Comments/questions regarding new ownership and upcoming changes

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

Any comments or questions? We might not be able to tell you everything right now but we'll do what we can.

Copy of Ownership announcement, for posterity:

Quote: Dear TWF Members,

The Webmaster Forums is pleased to announce that the site has been sold to a new owner! The new owner wishes to remain anonymous at this time but I can assure you that this is a friendly person who has the best interests of the forums at heart. He has appointed me to manage the site as I see fit. I will remain the head administrator and manager of TWF.

Now that the ownership has been finalized there will be many changes and improvements in the forums. Our first priority was to move the site to a new dedicated server. The new sever is significantly faster than the old setup. You will notice a significant improvement in performance now that the forums have been moved. Sometime in the next few weeks we will also be upgrading our vBulletin software to the latest version.

The next step will be a major overhaul of the site over three phases. Phase I will involve the introduction of some revenue generating methods. Under the new ownership agreement it will be necessary for us to pay hosting and other costs. We are committed to keeping advertising and other revenue generating methods as unobtrusive as possible. We hope that you will support us as you see fit.

Phase II of the overhaul will be a complete redesign of the forums and the addition of several new features and vBulletin customizations. We welcome any comments or feedback you have on the future look and functionality of TWF.

Phase III, to be introduced in 2006, will consist of a content portal with articles and other features. The details of this phase have yet to be finalized but we hope that this will become a valuable resource of the webmaster community.

On behalf of the new owner and the TWF team, I would like to thank you for your ongoing participation and support. This site would be nothing without you.

Thank you,

Megan Jack
TWF Manager/Administrator

Nintendo's picture

He has: 2 posts

Joined: Oct 2005

Quote: Phase I will involve the introduction of some revenue generating methods.

See that empty spot up there? Place AdSense/Yahoo ads or some banner there!! Why have it empty when it can make money??!! Confused

Greg K's picture

He has: 2,145 posts

Joined: Nov 2003

There is usually ads there, they just have not been started back up since the forum was moved to the new servers. There will be ads again.

-Greg

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

Greg K wrote: There is usually ads there, they just have not been started back up since the forum was moved to the new servers. There will be ads again.

-Greg

Actiually, I think I can put an adsense banner in there for now until we get the ad system set up properly. That's going to take awhile because we'll have to finalize our pricing and contact advertisers and such. I am also going to be putting google ads on the guest user pages today.

We will also be implementing premium memberships sometime within the next few weeks.

They have: 5,633 posts

Joined: Jan 1970

I will be glad to give what i can to the forums!

Renegade's picture

He has: 3,022 posts

Joined: Oct 2002

bja888 wrote: I will be glad to give what i can to the forums!

Great, we'll have all of your money and physical possessions. Laughing out loud Since you have no personality or a life, we can't have those Sad Sticking out tongue

JeevesBond's picture

He has: 3,956 posts

Joined: Jun 2002

Oh Renegade, that's the funniest thing I've heard this week!

Never a truer word spoken in jest...

demonhale's picture

He has: 3,278 posts

Joined: May 2005

so whats with the premium membership?

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

We haven't ironed out the details on that yet but basically you'd be able to pay a small yearly fee (probably around £10-20/$20-30 US) for some extra features like more PM space, ad-free browsing, things like that. There will be a couple of levels that might get phased in over time. Premium members would also have a badge under their names - you might have seen this in other forums. Just a way to make a little bit of money and allow members to support the forum. Regular members would not see any change in permissions or features, although new features may only be available to premium members.

It's important to understand that this is not about buying more features so much as showing your support for a forum you find valuable. I am a premium member at two other sites and I appreciate the opportunity to support their efforts.

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