I have not really read the other replied to this, as I wanted to give you an independent uninfluenced point-of-view.
Sitepoint uses advertising and so forth like any other site. I am also aware of their other websites too, some of which I have had the pleasure of using. So I have benefited from this.
For me it’s still a fun place, and the level of knowledge here engages me more than anything else. I enjoy posting and getting replies, replying to others and just silently reading in. I have posted in many of the forums here.
Most sections give unbiased advise, which is always good fun, and some even make me laugh especially when arguements break out and people have contradicting point of views, which helps you see things from 2-side perceptive.
I did however find that the forum sections which were more geared to guidance served better, and the ones which people used for getting clients had a different vibe to them.
There is only one thing I asked, don’t ever think of removing this forum. I like it here.
I did have two ideas which might help bring out the community.
Maybe you could come up with some way to place unanswered posts on the front page, so people just stopping in for a peek may see them an answer them (instead of having to dig through respective forums).
Also, I’ve noticed that the number of featured posts has dropped significantly, down to only one or fewer a day, and most of those are “official”. In the past twelve days, there have only been 19 days there have only be 14 featured posts (only 2 days that had 2). Of those 14 featured posts, 9 of them are “official” (2 posts for articles, 1 which got no posts; 3 contest results; 1 about a new “official” course; the t-shirt post, october breasts; and this).
That means there are only 5 in the past almost a month that have anything to do with the real focus of Sitepoint… that’s not a lot of choices for those that don’t dive below the front page.
Not necessarily. I don’t begrudge anybody for trying to make a little money.
I have learned a lot here at Sitepoint from people who have taken their time to help me with my problems. Sitepoint is my first and main resource for anything web related. I have helped a small number of people around here along the way. I have not helped as much as I have been helped, but making websites is a hobby for me so I can’t be expected to be an expert like some of you.
My biggest issue here at Sitepoint has to do with the inability to edit one’s posts. There are times I will scan posts in a few boards (PHP, Javascript, CSS) and if there is a question that has not been answered within a few hours and I have the knowledge to answer it, I will take a stab at it. There are times where I think I know what kind of answer the original poster is looking for, but not always. Being unable to edit my posts after a few minutes, I am reluctant to say anything for fear of being wrong. If I’m wrong, I can’t edit my post to make it right.
Another thing I would like to see here at Sitepoint is a code repository. I have seen the same or similar questions asked over and over again. Take for instance an AJAX script. Wouldn’t it be nice if as a group we made a nice AJAX script and then had a place to put it where people could find it and use it freely in their projects? How about Apache rewrite code? Want SEF URLs? Go to the code repository and find an example of something that meets your needs that you know works. No point in everyone reinventing the wheel.
I’ve been on and off site point for about 10 years now, a member of the forums a bit less than that. I don’t the problem inherently is with the forums as the first quote mentioned, I feel that it is the sitepoint website.
I must say I used to spend a lot more time on sitepoint than I do now. I pop in from time to time now. The first thing that got me was the incessant interupting advertisments everywhere. The kind that get up in your face.
I get it, it’s a business. But I personally am one of those consumers who responds better to a recommendation by someone who’s opinion I respect, before, for example, purchasing a book. My generation has evolved to somewhat loathe the force-fed advertising we grew up with on tv.
Of the articles, I must say that the scales between feeling commercial and feeling helpful are tipping towards commercial.
This is something I’ve thought about on many occasions in the past. Meaning, often it is a conscious decision of mine to not visit sitepoint, not merely an inherent behavioural pattern.
It’s a shame because while there are no sites I visit which cover as much ground as sitepoint, I just can’t help feel that the experience of visiting sitepoint has degraded as it’s become more commercialised.
[FONT=“Georgia”]So even if Sitepoint was a commerical forum, which it isn’t, why should that produce negative feelings?
Most of us are here trying to promote or gain skills for our own work-from-home business. We’d be just as out for profit as you say the Sitepoint owners are.
And besides. Sitepoint didn’t ups and make itself. Without years of effort by those same owners, it wouldn’t exist, and we wouldn’t even be having this intelligent conversation across the planet right now. We may well be on Facebook collecting farm animals or whatever.
AND, without Sitepoint I know I wouldn’t have been as good a web-designer as I am now. Back when I joined, Sitepoint introduced the whole idea of web-recommendations to me, and efficient coding practices. I haven’t bought a single Sitepoint book. I haven’t forked over any money to them at all, and look at what I’ve gained on their tab.
Who pays Sitepoint’s hosting? Does the “community” pitch in to sponsor their servers? Who pays to promote them? Who pays the Sitepoint staff? Who buys all their machines?
