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C'mon People, is this necessary?

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Subject:C'mon People, is this necessary?
Summary:How much advertising do we REALLY need?
Messages:3
Author:Mark Waterous
Date:2008-08-11 01:01:02
Update:2008-10-22 13:17:01
 

  1. C'mon People, is this necessary?   Reply   Report abuse  
Picture of Mark Waterous Mark Waterous - 2008-08-11 01:08:16
I may get banned, or have this censored, but I gotta say something, because it's been driving me nuts.

Advertising is a great way to bring in a few cents revenue every month, but if you really want to pay your mortgage with it, perhaps you could beef up the content on the site, instead of beefing up the advertising.

Having multiple ads on the page I'm viewing, and then getting slammed with two pop up windows, AND an interim ad (click here to skip this crap) by the time I've gotten to the second page of this site is ridiculous. You should consider how many people come here and never come back for that reason in comparison to how much money you're making by spewing that garbage at us.

Oh, and just because I'm in a bad mood from this, I'll add quickly that I agree with the poster below me. The sites user interface is HORRIBLE.

Just a couple thoughts, I'm out.
-m

  2. Re: C'mon People, is this necessary?   Reply   Report abuse  
Picture of Manuel Lemos Manuel Lemos - 2008-08-11 02:06:22 - In reply to message 1 from Mark Waterous
Mark, I suppose you arrived to the site lately. That may justify why you are not aware of certain facts that explain why the site is the way it is. Let me give you an overview.

The site was started in 1999. Then it was more of an hobby project maintained in my free time. Later in 2001 it started growing so fast, that it was no longer viable to keep it open without dedicating to it full time.

Therefore, it had to be turned into a source of income that allowed me to work on it full time, providing support to the users and developing new features that the users were asking to make it a better site.

Nobody likes advertising, but it turned out to be the most viable way to generate income to the site.

An alternative way to keep the site viable without annoying the users with advertising is to provide a package of services exclusively to subscribers that pay a premium fee.

Despite this was plan A devised in 2002, it only became a reality in 2007, as you may read the announcement in the site blog:

phpclasses.org/blog/post/68-Launche ...

Among several other benefits users may access the site without advertising. More information about the premium service advantages and how to subscribe is available here:

phpclasses.org/premium/

The premium subscriptions are available for a small monthly fee of $5 a month or $4 is paid annually. This is peanuts to most PHP developers that can make that in just half an hour or less of paid PHP consulting they provide.

Buying premium subscriptions will help the site to invest further on more improved features. Therefore you and everybody else is encouraged to become a premium subscriber.

You also complained about of the site user interface being horrible. That is subject of tastes and personal opinions. Still, thanks to the additional revenue generated by premium subscriptions, it was launched a new site redesign contest that will provide a money prize to the winner, as it was announced also in the site blog:

phpclasses.org/blog/post/80-9th-ann ...

This is still being worked on but in a few weeks there will be something in place to start the contest and allow people with good Web design capabilities to propose their designs.

Meanwhile, you may want to check this other forum, precisely about the site design, on which there is this thread about what people would like to see changed. Feel free to post you opinions on this subject here:

phpclasses.org/discuss/topic/site/f ...

  3. Re: C'mon People, is this necessary?   Reply   Report abuse  
Picture of remo williams remo williams - 2008-10-22 13:17:01 - In reply to message 2 from Manuel Lemos
hi manuel,

i must say, i'm agreably surprised to see how much time you spent on answering a post dealing with so called "crap", while the post itself is obviously a crap itself (by definition).

this very site has been not only of a great help, but also a great source of inspiration for me and i'm certainly not alone thinking like this. so don't be too angry about someone who obviously has no idea at all, what it takes to run a community. i'm certain that this dude has lots of ads in his own sites, and he's just angry that noone cares about clicking and he doesn't have any revenues.

don't let anyone mess you up and keep on going just like this. you're doing a great job!

ads? so what? i always found what i was looking for!