I may be the only one who believes this, but just hear this out.
I love MyBB. It is simply a great script. However, there is one thing that makes me think. Why is there no ads on mybb.com
I know there are two sides to this, ads make people leave and I understand that. I may not know history and if there were ever ads on the site, but I believe there should be still.
The more money the MyBB community is able to obtain, the better and in my opinion can help with development for the site.
I know ads usually mean the site is turning into a "business", but I would be willing to deal with ads if it would help the developers and improve the communities funds.
Does anyone agree or disagree, and I completely understand if I disagree. Don't think that if you disagree you are not supporting MyBB; it is simply a matter of preference.
This might backfire, but this is just my opinion.
Obviously I don't mean putting ads everywhere on the site. Maybe just one ad or two put at the bottom or somewhere that would not be bothersome. Opinions?
It's been brought up before. In the end ads would probably do little to help development. They would only lesson the burden on Chris with server costs. And, well he chooses not to have ads on the forum or site(other than some text link ads on the main site).
(2013-03-17, 01:24 AM)Alex Smith Wrote: [ -> ]It's been brought up before. In the end ads would probably do little to help development. They would only lesson the burden on Chris with server costs. And, well he chooses not to have ads on the forum or site(other than some text link ads on the main site).
My apologies. I did not realize this had be brought up before.
Your right, it may not help with development. Wouldn't a little bit of promotion be possible with the funds?
Chris said he'll never puts ads on the community forums. We were running Text Ad Links on the homepage for some time but they didn't bring in much and they were often spammy. Any money which funds the MyBB project is used solely for necessary expenses. We never pocket a dime.
Being the marvelous man he is, Chris pays for everything out of his own pocket. There are some occasions where we need a little help from the community, such as purchasing MyBB.com which cost a considerable amount of money, and that's where donations come in.
If you really want to support the project you can always donate a few dollars (at the time of writing we are unable to accept donations in the form of money) or you can simply help by developing themes, plugins, supporting users on the board, and generally using MyBB to its full potential. The community is by far one of the most important things and being part of the community is one of the best things you can do to help support MyBB.
MyBB should get it self recognized as a non-profit organization. Would probably help with the paypal stuff. Plus I can donate and put it as a tax write off
.
I don't see the issue with it to be honest. If it helps Chris then why not? It could probably generate quite a lot on the forums, and if it did, perhaps Chris would be willing to give the extras he gets from ads to the developers. It might speed up the development process.
All of that is hypothetical and dependant on the ads making quite a bit, but I doubt anyone would complain, even if it is just to lessen the server costs that Chris pays with his own money.
Overall it depends on the impact it has on potential new users. Say someone visits the site now, it looks a bit outdated but the actual forum software is good. Someone else visits and there are ads (depending on how animated they are) could potentially leave at first sight and move on to one of our competitors.
In my personnel opinion I wouldn't mind but I am already registered and using MyBB, I'm not so likly to leave. I would also help the project in any way I can, one of the reasons I give up my time to provide support. As a everyday visitor to the community and not the main site it wouldn't have much impact on people like me. Adding ads to the forum could potentially violate the we run what you run policy, unless you use a plugin made by someone in the team like with MySupport.
As an overall answer for this we shouldn't consider the money gained but the potential user losses.
I would go for no ads, text ads wouldn't be bad depending on the content and the positioning.
With Chris already deciding is it worth debating?
MyBB is running fine and has been for years thanks to Chris, sponsors & donators so if it is working now then great, why change it?
If MyBB was ever to struggle with money I'm sure they would implement ads or do an alternative to generate money.
Then again about you saying people would leave, SMF has adverts and it seems to work great for them, they seem to be growing and growing. Other revenue methods for them are their premium user group which has some nice perks, I'd be up for upgrading my account if MyBB offered something similar.
Notice I used the words potential user loss, not user loss.
http://community.mybb.com/thread-17217-p...#pid114961
Quote:I want to stress that we're not going to be plastering ads all over the site and that we'll never be placing any ads on the community forums - it's only that one page of the MyBB site which will carry the ads.