers get virii from facebook ads. I would cancel my membership(which I plan on upgrading) if I ever found a virus sponsored banner or ad on here.
 
Spark,

You have by far the BEST Knife Forum there is, I have been on other forums and they do not even hold a candle to your site. You and your site will always get :thumbup::thumbup: from me.

I personally do not care for banner ads, but if it helps you make money and keeps the site open, I am all for it. If your going to rig it where only non- paying members would see the banner ads, that would be a plus. I would hate to see the site cluttered with the ads, especially for us paying members. I dont think I have ever bought anything using them.

I personally dont think you should open up search for all members. There are features that should be exclusive for paying members. Paying members pay not only to help maintain the site, but for special privilages. The search function, selling items, etc. should and remain for paying members. Should you open up search and other things to non-paying members, you will surly see a drop in paying membership.

I gladly pay for my membership, I feel to help maintain the site. I am on here multiple times daily. A basic membership is only $10.00. For 1 year, thats great. If someone wants search and other privilages, $10 is a small price to pay. You spend more than that on a single magazine or through the drive thru at McDonalds. I know times are tough for everyone now, but $10 is not alot to pay for what bladeforums.com offers. Especially when many on this site have $400 folders in their pockets right now. I see people on here daily that are non-paying members that whine that they want search, they want to sell.............if you want these things, pay for them like everyone else and help support the site. Thats not alot to ask and is more than fair !!!

I would hope that you keep this forum knife related. We dont need a cooking, car, weather, etc. forums. If you wanna have one dedicated to kitchen knives, thats cool. But for all the other non related knife forums like I mentioned, there are other places for that. This is Bladeforums.com........not everythingunderthesunforums.com !!!

In the end, I want you to do what will ultimately keep the site open and so you can make money on it as well. But there are things that should be only for paying members only.

Thanks Spark for letting us share our thoughts. Lets look forward to another 12 years !!!
 
I think if you pay you shouldn't see banners, you are already supporting the site and that should be good enough IMO.
 
I am one of those registered non-paying folks. As you can see, I'm coming up on a thousand posts, and literally years of great companionship here.

I think when I hit 1000, I'll sell off a little something of my collection and put it toward the site.

You guys are the greatest!

That all being said, in my current free-loading state, I don't mind banner ads. In fact, I click on them because I know that it means $$ to the forum.

Keep up the great work, and we trust your judgment for the rest.
 
Banner Ads for non-paying members.:thumbup::thumbup:

Search for paying members only. Google does a good job when it is site defined.

This is BladeForums, not everything under the sun forum. Threads on using knives in camp or kitchen can be started now in a couple of forums and will get views. That is enough IMHO.

Thanks for asking,
You did not have too, I would have stayed around anyway.
Jim
 
Esav Benyamin said:
Banner ads visible only to non-paying members are a legitimate compromise. I've seen other sites that do this: subscribe and the ads disappear. Put them on the top and/or the bottom of the page. Ads along the sides really eat into reading space.

It would be nice to have an effective search function but I usually find what I'm looking for when I turn to an outside search like Google.

New forums: we don't need a Barbie forum but food and photography bracket a lot of what we do discuss here. Many of us use knives for food more than anything else, and recipes pop up often enough that we could toss them into it, too. Photography is integral to many forums. A lot of us would benefit from one place for the experts to share techniques, equipment, and advice on how to do it.
Click to expand...

Exactly.

Just saved me a bit of typing Esav, Thank you
 
Hi Spark -

I would be more inclined to pay to support the forum if it meant would not have to see banner ads as opposed to not being able to have a sig or avatar or pm's or especially search.

The latter all seem abnormally punitive and do not harbor a "family" feeling to the forum. Just my humble opinion, thank you for asking!

best regards -

mqqn
 
Food is a great idea for a Sub forum Many Chefs and Cooks out there that are Knife people as well
 
nothing is free so i support any reasonable efforts to keep the forum solvent. this forum supplies myself with much entertainment.
 
Hankins said:
Food is a great idea for a Sub forum Many Chefs and Cooks out there that are Knife people as well
Click to expand...


Absolutely. I hadn't thought about it until I sold one of my knives to a chef in N.Y.

I don't see a problem with adding subforums that aren't 100% knife related. Heck we have a political s/f already. Sometimes people like to look into something a little different just for a change of pace
 
Search: I have no preference either way. If you have the bandwidth I say just make the call that makes most sense to you. IF, you need to change it later; for whatever reason.... you can. :thumbup:

Sub forums: I see no reason not to add some if there is interest and the capacity to do so is there. People can choose to look at them or not, so it should really take nothing away from this first and foremost being a knife related site.
It also might bring in more paying members and create knife interest in some people that would otherwise never be exposed to knife loving people ..... this could possibly help the bottom line in the long run.
IF for some reason the "more sub forum" format/idea does not work... you can always elect to shut it down. :thumbup:

Banner Ads: I hate them with a passion. But I see no problem whatsoever with non paying members seeing them.
There is no "free lunch".... we pay to play. :thumbup::thumbup:

Spark, thank you for throwing this out to us for discussion. You do a great job here! :thumbup:
------------------------------------------
gazz98 said:
4. I wish folks wouldn't edit out the prices of knives when they sell them on the forum. It would be nice to have a reference of prices on knives that have sold in the past.
Click to expand...
+1 ... My only other suggestion would be summed up in the quote directly above. Make it mandatory that the sale price of any item be left in the thread after the item sells.
--------------------------------------------

And on a side note a question for Esav :

What in the world do you have against "Barbie"????

:D:D:D:D
------------------

Thanks again Spark for this great site.

And thanks to you and all the Mods for the great job you all do!!!!

Hats off to you all............ :thumbup:
 
Spark - I'm going to suggest something a little more hard line here. How about if you hit a certain usage formula based on your post, you get asked to at least sign up for a basic account. For instance 100\month, 500\year, something like that. If you hit 1k post, you get hit, no matter how many years. So even if you've been signed up for several years, but only have 100 post, no you won't get hit with the e-mail. That way only the people that are active at a certain level are expected to pay. Or if anyone things that would deter people from posting, which I don't think it would since were talking $10, but if so - it could be done based on just visits, your stopping by BF 20+ days a month, yeah - you should probably help out. Although doing it based on visits would be more involved...
 
Search
I do not mind opening up the function to non-paying members as long as the overall performance does not degrade too much.

Banner Ads
I do not mind them as a paying and non-paying member as long as they are not the pop-up kind, the type that follows me on the screen when I scroll down etc. If clicking on my favorite knife shopping site helps keep this place running I'm OK with it but they better be reliable sites. I'd hate to see new members click on a link to a fly-by-night store only to lose cash.

Additional sub forums
I do not really go to all the present sub-forums so I'm not sure if this is relevant to me. I will probably be most excited about a photo related one. Maybe we should start a poll to see what is in demand.
 
I personally think that making non-paying members see adds is a great idea as a paid member I don't want to see ads, I am offended enough by the people who have 4-5 inch high banner ads with animation etc. in their signature.


-Page
 
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