Server upgrade discussion...

flogen

jesus_thats_gre wrote:

Maybe offer them the tools or provide tutorials on how they could create their own skins for these forums also? Clans are very conscious of their image/branding so the skins would go down well..

yeah, was thinking that myself after I posted, allow them to have their own colours or backgrounds etc.

jesus_thats_gre

Possibly offer something in conjunction with hosting365 whereby clan already hosting a clan site/forum with boards.ie can be referred to gaming365 for a gaming server.. Mutually beneficial and possibly improve the Irish CS community again.

delly

Just signed up today, w00t, red stars all round.

WizZard

Gianluca Unkempt Bather wrote:

how about raffeling off the server name?

eg a user offers x amount of cash to name the new server(s). they would then become part of the boards history, like muppet and wang and pie

wont make a large amount of money but will make some and is harmless money generating fun!

I like this idea. Could be cool...

ARGINITE

How about giving subscribers a free t-shirt/calander:)

masteroftherealm

flogen wrote:

I'm not sure what the prices are for the likes of komplett ATM, but you could have a smaller annual fee for the above (as they're non-profit) to have their own special forums. .

I know that the fees for the interaction forums are quite high(Cant specify exactly how much but its in the high three and four figures) So it'd have to be dropped quite a bit.

flogen

masteroftherealm wrote:

I know that the fees for the interaction forums are quite high(Cant specify exactly how much but its in the high three and four figures) So it'd have to be dropped quite a bit.

yeah, I figured they wouldn't be the cheapest, but even a small fee (perhaps even the price of a year long subscription) would be perfect for small bands and even clans. Maybe a bit more. I mean, a decent sized clan could split the cost and so could a band meaning the price per person would be tiny.

ecksor

We already give private forums to clans for free. If they want to pay us for skins then I certainly won't stand in their way.

flogen

That's fair enough, but bands would certainly like a public forum and would likely have trouble getting one from user support etc.
What you said about skins could be interesting though, perhaps offering private clan forums customisable skins, a small bit of webspace for a basic site with stats etc. for a small fee.

ecksor

Well, that would seem like a commercial interaction forum to me. The skins comment was just in reference to the earlier suggestion.

flogen

ecksor wrote:

Well, that would seem like a commercial interaction forum to me. The skins comment was just in reference to the earlier suggestion.

Well I guess it would be, but not for companies, but artists (a nice loose term) or gamers. Given that both groups aren't expected to be raking in the cash you could justify a smaller fee, besides as you said yourself clans get forums for free anyway, so anything they pay would be for "additional services" whatever they may include.
Obviously if the band paying goes professional it would be harder to justify the smaller fee and the situation could be reviewed.

ecksor

The games clans just have private forums for their own use, not forums for interaction with the public, hence my distinction. It really depends on what they would want, we've tended to give groups like that public or private forums for general use anyway.

DeVore

Can you imagine a whole month of staring at me in a thong!

As regards the profit thing, I'm blue in the face saying this:
I certainly wouldnt mind making a profit from boards, none of the admins would mind. But it comes after changing the face of Irish Society, so it might have to wait a while

There are ways we can have both this haven of mucking about, supported by side things like subscriptions, t-shirts, ads etc. I keep saying that we arent actually asking you guys for money! Nothing in my post was about raising funds, just letting people know why the site is running a bit slower...

DeV.

ecksor

DeVore wrote:

I certainly wouldnt mind making a profit from boards, none of the admins would mind. But it comes after changing the face of Irish Society, so it might have to wait a while

Well, I don't have quite such grand social ambition, but that's roughly my point of view. I'm going to take this opportunity to expand on it though, because I find the financial commentary either holds the view that we're all moneygrabbing liars or that we're basically a crowd of soft touches that aren't squeezing enough money out of our users. The truth is a lot less clear cut.

The first theory, as demonstrated by magpie the other day, is quite a conspiracy. We ran a website for many years making no money and enduring lots of grief only to suddenly to unleash our sneaky money making plan by making people pay to view a sex forum (after cunningly refusing to create one for many years). Imagine, such a clever move on our part to manage to cover our hardware costs, and we would have gotten away with it if only for those pesky kids!

Admittedly, not too many are around for any length of time and are dense enough to come to that conclusion, but we do run into it from time to time.

The other end are the people who get worried that boards is about to disappear because we're running out of money and figure we need to start extracting money from the regular users by charging for forum access, or paying for reading old posts or paying for sign up or for searching or whatever. I don't have the same keen interest in online communities or the grand ambitions to provide all sorts of free Internet services for Ireland in one place that I once did but at the end of the day I didn't start mucking in around here to start charging people for those things and I'm pretty damn sure that the others didn't start this site for that purpose either.

Still though, ignore all the touchy feely sentiment if you like (either for the sake of argument or if you flat out don't believe us) and it still doesn't make sense to start charging people for those things. My own view is that it would be a poor business decision anyway. For years and years we've been growing awfully big as various little and not so little groups have hung around and gotten bigger and spawned other groups and the whole thing has snowballed over time. Now we get suggestions to basically give the finger to those groups while holding out our other hand looking for cash. I think that would cripple our growth.

This time last year we realised that if we realised that we needed to start capitalising on our growth somehow or boards simply wouldn't be able to sustain itself. That process has started but of course things take time. Building other money making ventures around boards that don't interfere with regular usage should achieve that aim without destroying the communities or turning off users.

regi

I don't see why profit ought to be seen as a dirty word.

