232 replies to this topic

[SordFish]

what about having a system like passionford's gold account?? surely that would generate enough income... as im sure there is plenty of people selling or wanting to sell stuff.

[ctrsam]

I agree with paid membership

alot of clubs do it but it has to come with an incentive

Stickers
membrship cards
extra paid user sections
club discounts

alot of work

[Stu.]

I agree with Civic_Boz on both counts.

Paid membership WON'T work; sure existing members would pay, but new members would stop completely. Nobody's going to sign up to a site that asks for £5 on the registration screen.

The forum worked perfectly fine before we went to IPB. Can't we just go back, it was a heck of a lot cheaper, and I don't remember any driver errors. I'm not being funny, but some people may get annoyed with donating towards keeping the site running if it's regularly down.

[Smiley]

This was always gonna happen, I am actually surprised poom kept it ip aslong as he did after losing interest, most forums go down within a month off the owner stopping using it, so kudos to steve for keeping it alive this long.


Paid membership won't work, as a short term measure it may do, but as box rightly points out, once the old members get older and move on, they will not be replaced by new blood, as no newbie will pay to use a site when there are hundreds and hundreds off free sites out there to use.
Wed jus be flogging a dead horse there.

Donations aren't working, we, me included donate when ita mentioned and pushed, but we soon forget and don't bother until something like this happens.
Donations created from this thread will probably keep it running for A few months, but after that it will be back to nothing, especially as some off our higher donators are banned! Lol


And lastly traders, this is were we go wrong, plenty of people want to trade on here but they get told, we are not excepting any more traders! That's money lost there.
Plus the current traders, yes they aren't paying much, but as they have recently been told to Stick to there own sections only, I doubt they'd pay more for a forum they can only use 99%.


Enjoy it while it last peeps, as it won't last mug longer IMO!

Anything up there was just my quick thoughts, not aimed at anyone inpaticular just a general view I have

[EG6CIVIC]

most forums run on paid memberships from my understanding so it should work for CL too, at least for a short while, everyday there are new members joining so a small joining fee would help, if thre a small fee of say £5 for new members, £10 for say for more options like for sale sections etc and gold memberships £15 for memebers who want to donate a bit more. I can see donations are only boosted by these types of threads and then die down but it would be a real shame if this forum closed down after how far it has come

[Jim]

any idea how many people are active daily? i know there are thousands of members, but tbh half of them dont use the site?

is there a average number of people online everyday?

i have an idea once i know

[Tobiasnugent]

Why not use a simple machines forum ? Its free and its okay tbh its not fantastic but easy to use like here http://hondanortheast.org.uk/forumss/

Just a suggestion ?

[StevieG]

I used be on cliosport.net when I had my Clio and I used to pay £10 a year with them.
With that you could see the for sale sections, some other sections would be unlocked and you could sell things yourself
other privilages like have an avatar and things like that.
They also had a membership card, small booklet on cliosport.net and send like a pen with the forum name on ad some stickers
worked a treat!

Edited by StevieG, 12 January 2011 - 09:13 AM.

[Smigzy]

Increase trader prices, no question, its over £500 per yer PER TRADER to trade on GTROC IIRC and it works. £100 or £200 per year seems fair for the amount of revenue CL must generate for traders.

50p per for sale advert for standard users?

First 50 posts are free then £2 per year?

I'm only a relatively recent member on here but i've been on car forums for years and years, this is defo one of the more very better ones!!!!!! lol

[SimonF]

To be honest, i'd go backwards like has already been mentioned.

Go back to a tiny, free forum.

Something like SEO Board or SMF.

http://www.seo-board.com/

http://www.simplemachines.org/

Reduce the amount of sub sections, completely re-organise the forum and squash it down a little. Stop any resource intensive usage like chat, image hosting, fancy jquery bottom bars and so on.

Once you've done that, reduced hosting costs, the site can become more stable, traders will pay more as the user base grows stronger and more consistant and then the upgrades and server upgrade can pay for themselves.

[Mattharvey12]

Smigzy, on 12 January 2011 - 09:14 AM, said:

Increase trader prices, no question, its over £500 per yer PER TRADER to trade on GTROC IIRC and it works. £100 or £200 per year seems fair for the amount of revenue CL must generate for traders.