Okay, you say you don’t have negative feelings, zipperz. Fine. But I don’t understand why that should even be at risk of producing negative feelings in the first place.
Sitepoint is give and take. It’s a trade.
I’ve gained free knowledge and entertainment from them over the years. I give back some time in my posts to others here and there.
[ot]No, haven’t contacted them, didn’t want to bother someone about something that was free.
As I work at a client service (replace: “client”, “complaint”), I get complaints 24/7, so I’m quite tired of that. I’m not likely a guy who is contacting other ‘client serices’ or stuff like that very easy if it’s not necessary. It’s the last thing on my ‘to do list’.
If it would be the case that it’s something that I paid lots of money for, ok, I would get in contact… but this was a free present.[/ot]
That’s because competitions are mostly at the time I’m on holidays :fangel:
I feel pretty similar.
I found Sitepoint during study and found some great people here willing to show me the ropes. I enjoyed learning and contributing because I was able to help others in the same boat.
Now that i’m the 9-5 I am only able to wave as I pass by.
I have always liked the community driven aspects of the forum though - contests, CSS quizes etc…
And I find Molona / mizwizzy’ podcast segment particularly entertaining
[ot]I assume that that was the case.
Did you ever contacted a member of the staff so your problem could be sorted out? That would be even worse[/ot]
My only worry is that it is really tough to get feedback from people and it seems to be harder to get them involved in contests and competitions. Maybe it is because we’re rushing all the time, or maybe it is because we’re not doing it right.
Thanks for taking the time out to contribute to this thread guys. TBH, I’m still feeling a bit in the dark about it all. The general feel of the responses is positive, with a few negatives being based mostly on misconception. I am starting to think that perhaps that is the biggest issue.
I’ll attempt to clear up a couple of those misconceptions here.
I think the first thing that I need to make clear is exactly what I mean by community and forum. Flippa and 99Designs are not part of the SitePoint community. They are separate entities owned by separate companies. All decisions to do with the SitePoint forum have absolutely nothing to do with profit. I have full autonomy to make decisions about the community and my solitary motivation is the health of the community.
Are you able to tell me what it is that makes you feel that way?
Ok, I’m hearing you. Advertising is an issue for you.
I certainly take your point here, however I must explain that none of the SitePoint marketing emails have anything to do with the forums. You will be on a mailing list either because you have opted in, have previously purchased a product, or have downloaded sample chapters.[/QUOTE]
I have to stress that this is not the case. The forums are NOT here to push products. I concede that I made some serious mistakes with the t-shirt project (which I will explain in the t-shirt thread) but those were solely mine, and had nothing to do with the company or the marketing dept. Those shirts are NOT a SitePoint product.
Cool. That’s what I’m trying to address with this thread.
Yup, I’m seeing that now. That is definitely one of the mistakes that I’m referring to above.
Ben - I’m sorry if this feels like an attack on you. I used your quote (minus your name) because you very concisely worded an issue that has been raising it’s head more and more lately.
I need to make it clear that I am employed by SitePoint, but I am employed to run the community as a separate entity. Hands down the most challenging part of my role is to try and keep you guys - the community - separate from the moneymaking side of things. I’m asking for your help on that now.
As in “posting a new thread to get a decent response on how to solve your problem, and finally get a reply with a link to the book section, where you can buy a book where that solution is explained”
No, as in content writing/blogging, social networking, and SEO sections. There’s good stuff in there somewhere, but it’s drowned out by crap.
I’ve answered questions by pointing to books, but I didn’t think to point to the book section, lawlz.
So it sounds like most of your negative feelings have to do with the separation of the Marketplace. That was a legacy decision and one that I am not in a position to justify. My job is to run the forums in their current incarnation so I’m looking for feedback from you guys as to how I can do that better. I appreciate you taking the time to write and I don’t mean to dismiss you outright, I just need to clarify what I’m asking.
As far as the ads go, are you suggesting that there might be a cultural change if we were to get rid of them?
I’m hearing you. That makes sense.
That makes sense and is very easily done. I’m not disregarding your other points, I just need some time to digest them.
Hmm, yes.
What I love to sitepoint books is that their layout and style is quite good. More easy to read than dull books like Wrox, O’Reilly, etc…
I have a few webdesign books from Peachpit Press that are worth reading, not only for the content, but same reason: good layout as the Sitepoint books.
