« Talk about double standards
Adding Value to the project
Rapture? Not so much... »

Nao

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Re: Adding Value to the project
« Reply #15, on October 21st, 2011, 08:45 AM »
I'd go with Wedge and I'd donate the money to someone who really needs it and won't use it to throw lawsuits and capitalize and generally be an ass.
Same goes to all hosts that offer a 'free' copy of vB. Run away from them!

DirtRider

  • All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified.
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Re: Adding Value to the project
« Reply #16, on October 21st, 2011, 10:38 AM »
Quote from Nao on October 20th, 2011, 10:58 PM
You gave money to vBulletin?! Meh... Worst forum system ever...
Actually we are all very happy with it and have to date had no issues at all.

BTW programmes like yourselves could make some serious money out of doing a few good paid mods for it.
“Any code of your own that you haven’t looked at for six or more months might as well have been written by someone else.”
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Arantor

  • As powerful as possible, as complex as necessary.
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Re: Adding Value to the project
« Reply #17, on October 21st, 2011, 10:46 AM »
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BTW programmes like yourselves could make some serious money out of doing a few good paid mods for it.
I don't think there's a great deal of money to be made out of paid add-ons to free software, because the whole "it must be free" crap gets in the way.

That said, I want to believe, which is why I'm putting in support in the core for third party plugin repos that can be account locked for just that reason.

I am curious, what would be 'good paid plugins'? WedgeDesk is going to be paid but only because it's sufficiently niche that I can get away with it - it's large and scary enough, and with me as the only dev, I need to have some reason to prioritise it above, say, core Wedge dev.
When we unite against a common enemy that attacks our ethos, it nurtures group solidarity. Trolls are sensational, yes, but we keep everyone honest. | Game Memorial

DirtRider

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Re: Adding Value to the project
« Reply #18, on October 21st, 2011, 10:59 AM »
Well taking about a free forum software no I think you will not make much as most people take the free forum software and then want everything free and support by yesterday  :whistle: However when I was using SMF I always made a point of either purchasing the paid mod or a least giving a donation to my main mods, I feel it was just the right thing to do

If I look at vBulleting the guys that have done PhotoPost are making a killing as it's the only game in town right now. We purchased it and it is not bad but nothing near what you guys did here. So if you had to get this one working on vBulletin I am sure you would have a winner and make money on it. 

Another for VB that I could think about would be a Yellow pages they do have one but the guy has dropped it and it has bugs. Overall the SMF mods were done well considering it was all free

Arantor

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Re: Adding Value to the project
« Reply #19, on October 21st, 2011, 11:16 AM »
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Well taking about a free forum software no I think you will not make much as most people take the free forum software and then want everything free and support by yesterday
Yup, never mind that people are volunteers doing stuff in their free time, and that folks have sunk thousands of hours of their free time into making this, I WANT MY FREE SHIT, DAMMIT. :niark: It actually really pisses me off. I don't mind particularly that I made dozens of mods for SMF, I don't even mind that I didn't get much in the way of thanks, but I did mind the amount of people who seemed to be under the impression that they had any right to do anything other than ask me if I'd add things or change things, as opposed to expect, demand or in one hilarious case, threaten me with a DDOS in order to make him what he wanted.

It doesn't help that while there are three (AFAIK) paid theme sites for SMF, each with a decent amount of reputation that they've legitimately earned, there are three paid mod sites, of which only one could justifiably claim to have good standing, the other two are clearly out for whatever they can get, including buying up other mods and taking over other mods just so they can promote the crap out of their own paid stuff.[1]

I will say, though, I had an interesting discussion with vbgamer once on the subject, in particular reference to the ad management mod after he'd bought it. The mod's free (branding notwithstanding) and because it wasn't using template layers and so on, it did a number of core template edits. Needless to say: support nightmare. So he started offering a paid service to install it, $15 a time.

I don't have a problem with that. The thing is free, and if you aren't using the default theme, you can install it yourself with fairly minimal effort. But if you want someone to do it for you, it's only fair that you should pay them the time to do it.[2]

And yet, he was annoyed - and I agreed with him about it - at the number of people who didn't want to pay the $15 for him to do, but also didn't want to do it themselves.


One other little anecdote. I once talked about doing the vBookie mod for SMF. It's a simple enough project, really, but it would have required template edits to do properly, and would be big even if it was pretty simple. So I talked about the fact that I didn't want to do it for free, and that I thought $25 was a reasonable fee for it plus a year's support, or an extra $15 on top for me doing the installation for you. Cue a surprising amount of nasty feedback - I was genuinely surprised at the volume and ferocity of some of the messages, even though I thought it was quite reasonable.