50p per for sale advert for standard users?

First 50 posts are free then £2 per year?

I'm only a relatively recent member on here but i've been on car forums for years and years, this is defo one of the more very better ones!!!!!! lol

This

Edited by Mattharvey12, 12 January 2011 - 09:38 AM.

[Tobiasnugent]

SimonF, on 12 January 2011 - 09:33 AM, said:

To be honest, i'd go backwards like has already been mentioned.

Go back to a tiny, free forum.

Something like SEO Board or SMF.

http://www.seo-board.com/

http://www.simplemachines.org/

Reduce the amount of sub sections, completely re-organise the forum and squash it down a little. Stop any resource intensive usage like chat, image hosting, fancy jquery bottom bars and so on.

Once you've done that, reduced hosting costs, the site can become more stable, traders will pay more as the user base grows stronger and more consistant and then the upgrades and server upgrade can pay for themselves.

Simple machines is the same as the hondanortheast forum i use, its pretty good tbh

[PunyDeano]

i believe paid memembership will keep the people of the community that are worth keeping!! would lower the rate of scammers too to be honest. sure it would lose a few people but would you rather lose a few or lose everyone?

[J90CVC]

What's wrong with vbulletin?

Edited by J90CVC, 12 January 2011 - 10:16 AM.

[SimonF]

J90CVC, on 12 January 2011 - 10:16 AM, said:

What's wrong with vbulletin?

We are trying to reduce costs here...

Plus, it's shit.

[J90CVC]

SimonF, on 12 January 2011 - 10:22 AM, said:

J90CVC, on 12 January 2011 - 10:16 AM, said:

What's wrong with vbulletin?

We are trying to reduce costs here...

Plus, it's shit.

It seemed to work fine before? No cost issues either?

[SimonF]

J90CVC, on 12 January 2011 - 10:23 AM, said:

SimonF, on 12 January 2011 - 10:22 AM, said:

J90CVC, on 12 January 2011 - 10:16 AM, said:

What's wrong with vbulletin?

We are trying to reduce costs here...

Plus, it's shit.

It seemed to work fine before? No cost issues either?

https://www.vbulleti...order/index.php

?

Plus, "it work" doesn't mean to say it was any good. The forum software it self is shit, and moving to vb isn't going to solve the problem of it being a hugely bloated piece of kit putting immense strain on a server.

On a side note, if CL would to ever close, i would imagine that something else would pop up. Hell, i'd throw something up similar to the plans above.

Edited by SimonF, 12 January 2011 - 10:27 AM.

[seanyreeves]

paid membership wouldnt have to be compulsury, im on pug306.net for info on my winter beater and thtas paid membership of like 5 pounds a year or sumthing, but the tech sections etc are free. If civiclife started off free for new members as it is now but they didnt have all the features i dont see that stoppping people signing up, and then when they need to use the rest of the features when they have the post count to sell etc then theyll have to pay.220 pounds a months really isnt a lot of money for a forum this size, im sure theres atleast 220 active users that could all pay 1 pounds a month.

[pow]

Paid membership works for alot of sites. Can't see why it wouldn't work here.

Like other have stated make a paid gold membership which allows you to use the chat or for sale section.maybe offer a free civiclife calendar along with the paid membership. £10-20 a year isn't going to break the bank & will stop all the muppets joining, If this small fee is to much for someone to use the site & access the bargains & knowledge this site offers then they don't belong on the site. This site has saved me thousands over the years on cheaper parts & learning on how to fix/repair & upgrade my civic.

[J90CVC]

SimonF, on 12 January 2011 - 10:25 AM, said:

https://www.vbulleti...order/index.php

?

Plus, "it work" doesn't mean to say it was any good. The forum software it self is shit, and moving to vb isn't going to solve the problem of it being a hugely bloated piece of kit putting immense strain on a server.

On a side note, if CL would to ever close, i would imagine that something else would pop up. Hell, i'd throw something up similar to the plans above.

I didn't mean it didn't cost anything, I just meant there was none of this before we moved to IPB.

I like this layout, ease of use, etc. and the errors aren't that big of a deal but obviously it costs a bit of money. What I don't get is that other forums I'm on that use IPB run perfectly 100% of the time, and some have a lot more traffic and users?