What can we do to keep the boards up?

[Leopold]

i'd pay $1+/month for search, pm, and custom title! That right there is worth more than $1 of my money!

 

[Sir Osis of Liver]

I have to admit that the custom title would be cool, pay a buck a month get to be whatever wacked out tile they want, throw in search, pm, and who's on-line. I think that would be worth it and i don't think that it'd have the same conataions as every one that pays having the title elite or a prestige member.

 

[CRGreathouse]

I'm all for whatever it takes to get the boards working well, but I'm not sure that I like the idea of custom X for "elite" members. While I'd be willing to pay (let's face it - I love the boards) and have done so in the past, I wouldn't want to divide the community. If giving "perks" would encourage enough people to give the money we need to run this place, so be it... but if there's a better way I'd prefer it.

 

[LightPhoenix]

Advertising might be tough to get right now, what with the downturn of the internet market. Even so, I would have to concur that the miniatures companies, the gaming companies, and the video game companies and sites would more than likely be your best bets.

The problem is that I'm not sure how many advertisers would take you up on an offer based on solely the numbers this site generates. You'd have to be fairly persuasive - demonstrate that RPGs and specifically D&D is a growing market, that you have a good number of people signing up every month, that we tend to buy products they sell (ie, why put ads for sports games on a site like this?), and most importantly that they'd get click-through... convincing people is a bitch

(Seperate topic)

As for the Amazon/Talon thing - the point is that through Amazon, you'd be supporting the site. Buying through Talon or someone else doesn't support the site at all (sorry Talon!).

 

[hong]

I don't think the custom title is a great idea either. I'm not even sure whether displaying the post count is a good idea (not that there's anything wrong with spamming the boards, I hasten to add).

Making the search, PM, modify profile and attachment posting functions pay-only would work for me.

 

[Horacio]

If there are a custom title, I want mine to be "Inventor of Prestige Membership", as the originator of the idea

 

[Blacksad]

I asked on a french newsgroup if someone had a solution, here is an interesting one, I do not know a lot about html, so I'll let the message in french alongside my rough translation, in case someone could understand both french and html.

En résumé, je me suis arrêté sur la première page. J'ai téléchargé
environ 40ko d'HTML.

To summarize, I've stopped at the first page. I downloaded nearly 40ko d'HTML.

En regardant la source, j'ai vu ça :

Looking at the source, I saw this:

<tr align="center">
<td bgcolor="#333333" valign="top"><img src="images/off.gif" border="0"
alt=""></td>

<td bgcolor="#222222" align="left"><a href="forumdisplay.php?s=e0c4afa7
40b6bd8ce3b6b9b9ebdd0a62&forumid=12"><font face="verdana, arial,
helvetica" size="2" color="#ffffcc"><b>Natural 20 Press</b></font></a>

<br><font face="verdana,arial,helvetica" size="1" color="#ffffcc">

Répété des dizaines de fois.

Repeated several times.

Dans l'HTML moderne (et pas si moderne) il existe ce qu'on appelle des CSS ( http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/ ) qui fonctionnent assez fiablement dans une majorité de navigateurs... Ca permet de définir un style par défaut pour les polices, pour les tableaux, etc. D'ailleurs, il y a quelques styles définis au début de la page, pour des trucs de présentation classiques, comme les liens qui changent de couleur quand on passe la souris dessus, etc.

In modern HTML (and not so modern) something exists called CSS ( http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/ ) that works quite well in the majority of browser... It allows to define a default Style for the fonts, tabs, and so on... As a side note, there is some defined Style at the beginning for classic presentation tricks, like links that change colour when you put the mouse on them, and so on...

L'idée serait de définir quelque chose qui ressemble à :
(Je dis ressemble parce que je fais ça plus ou moins au pif et de mémoire, je suis pas certain que l'exemple fonctionnerait...)

The idea is to define something that looks like:
(I say it looks like because I do that free style, and from memory, I'm not sure that this exemple would work as written)

TR {
text-align: center;
}
TD {
color: #ffffcc;
text-align: center;
font: normal small arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
}
.fonce {
background-color: #222222;
}
.clair {
background-color: #333333;
}
.gauche {
text-align: left;
}
.big {
font: bold large arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
}

Ensuite, pour le tableau, on arriverait à quelque chose du style :

Then for the tabs, we'll get something like:

<tr><td class="clair"><img src="images/off.gif" border="0" alt=""></td>
<td class="fonce"><a href="forumdisplay.php?s=e0c4afa740b6bd8ce3b6b9b9eb
dd0a62&forumid=12" class="big">Natural 20 Press</a>
<br>blablabla...

Ca permettrait d'alléger la majorité des éléments, notamment en
supprimant toutes les balises <font> (qui sont dépréciées dans l'HTML moderne, mais je m'égare). Ce dernier point seul, après un test rapide rapide, permettrait déjà de réduire déjà d'un quart la taille du document.

It would allow to light up the majority of the elements, especially by erasing all the balises/tags? (that aren't appreciated in modern HTML, but it isn't the current subject). That alone, after a quick test, would allow to reduce the size of the document by a quarter.

Ensuite, un autre avantage des feuilles de style est qu'elles peuvent être placées dans un fichier séparé à part sur le site. Ca permet à la fois de modifier facilement le look du site en peu de temps (!), mais va aussi alléger la consommation en bande passante par le client : en effet, le fichier .css séparé est mis en cache après avoir été chargé la première fois par un navigateur, ce qui fait que les clients ne le re-téléchargent pas plusieurs fois...

Then, another advantage of Style sheets, is that they could be put in a separate file in the website. It allow both to easily change the look of the website easily and quickly, but it would also ease the need of bandwidth from the host: effectively?, the .css file separated is put into cache after being downloaded the first time by the browser, it means that the host doesn't down/up?load them several times...

Sinon, au passage, il y aurait sans doute moyen de raccourcir un peu la taille des liens qui semble assez kilométrique. Ca semble idiot, mais je suppose qu'avec le nombre qu'il y en a, ça pourrait faire une différence...

Also, while we're at it, there is probably a means to cut the length of the links that are in the kilometer category. It seems stupid, but I suppose that with the number of them, it might proove to make a difference.


Again, this is not from me, I just hope it mights help.

 

[hong]

The board already uses CSS. I agree that it could be more efficient in how it defines the styles, but then you'd probably run into problems with browser incompatibilities.

 

[Troll's Choice]

It might not hurt to have an "EN World Donation Drive", something like what the PBS television station does. They have no commercials, so they rely on donations...

 

[Lichtenhart]

Originally posted by Morrus

Search

Have I heard the magic word Search? I'd sell my car to afford Search?

Seriously that is definitely a neat idea. I'm sure people would continue to donate for it. It wouldn't be a gamble anymore.