So, I then said, fine, I'll look at doing it for free, but for 2.0 only to make *my* life easier, and look at maybe charging for support because of the complexity of it. Even that triggered a surprising amount of crap, though not nearly as much as before. People just do not want to pay for stuff, generally speaking, for a free platform.[3]

What it comes down to is investment in the platform. We have a rather irrational take on sunk costs, that we'll often spend over the odds not to have wasted the initial sunk costs, such that when you spend upwards of $200 to get into the platform in the first place, you're prepared to spend a bit more on add-ons for it, even if you could actually achieve everything you wanted with another platform.[4]
 1. Exactly who I'm referring to will be an exercise for the reader.
 2. For most themes, $10 would be enough in my book, but that's another story. The principle of paying someone to do it is entirely fair game, after which you're just haggling over the details.
 3. I wouldn't mind so much if those people contributed back in other ways, e.g. support, but very often not even that happens.
 4. It is much like the iOS vs Android situation. People who buy into the Apple ecosystem are invariably prepared to pay for apps, not just because they're presumably able to do so, but because they have also the sunk costs mindset behind them.

DirtRider

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Re: Adding Value to the project
« Reply #20, on October 21st, 2011, 11:47 AM »
I agree with what you are saying and this is why if you had to make a few great mods for VB and have the support to go with it you would have people breaking down the door to get them. Once I crossed over from free to paid I knew that just the cost of teh forum software would only be the start of it. Well I must admit up until now I have only really found the one paid mod I had to get and that was photopost. Overall being a paid platform I was expecting a higher quality of mods available and was prepared to pay for them. I was surprised to see this was in fact not the case here.

A lot of the mods are very manual when it comes to installing them as in having to actually edit your templates and insert the code. I am not a big one on these as I am not a programmer so even the simplest edit can become a huge issue for me  :lol:

Arantor

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Re: Adding Value to the project
« Reply #21, on October 21st, 2011, 11:52 AM »
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I agree with what you are saying and this is why if you had to make a few great mods for VB and have the support to go with it you would have people breaking down the door to get them
That would require me buying a vB licence and learning to code for vB, neither of which is going to happen any time soon. There is more chance of my learning to code for xenForo than that - but I have Wedge instead ;)
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Well I must admit up until now I have only really found the one paid mod I had to get and that was photopost. Overall being a paid platform I was expecting a higher quality of mods available and was prepared to pay for them. I was surprised to see this was in fact not the case here.
I want to be surprised by that, but I'm not. Given how poor some of the paid mods for SMF are, it doesn't surprise me to see that people are trying to make a quick buck with some trash on vB.
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A lot of the mods are very manual when it comes to installing them as in having to actually edit your templates and insert the code.
To a point that's unavoidable. If you're modifying something inside a template with a mod, it's almost certainly going to have to modify the template to make it work. But that's only for very specific changes, for a lot of things the modular approach that Wedge has will remove that need.

DirtRider

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Re: Adding Value to the project
« Reply #22, on October 21st, 2011, 12:06 PM »
Quote from Arantor on October 21st, 2011, 11:52 AM
That would require me buying a vB licence and learning to code for vB, neither of which is going to happen any time soon. There is more chance of my learning to code for xenForo than that - but I have Wedge instead ;)
Yeah I suppose it would take a bit of work to get into coding for VB and you would need the licence and it's not cheap either  :whistle:
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I want to be surprised by that, but I'm not. Given how poor some of the paid mods for SMF are, it doesn't surprise me to see that people are trying to make a quick buck with some trash on vB.
Yes well I know all about that as I paid for a mod and later just dropped it and purchased another one as the support was none on the first one
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To a point that's unavoidable. If you're modifying something inside a template with a mod, it's almost certainly going to have to modify the template to make it work. But that's only for very specific changes, for a lot of things the modular approach that Wedge has will remove that need.
Yeah I suppose most mods need to change the templates but most of the VB ones do all of that when you install them. Just some of then don't and I think maybe they are being done by noob coders and they don't know how to make it so it installs everything.

Arantor

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Re: Adding Value to the project
« Reply #23, on October 21st, 2011, 12:09 PM »
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Yeah I suppose it would take a bit of work to get into coding for VB and you would need the licence and it's not cheap either
And by all accounts, vB 4 is a polished turd anyway.
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Yes well I know all about that as I paid for a mod and later just dropped it and purchased another one as the support was none on the first one
I think it's going to come down to reputation building and establishment thereof. I mentioned before the disparity between the theme and mod premium sites - DzinerStudio and BlocWeb are pretty good at supporting their premium wares, can't speak for LogoOff as I don't have a subscription. Meanwhile, <premium mod site 1> (from experience) and <premium mod site 2> (by all accounts) are not so good.

