Daniel Clough
10-23-2002, 12:38 AM
Hey guys,
ok I need to address quite a few things so beware its a bit of a long winded announcement but I really need everyone to read this fully... It is important ;)
1. Server Move
Firstly is an apology for the speed of the site lately. Its been unacceptable and trust me you are not the only ones getting annoyed with it. It is intermittently slow and I am having troubles sending out the community crier etc. The simple fact is we are becoming too large for a shared host solution (multiple accounts on one server). It has come to the point where we need to rent a dedicated server which means we will be the only ones on the server therefore making things run a lot more smoothly and speedily and introducing the framework for us to grow in the future.
So in the near future (server has already been ordered) we will be moving to a new server to solve all of these problems. I will let you know specifically if there will be any downtime and a warning before hand. Obviously it goes without saying I will do my best to keep the downtime to a minimum as usual. This will happen within the next 1-2 weeks though.
What does this mean in terms of our costs? Well for a start a 300% rise in costs! :cry:
We are restructuring our revenue model to better optimise the way we bring in money. Until this is re-shaped I am going to experiment with the following:
2. Banners
We are going to be giving an ad agency a months trial to see if it can help cover the costs of Wannabebig.
Now.. I will NEVER introduce things that will affect the usability of wannabebig, you can rest assured that everything is going to stay cool. This is also a trial so I can change my mind at any point.
Basically where the banner used to show the forums, it will now be a selection of general banners that we will receive payment for the amount of impressions that are served. The other thing that will be introduced is a 12 hour timed pop under. This is a pop up that will minimize automatically so not get in your way and just requires you to close it at your own time. I have ensured that ALL ads will be appropriate.. (no adult, alcohol or tobacco ads)
This will NEVER pop up more than once in 12 hours. So it won't keep annoying you from page to page I promise :)
We'll give this a months trial and see the sort of money it brings in. If its not considerable I will remove it.
However I do need to ask a favour from you guys:
a) If you see any ads that you consider inappropriate please email me or pm me and let me know so I can remove them. As I said I will not let ads interfere with the quality of the site, so please do email if you see anything.
b) Basically the more you guys browse wannabebig.com and click a few of the ads the more money we will get. Even if its once a day to get the pop under to pop up ;) So try and get there daily and visit a few pages if you don't already ;)
3. Supplements
If we are to grow to be the biggest bodybuilding community on the net we need to establish a way of supporting our growth. A lot of you probably are already aware a sports supplement company is going to be launched soon and choosing our supplements is going to be the best way you can help support Wannabebig.
There will be a coming soon page available soon outlining a little bit about what we want to achieve and what will be available so keep an eye out for it :)
Well...... That's all I wanted to say.
We have a massive amount of new features, content and ideas to launch in the next few months so we are just going to get better and better. So if you haven't already told your friends, tell them! If you have, tell them to tell their friends ;)
Thanks for listening
Daniel
ok I need to address quite a few things so beware its a bit of a long winded announcement but I really need everyone to read this fully... It is important ;)
1. Server Move
Firstly is an apology for the speed of the site lately. Its been unacceptable and trust me you are not the only ones getting annoyed with it. It is intermittently slow and I am having troubles sending out the community crier etc. The simple fact is we are becoming too large for a shared host solution (multiple accounts on one server). It has come to the point where we need to rent a dedicated server which means we will be the only ones on the server therefore making things run a lot more smoothly and speedily and introducing the framework for us to grow in the future.
So in the near future (server has already been ordered) we will be moving to a new server to solve all of these problems. I will let you know specifically if there will be any downtime and a warning before hand. Obviously it goes without saying I will do my best to keep the downtime to a minimum as usual. This will happen within the next 1-2 weeks though.
What does this mean in terms of our costs? Well for a start a 300% rise in costs! :cry:
We are restructuring our revenue model to better optimise the way we bring in money. Until this is re-shaped I am going to experiment with the following:
2. Banners
We are going to be giving an ad agency a months trial to see if it can help cover the costs of Wannabebig.
Now.. I will NEVER introduce things that will affect the usability of wannabebig, you can rest assured that everything is going to stay cool. This is also a trial so I can change my mind at any point.
Basically where the banner used to show the forums, it will now be a selection of general banners that we will receive payment for the amount of impressions that are served. The other thing that will be introduced is a 12 hour timed pop under. This is a pop up that will minimize automatically so not get in your way and just requires you to close it at your own time. I have ensured that ALL ads will be appropriate.. (no adult, alcohol or tobacco ads)
This will NEVER pop up more than once in 12 hours. So it won't keep annoying you from page to page I promise :)
We'll give this a months trial and see the sort of money it brings in. If its not considerable I will remove it.
However I do need to ask a favour from you guys:
a) If you see any ads that you consider inappropriate please email me or pm me and let me know so I can remove them. As I said I will not let ads interfere with the quality of the site, so please do email if you see anything.
b) Basically the more you guys browse wannabebig.com and click a few of the ads the more money we will get. Even if its once a day to get the pop under to pop up ;) So try and get there daily and visit a few pages if you don't already ;)
3. Supplements
If we are to grow to be the biggest bodybuilding community on the net we need to establish a way of supporting our growth. A lot of you probably are already aware a sports supplement company is going to be launched soon and choosing our supplements is going to be the best way you can help support Wannabebig.
There will be a coming soon page available soon outlining a little bit about what we want to achieve and what will be available so keep an eye out for it :)
Well...... That's all I wanted to say.
We have a massive amount of new features, content and ideas to launch in the next few months so we are just going to get better and better. So if you haven't already told your friends, tell them! If you have, tell them to tell their friends ;)
Thanks for listening
Daniel