OutOnSite.

[Fleeting]

Can someone remove or change that irritating advertising banner.

 

[johnb2713]

If you pay some $$$ and become a supporting member, you can switch it off.

 

[binky]

Can someone remove or change that irritating advertising banner.

Unfortunately these sites do have running costs that need to be met by advertising or subscription.

 

[OutOnSite]

Can someone remove or change that irritating advertising banner.

Hi Fleeting,

Tony here from OutOnSite, apologies if you found the banner irritating, that was not our intention at all and we originally requested that the banner only animate once rather than keep looping over and over again, which as you mentioned, can be quite annoying!

Thankfully the developers of the forum have now managed to change it for us so that it only animates the once as we requested and therefore, hopefully is less of a distraction.

As you probably have guessed, we have paid to become a sponsor of the forum to promote our software which is used by a wide variety of businesses including lots of electricians and other maintenance companies that likely visit these forums, the last thing we want to do is annoy any potential customers so I do apologise for that.

Any questions please let me know.

Kind regards
Tony Fletcher
Founder
outonsite.co.uk

 

[johnb2713]

Unfortunately these sites do have running costs that need to be met by advertising or subscription.

It is true that there are running costs BUT it's not as much as you may believe. I host around 50 sites on my server, 3 of them are active forums like this but centred around Yamaha Electones (organs) and the other general music but centered around organs and keyboards. The running costs are less than £50 per year. In terms of us 'users' benefitting, it's really the other way round, the forum can only exist if it has users that participate and give advice / share knowledge etc. It's the users that should rewarded if anything.
Just another viewpoint!

 

[Richard-the-Ninth]

I have to point out that not all forums/websites are hosted by the person/group that own them. I have a website, hosted by a 3rd party and the website/domain name is cheap. BUT they charge for data used, and if you have a forum it can and does use a lot of data, so in general a website doesn't cost much to run/maintain, but forums do.
Another forum I am on the owner makes no bones about it, he started it because he thought he should, but does not have the time (Work and family life) to look after it himself, so it is hosted by a 3rd party and the bills are/were on average £300/month, so yes he has adverts and banner ads to pay for it.

 

[johnb2713]

I have to point out that not all forums/websites are hosted by the person/group that own them. I have a website, hosted by a 3rd party and the website/domain name is cheap. BUT they charge for data used, and if you have a forum it can and does use a lot of data, so in general a website doesn't cost much to run/maintain, but forums do.
Another forum I am on the owner makes no bones about it, he started it because he thought he should, but does not have the time (Work and family life) to look after it himself, so it is hosted by a 3rd party and the bills are/were on average £300/month, so yes he has adverts and banner ads to pay for it.

That sounds expensive, what sort of membership numbers / active members at any time does the forum have?

One of mine that I host has Total posts 57747 • Total topics 21200 • Total members 11897. Lots of attachments to posts with music recordings. I suppose a lot will depend on the server hosting and bandwidth allocations. Ours is down in Canary wharf in a data centre somewhere, I've never seen it, we bought it online and the data centre look after it giving it the odd clean out / reboot etc.

 

[OutOnSite]

That sounds expensive, what sort of membership numbers / active members at any time does the forum have?

One of mine that I host has Total posts 57747 • Total topics 21200 • Total members 11897. Lots of attachments to posts with music recordings. I suppose a lot will depend on the server hosting and bandwidth allocations. Ours is down in Canary wharf in a data centre somewhere, I've never seen it, we bought it online and the data centre look after it giving it the odd clean out / reboot etc.

As you mentioned a lot depends on the type of hosting you have, renting a virtual server (or even a physical server) can be a fairly low monthly cost depending on the specs of the system but then you often have to manage the operating system yourself, keeping software up to date, possibly backups as well and when it comes to the server operating system being out of date and vulnerable to security exploits you would have to manually migrate everything (i.e. websites, databases, DNS records etc) yourself to a new server or pay the hosting company to do it for you.

If you have managed services (i.e. where you just pay for the service you need, for example application or database services) such as on a platform like Microsoft Azure (which is where we host our software), everything is managed by the provider, including point in time backups, geo-replication to other data centres, firewalls etc, this can be very expensive in comparison but then it makes the system/website a lot more resilient and secure with various protections in place if there are issues in the primary datacentre that hosts your application.

The link at the bottom of this forum takes you to the platform that this forum is hosted on so you can get an idea of the prices that they are likely paying to host it.

 

[Murdoch]

Public forums are a bit like public services - everybody wants to use them but seemingly most people don't want to pay for them

 

[Richard-the-Ninth]

That sounds expensive, what sort of membership numbers / active members at any time does the forum have?

