CForum Support - subscription?

[Bob P]

I'm perfectly willing to donate to the cause - and certainly the Admins shouldn't be required to support the site in addition to all the work they put into it. Give us an idea of the total money required and I'm sure we will respond. Some other sites have an annual drive for that sort of thing.

Tommy should donate one of his old boats (now useful only as a planter) as a prize for a lottery.

[TonyB]

The ads here are pretty low key. As for Email thing people sometime PM and it comes up in my email with a notification that i have a PM, could it just send it as an Email, without posting an Email address?

TonyB -thank you for your thoughts - please clarify what you'd like to see changed in the PM and e-mail system - currently you can send PM's OR e-mails IF the user has OK'd that in their profile. THey will receive a notification if they receive an e-mail (well, they get the e-mail!) or a PM. If you (or anyone) isn't getting them it is because they are being routed to a "spam" folder - and unfortunately there's not much we can do about that.

Other interesting items that we get questions on sometimes - PM's stay in our "outbox" until the recipient reads them, then they go to "sent" items. Nice to know if your PM has been read or not!

There will NOT be any pop up ads - that is the reason we took over the forum over a decade ago - the forum there was "free" and supported solely by pop up ads from the forum host (Network54). Wow did that get annoying. We had already started the "CBoat museum" and decided to host the forum as well if Scott W. was willing (and he was as the site had grown far beyond organizing the first "Concordia" in 1999, which is what it had been created to do). For many years we coughed up $ to pay for the hosting or hosted it ourselves (Kenneth did the hosting). Then we added ads to help offset the increasing costs as we had more users and needed more bandwidth and storage. Last year we tried a cheaper host but found their service to be very unreliable. We're back with pair.com and happy....

We talk about getting rid of the Google ads, as it does take up space and they are not always relevant. You may notice that there aren't any political or other ads here - we've blocked them. We lose a lot of revenue that way, but we don't want to be annoyed by them and know you don't want to either. If we can meet basic costs (we're all unpaid) we may just go that way.

Keep the thoughts coming!

[Sir Adam]

Tony,

Am I understanding that you want the content of any PM's e-mailed to you along with the notification (and not just the notification)?

[foofooboy]

As someone very new to the site and whitewater canoeing, I can give an outsiders perspective. I don't think I would have joined the site if there was an initial charge. I spent most of the summer researching boats and hunting craigslist in the south east trying to find a boat that I could afford. I eventually bought something mid-summer and sort of lucked out I bought a boat that was my size. I stumbled onto the site a month after I bought it and did tons of research and helped my buddy try to find a boat. Here are my thoughts:

1. I have been a member of other board communities and premium members would get a t-shirt and a sticker for membership. T-shirts run about $6 for a double sided single color shirt and stickers should cost about a $1. If you are charging $25 a year you are making $19 per member. Both of these things advertise the site externally and help drive traffic to it.

2. Ask the community for help. If things need to be done, there could be members that have the skill set.

3. Ask sponsors for items to raffle.

4. Charge $5 to post items for sale, but allow premium members to sale fore free.

5. Have a good how-to section and give premium members access for free. Everything from how to re-web a seat, to putting on skid plates, to care of the wood in boats. Outfitting and sizing.

6. Provide a list of boats for people of certain sizes and the rivers they will handle. Example I am 5'11 260, so I should look for boats, x, y an z for running class II-IV rapids. I would have gladly paid $20-$25 to have saved me some time and confusion researching.

just my $0.02,
jamie

[OC One Blade]

As someone who has greatly benefited from the existence of this site, I would be willing to do my part. I'm with most everyone else in that I lean towards making a contribution and gettiing something tangible out of it (T-shirt, decal, etc.). I'm not really a fan of the whole status or rank thing or anything that would potentially cause division or deter any newcomers. This board is amazing in that you can pretty much throw out whatever question you want without fear of getting ridiculed and at the same time get responses from people who genuinely try to help. If we jeopardize that, I think we jeopardize the site.

I'm for helping with whatever improvements the majority would like to see within those parameters, be it mobile integration or whatever. Heck, I'll even throw out the first t-shirt slogan:

I'm a C-Boater!

If you have to ask, you're part of the problem.

CBoats.net Come see so you can C!

[Sir Adam]

You know, we might just have to make a shirt with that:)

Keep the ideas (and ideas for shirts!) coming!

[craig]

For me; paid membership.. I don't like it
contribute to fundraiser or buy some swag ; I like it

[OC One Blade]

You know, we might just have to make a shirt with that:)

Keep the ideas (and ideas for shirts!) coming!

That'd be great! I'll have my people call your people to iron out the details of the contract, royalties, and such.

Nah, I'm thinking one free shirt, and we'll call it even. Of course I'll still buy three more to help out. My wife and both sons are c-boaters!

[Myszoor]

4. Charge $5 to post items for sale, but allow premium members to sale fore free.

+1 :)

5. Have a good how-to section and give premium members access for free. Everything from how to re-web a seat, to putting on skid plates, to care of the wood in boats. Outfitting and sizing.

-1 :(

[TonyB]

Tony,

Am I understanding that you want the content of any PM's e-mailed to you along with the notification (and not just the notification)?

personally, yes

When using my phone, I have to login to get PM's and so now Im logged in. So, when I go home and click on link to "responses since last log in"
I lose what was posted before that log in.

coupled with having to login on the phone, it's a little inconvienient.

could it be an option, that can be toggled on/off?

[sbroam]

Tony,

Am I understanding that you want the content of any PM's e-mailed to you along with the notification (and not just the notification)?

Yes! I find little value in PMs - I have to log in to get to them and when the mailbox gets full, they get rejected and I have to decide which conversations to preserve. I prefer to have e-mail as my main channel of communication (almost no limit, searchable, etc...)

[TonyB]

4. Charge $5 to post items for sale, but allow premium members to sale fore free.

+1

I disagree, I think this is one of the gimicks to get people here, if you charged for posting, some people wount post.
you can always have a harasment post to ask for a donation when posting or item is sold.

MY club has an event where pople can sell used stuff, the year they tried to charge barely noone brought anything

[Sir Adam]

Yeah, we're boaters. We're cheap:) I know it as I am too!

Here are my latest musings...
1) Yes, we need to fix the conversion boats "add a boat" feature... BUT WHEN WE DO FOLKS NEED TO INPUT BOATS! There was a lot of folks who wanted it there, Kenneth put a lot of work in to building it from scratch, and only a few folks have taken the time to input boats and upload their specs and images.
2) Store needs an overhaul. We've got a 3 year old and a 6 week old (translation: we'll get around to it eventually... but not likely to happen this year)
3) PM's - I disagree and like the system as is - here is why - when you receive the PM notification and it includes the message, you never check your PMs. They still build up. AND, folks who sent you the message still see it in there "outbox" as not having been read by you yet. If you don't want PM's, and only e-mails, go to your profile, disable PM's, and only accept e-mails....

[sbroam]

...
3) PM's - I disagree and like the system as is - here is why - when you receive the PM notification and it includes the message, you never check your PMs. They still build up. AND, folks who sent you the message still see it in there "outbox" as not having been read by you yet. If you don't want PM's, and only e-mails, go to your profile, disable PM's, and only accept e-mails....

Ah - didn't see that I could disable them! There are two messages there that I completely missed and I'm sure the senders think I was ignoring them... e-mail only from now on!