What I dislike is, that SitePoint seems to write new books that are a little too fancy, marketing-like, and less interesting for me to buy for some reason. First there were the development books which came out super:
Simply Javascript, The Art & Science Of …
Database Driven Websites (php)
HTML and CSS references, anthologies, …
But it seems, since they’ve already written books about those topics, it’s hard to write another book about the same topic, it would be squeezing the lemon too much. But they needed new books, for new revenues. For that reason, it seemed like SitePoint decided to write a few books as their ‘design’ section:
“Create Stunning HTML Email”, “Fancy Form Design”, “Photography for the Web”, “Sexy Web Design”, …
For some reason I dislike them a bit, these try to keep you busy, making you creative reading a book, without a lot of ‘new’ material or content. While there are already lots of books about CSS that try to let you think
about creating websites the good way.
As in “posting a new thread to get a decent response on how to solve your problem, and finally get a reply with a link to the book section, where you can buy a book where that solution is explained” ?
It’s a good way to motivate people on this forums.
I won a book once by a competition, but I actually have never received it. Probably something went wrong by the mail service.
Still, a good way to keep visitors coming back.
To be honest I really don’t have any negative feelings.
I just think sitepiont is a commercial forum trying to turn a profit on the posting, traffic, knowledge and information that accumulates on the forum.
Most times I visit forums I read some threads and then try to help a few beginners or answer a couple of questions before I leave. To me that is what a forum community is about. Learning and then giving back, Because the beginner asking stupid questions now might be and expert who will come back and answer questions in the years to come.
At site point the owners are always in the background trying to turn some profit from it all. Why should people go around and give out free knowledge when the owners are trying to package all of their knowledge in books and sell it for profit ? With a link to the forum as free support.
That kind of kills the whole community forum spirit for me.
Why should I volunteer at Wal-Mart ? They make money they should just hire people. I would rather go volunteer and put my time and energy in at the community library, community park, an open source software forum.
I know it is your job to market and moderate sitepiont and it seems like you are trying to find solutions to make site point a community. Personally I think the owners took too much from the forums in the way of marketing and trying to pull profits from it and turned a lot of the more active and knowledgeable posters away.
I think sitepiont killed the goose that lays golden eggs they got to greedy. This place is a shell of what it used to be. I really wonder if their marketing ventures will be sustainable because they destroyed a lot in the making.
Sitepiont always did have a commercial feel in the background but over the last couple or years they really have played it out.
I,m not really sure what you mean by “cultural” but i think it runs a lot deeper then the ads.
This is an interesting discussion to me community is complex it is interesting to see what makes it work and what kills it.
I’ve been around here a few years now and whilst I have seen the discussion on the forums vary a bit from time to time I don’t think things have really changed much - most people are around to both learn and help others which is what the forums are for.
But, I have seen a change in Sitepoint.com (and affiliated sites/courses/books/etc) which rubs off a little on the forum. Sitepoint.com used to be full of news and articles about building websites - so PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, etc tutorials being the focus points - and then news on the latest tools for web development (Dreamweaver to FTP software to Apache…).
If you look at the frontpage of Sitepoint.com right now the news items are about feed readers, fear marketing, a corporate logo, promotion for an SP course, and advert for SP live stream, news about Google Goggles and then just two articles about web development (one on Drupal, and one on PHP conditions). That frontpage is not that of a web development site but more like what you would come across on blogs like Mashable.
Yes SP still offer a variety of great articles (in the articles section) and the reference section is useful, but these aren’t on the front page.
A similar thing has happened with the books but to a lesser extent. The first few books about building PHP/MySQL websites, CSS, business kits, etc were great and very informative. But the most recent ones about “wicked” theme creation, JQuery Ninjas, Stunning HTML emails, and cloud hosting all just seem full of buzzwords and “lite” in general.
I’m not trying to dismiss what SP does, and I know they are a business that makes a profit - I’ve benefited greatly from the forums, articles and books over the years - but the focus of the site seems to have got lost over the past 18 months or so with SP moving away from web development to just web use. It has got to the stage, though that whilst I do nose around the forums every couple of days or so, I haven’t visited the main site in about the last 3 or 4 months, and that change in focus will always diffuse into the forum a little bit.
I’ve only been around for the last year and a half, so I can’t compare with yesteryear. But I would think that the forums now are a fun place to discuss web design. The only thing I can think of is that when a book or other product is for sale, the banners at the top of the page are a bit obtrusive and perhaps could be considered as ‘in your face’ marketing. (Mind you, though, I think it’s perfectly fair enough for SP to be displaying them.)
Other than that, the world economy has gone sour over the last few years, and this in itself could be changing people’s outlook on things—regardless of whether or not SP is doing anything differently. A lot of people use the forums, so SP must be doing something right. Are there any stats on forum visits now compared with a few years ago? </my-worthless-contribution>