Active members on a forum, no idea. It's the same with any forum, people come people go, some join and never post, some join, never post but read to find what they want to know. Not all forums "publish" the total posts etc

 

[OutOnSite]

Public forums are a bit like public services - everybody wants to use them but seemingly most people don't want to pay for them

Unfortunately that also seems to be the case for a lot of websites, software, App's etc. We even got a negative review once on one of our Apps with the person complaining that it wasn't free.

 

[Murdoch]

Unfortunately that also seems to be the case for a lot of websites, software, App's etc. We even got a negative review once on one of our Apps with the person complaining that it wasn't free.

if people expect things to be free, how do they expect anything new to be created. Daft thoughts by those individuals imho

 

[johnb2713]

As you mentioned a lot depends on the type of hosting you have, renting a virtual server (or even a physical server) can be a fairly low monthly cost depending on the specs of the system but then you often have to manage the operating system yourself, keeping software up to date, possibly backups as well and when it comes to the server operating system being out of date and vulnerable to security exploits you would have to manually migrate everything (i.e. websites, databases, DNS records etc) yourself to a new server or pay the hosting company to do it for you.

If you have managed services (i.e. where you just pay for the service you need, for example application or database services) such as on a platform like Microsoft Azure (which is where we host our software), everything is managed by the provider, including point in time backups, geo-replication to other data centres, firewalls etc, this can be very expensive in comparison but then it makes the system/website a lot more resilient and secure with various protections in place if there are issues in the primary datacentre that hosts your application.

The link at the bottom of this forum takes you to the platform that this forum is hosted on so you can get an idea of the prices that they are likely paying to host it.

Good points, well raised and I'm happy to contribute in my small way financially as well as being an active member. There are many forums out there (I'm not suggesting this is one BTW) that plead poverty yet absolutely coin it in. There's a very well known caravan forum which does this, they claim to struggle to provide the forum for the members where it is in fact the members that provide the content for the forum. I was banned from there for challenging their stance, tracking down the domain owners and publishing their accounts which showed profits in excess of £250,000 raised from advertising and membership fees.
This forum is way better than that one, the advertising isnt too obtrusive and being able to make a contribution towards the running costs rather than a membership fee is a great idea.

 

[johnb2713]

if people expect things to be free, how do they expect anything new to be created. Daft thoughts by those individuals imho

Well I suppose I could mention things like Linux and other free software, youtube hosts your video's free of charge to name two (just to play devils advocate )

 

[Richard-the-Ninth]

Daft thoughts by those individuals imho

I wouldn't say daft, I would say it's more a case of "uneducated" in the fact they think it should be free "because it should" but most folk do not see/understand that even the smallest things have to be paid for in some way. It still tickles me when you get ads that say ........................and get a Free gift card when you sign up/join

 

[Murdoch]

I wouldn't say daft, I would say it's more a case of "uneducated" in the fact they think it should be free "because it should" but most folk do not see/understand that even the smallest things have to be paid for in some way. It still tickles me when you get ads that say ........................and get a Free gift card when you sign up/join

Its a bit like the dumb DIYers who come on here asking questions about things they clearly don't understand and want to be spoon fed answers - for nothing

 

[johnb2713]

Its a bit like the dumb DIYers who come on here asking questions about things they clearly don't understand and want to be spoon fed answers - for nothing

Yep they have to 'Learn to pay' and 'Pay to Learn'

 

[OutOnSite]

Well I suppose I could mention things like Linux and other free software, youtube hosts your video's free of charge to name two (just to play devils advocate )

Typically there are 3 ways for software to make money:

1. Users pay for it, either outright or via a subscription.
2. Advertising.
3. The software is a "loss leader" (where the software itself is free but they make money another way by using it to attract customers to other paid for software or services that they charge for).

Linux could potentially fall into the "loss leader" category where the actual software is free but companies that distribute it such as Red Hat make money from supporting it or providing add-ons etc. Similar to Google's office products like Google Docs etc, they are free to use but they get you using Googles system and then they charge for additional cloud storage etc.

There is also software that is open source so it is not owned by anyone and anyone can contribute to it in there spare time, Linux would likely also fall into this category as well. But for something to be truly open source and completely free is rare because people are not usually willing to write software or work for free on a regular basis.

YouTube get their money from adverts, or from people paying a subscription to not see adverts when they use the service.

It's like the saying goes "If you are not paying for the product, then you are the product", whereby companies sell your data or at least you "views" to potential advertisers to make their money.