Without profit, there's no war chest in the event of disaster. There's nothing to fund interesting new things we can do with the site. Without profit, we could be seen as sending a message that says we reckon we can always hit up ourselves and the users for a bit of cash should we need it. I don't think that's entirely responsible.

Someone said recently that boards is a lovechild of ours. It is. But its nearly time for it to grow up, move out and get a job.

As for changing the face of irish society, I couldn't possibly comment.

CuLT

I don't think any website has ever, or will ever changed the face of society.

I'm sure, of course, that pop culture will continue to be affected by various information age brands like Google, eBay and the like; but as for changing society? I don't think so. Though I have a feeling DeV was taking the mick

RopeDrink

This place was a humble collection of game forums when I started out - Heck, that's how I was dragged into it.

I had only just started at CS, and managed to stumble apon an Irish CS Server where a few people suggested Boards.ie as a nice place to go.

So I did - I visited the humble collection of game forums that it once was and embedded myself in the Counter-Strike forum, got to know the regulars and, from then on, watched as the entire site just ballooned.

It's become one of the (If not 'The') biggest (And best) community forums in this country, and for those that appreciate it to offer some cash towards the site isn't a mean feat - Neither is accepting the offered money. Everything has it's price these days, so you can't take a dig at people for being realistic.

Just be glad that, so far, it is up to you wether you would like to financially contribute to the site. There are plenty other places out there that aren't half as good, yet still require you to subscribe with some dosh before you can even get your boot inside the door, with little to no benefit for doing so, either, so let's not go down the road of discussing 'money grabbing' here - It's not the case at all.

Now, time for some tablets and a few pints of water. Me brain aches and me tummy is frothing with buckets of vodka and blackcurrent. Nyom.

Beruthiel

DeVore wrote:

Can you imagine a whole month of staring at me in a thong!

my eyes!!

ARGINITE

DeVore wrote:

Can you imagine a whole month of staring at me in a thong!

But if you put it in a calendar im sure somebody would look at it.

Tar.Aldarion

i think i could handle a month of those legs

stagolee

subbed for 3 months just now, would have liked to sub for longer but the money situations not so good right now, anyhow maybe in 3 months my situation will have changed and then ill sub for the year. well worth every cent

DoctorEdgeWild

ARGINITE wrote:

But if you put it in a calendar im sure somebody would look at it.

OoOoooh another money making idea for boards!;

Amazing value! wrote:

BOARDS.IE PROUDLY PRESENTS - The Moderators of boards calendar 2006.

See those who wield the power at their most vulnerable, Ecksor in his boudoir, Cloud naked in the woods and many more.*

Available online at boards.ie or at most good purveyors of erotic masterpieces.

Only E12.99.

Oh, I see what I've done - taken it too far huh?


*Please note: Nothing I say is ever true.

Gilgamesh

actually I was just thinking, after reading through this thread.
Would boards actually offer a possibility of hosting a Forum for cash?

maybe to make things a bit clearer, this idea came to me when the whole tea'coffee forum request came up and was closed down.

Now I am currently starting up a tea business in Ireland, and while being in a very early stage, I would have loved to have this Forum, not for profiteering, but to actually see the interest of people to this specific topic and for maybe turning people into this field of interest.
what I am trying to say, is, would you be willing to open such a forum on boards.ie if it was paid for on a monthly basis, by myself for example, and of course as long as it stays well in boudaries of the boardsie rules, also not been used to close off deals directly?

hope that makes some kind of sense

regi

We do that already. Check out the commercial interaction forums above.

We accept payment by cheque, paypal or suitcases full of Earl Grey.

Step into my office...

Gilgamesh

wow, thanks for the quick reply Regi,

are you sure you want 'just' earl grey, see, that's why you need a tea Forum.
under which part do I find it exactly, sorry for been a pain, but have been up since yesteryear at this stage

Gordon

Early Grey is the best, but I'm told I'm a heathen for drinking it with milk and without lemon.

Commercial Interaction is under shop, there exists at least three fora under this category here.

oh, and 10k post wh00t etc

Sleepy

Heathen! Darjeeling is clearly the champagne of teas!

(and congrats on joining the 10k club!)

RopeDrink

I ****ing love tea.

Been drinking it for decades now - Three tea bags per go, left to stew for at least five minutes, squeeze and then add a mere drop of milk. Leave the tea bags in, too. Preferably made in a bucket, also. You can do the riverdance on my tea, thats for sure.

I drink at least ten mugs of this tea a day (Which is just under ten pints considering the size of the mug I use).

I absolutely DETEST sugar / honey / lemon in tea.

steveland?

RopeDrink wrote:

I ****ing love tea.

Been drinking it for decades now - Three tea bags per go, left to stew for at least five minutes, squeeze and then add a mere drop of milk. Leave the tea bags in, too. Preferably made in a bucket, also. You can do the riverdance on my tea, thats for sure.

I drink at least ten mugs of this tea a day (Which is just under ten pints considering the size of the mug I use).

I absolutely DETEST sugar / honey / lemon in tea.

My tea must be stirred three times clockwise and twice anticlockwise when you put the sugar in... or no dice!

Giblet

Ropedrink will be a tannic colour soon.