You can usually tell the kind of support you're going to get on premium resources by looking at what they've done with their free ones. If the free ones are poor, paid ones will be - free goodies are promotion, bad free goodies are not promotional at all.
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Yeah I suppose most mods need to change the templates but most of the VB ones do all of that when you install them. Just some of then don't and I think maybe they are being done by noob coders and they don't know how to make it so it installs everything.
That's true in any environment. Fortunately I hope to be able to set out some decent training material for Wedge, not to mention plenty of examples of 'doing it right' :)

DirtRider

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Re: Adding Value to the project
« Reply #24, on October 21st, 2011, 12:30 PM »
I would also only use DzinerStudio and BlocWeb when I was purchasing my stuff and I never had any issue with them so yes it is important to check out where you going to spend your money. Unfortunately when I purchased my first gallery I was a bit of a noob to SMF and did not do my research the way I should have  :eheh:

I think just from what you guys have done on SMF in the past anyone that has been around knows that your guys work is solid. Hmmm.... just thinking about when you do release this you may have a rush on support and only being the two of you really it may become a bit of a bind on your guys, I really hope not.

Arantor

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Re: Adding Value to the project
« Reply #25, on October 21st, 2011, 12:38 PM »
*nods* The best demonstration of quality is to let it show itself off, and that's certainly what I did with my mods over time.

As for support, I don't really see that being too much of a problem. At first, the biggest issue is going to be settling down bugs we didn't initially find, but that's what beta testing is all about - and figuring out what's a support issue and what's a bug fix issue. I also predict a fair amount of 'IT'S NOT WHERE IT WAS IN SMF!' but that should be relatively short-term as people grow to understand the mentality in Wedge. All in all, the redesigned ACP should help with that.

Then again, my ability to post 100+ posts a day when I'm in the support zone will probably help... :whistle: (my peak was 530 in one day...)

DirtRider

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Re: Adding Value to the project
« Reply #26, on October 21st, 2011, 02:11 PM »
Quote from Arantor on October 21st, 2011, 12:38 PM
*nods* The best demonstration of quality is to let it show itself off, and that's certainly what I did with my mods over time.
That it sure does and I think some people don't realize that and lose a lot by it
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As for support, I don't really see that being too much of a problem. At first, the biggest issue is going to be settling down bugs we didn't initially find, but that's what beta testing is all about - and figuring out what's a support issue and what's a bug fix issue.
I cannot wait for the beta to come out it should be great fun playing with it and seeing the end result.
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I also predict a fair amount of 'IT'S NOT WHERE IT WAS IN SMF!' but that should be relatively short-term as people grow to understand the mentality in Wedge. All in all, the redesigned ACP should help with that.
Funny you are right and I really don't get that type of thinking as it's not SMF and that is the whole point. Its like changing a car brand and expecting the new brand to be the same as what you had. If that is the case just stick with what you had anyway  :whistle:
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Then again, my ability to post 100+ posts a day when I'm in the support zone will probably help... :whistle: (my peak was 530 in one day...)
Wow that is crazy  :lol:

Arantor

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Re: Adding Value to the project
« Reply #27, on October 21st, 2011, 02:22 PM »
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I cannot wait for the beta to come out it should be great fun playing with it and seeing the end result.
It's going to be awesome.
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Funny you are right and I really don't get that type of thinking as it's not SMF and that is the whole point.
Except I have the feeling we're going to see it a lot because that's the standard we are going to be judged by initially, and that's understandable - except that if they wanted it to be the same as SMF, why aren't they using it? Answer: BECAUSE I WANT MY FREE SHIT EVEN IF I WON'T USE IT!!!!!! Yeah, you've probably figured by now that I assume the worst in people, particularly in users, until I have any reason to think more positively about them.
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Wow that is crazy
~45,000 posts in 2 years is crazy.

DirtRider

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Re: Adding Value to the project
« Reply #28, on October 21st, 2011, 03:36 PM »
Quote from Arantor on October 21st, 2011, 02:22 PM
Except I have the feeling we're going to see it a lot because that's the standard we are going to be judged by initially, and that's understandable - except that if they wanted it to be the same as SMF, why aren't they using it? Answer: BECAUSE I WANT MY FREE SHIT EVEN IF I WON'T USE IT!!!!!! Yeah, you've probably figured by now that I assume the worst in people, particularly in users, until I have any reason to think more positively about them.
Yes people will be benchmarking it against SMF and that could be a good thing as well I suppose. Then I also suppose you will be getting the bulk of people that used SMF using it and only once the word is out have others from other platforms moving across. Actually I think it will be interesting to see what types of reaction you will have across the board.
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~45,000 posts in 2 years is crazy.
:wow: Boy I don't have anything near that on my own forum and I thought I posted a lot. :whistle: I actualy wonder what my post count would be in total on all forums I have posed on

spoogs

  • Posts: 417
Re: Adding Value to the project
« Reply #29, on October 22nd, 2011, 08:18 AM »
Sorry I've been a bit quiet recently though I'm usually quiet anyway. I agree with Nao an Arantor on this. Though we have 2 great developers at the help user input and/or use case scenarios are always a great help.
Stick a fork in it SMF
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Rapture? Not so much... »