GeoffK

The <a href="http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=304429&perpage=25&pagenumber=1">First Thread</a> was getting pretty long, so I thought I'd start Part II off with a recap of what we're looking at for Premium Membership on DVD Talk:


First off, to respond to people who have voiced some concerns about premium services 'creeping' their way into other areas of the site:

We have ABSOLUTELY NO intent to covert things which are currently ad supported to a membership service. This especially includes the DVD Talk Reviews as well as the key areas of the forum.

There have been a number of really fantastic ideas in this thread, but to be clear the #1 benefit of forum membership (aside from supporting the site) will be the ability to access the forum without ads.

Before I get down to what I'm thinking will be included in the premium service, let me list what won't be included:

1) @DVDTalk email address. There are too many issues with Spam and spammers for us to offer email addresses to people. Also services like Yahoo Mail do such a fantastic job of offering Free Email with Spam Filters we don't think it makes and sense to offer this kind of service.

2) Image hosting. After a lot of research, there are a ton of issues around Image Hosting which make it very problematic to offer right out of the gate. So don't expect this as part of the membership

3) Tiered levels. We looked at what it would take to track a number of different membership levels (ie letting people buy a custom title, etc) and to manage it would take more resources than we have. So expect to see 2 options. An annual membership and a lifetime membership.

4) Avatars. Again a ton of issues to deal with in moderating avatars, so they'll not be there at launch.

What we are planning on offering is this:
1) An ad free version of the forum, which loads much faster and has no banners, pop-unders, or other advertising.

2) An indication under your name when you post that you are a paid supporting member. This probably won't replace our standard member titles. But would most likely be an additional field or graphic that would appear under the names of paid members.

3) A Set of NEW forum areas which are only postable by paid members. These will include a General For Sale/Trade Area, which you must be a member to post in (but will be readable by all). As well as a Members Only forum area which is ONLY readable and Postable by members.

4) Member's Only giveaways/promotions. We're planning on posting special and limited offers early in the Member's Only forum as well as host special giveaways and promotions which reward the paid members. This could also be an area for people to share things that they find on the net (ie paid surveys, freebies) which are limited opportunity that they wouldn't necessarily post on the open forum.

5) Priority Member Service. Paid members will be able to fill out a customer support forum for things like Member Name Changes, email address changes, forgotten passwords. or general issues they may be having with their account. These support issues will get priority response.

6)Private Messaging* This is still up in the air. But we'd LIKE to offer this to paid members.

At this point Annual Membership is probably going to be $30 but in true DVD Talk fashion expect there to be some great deals on membership (especially during the first week/month). We haven't set the Lifetime Membership price, but we hope to soon.

We're still looking to September to launch this

- G

MJKTool

Probably a silly question but does this include the "DVDTalk review" ad's for the site?

Aghama

I'm just going to reiterate how wonderful thread tracking would be.

RoyalTea

Is that where a little dot shows up on the folder icon of each thread that you've posted in?

Adam Tyner

Hmmm. I'd hope not. I personally wouldn't even characterize them as ads.

MJKTool

Only reason I ask is because they are in the Mature forum and it would be nice to be able to browse those threads at work and not have to worry about some dvd coverart of a 10 inch penis in some chicks mouth

Aghama

That's the most basic form. Something Awful has it set up where in your control panel there is a list of your subscribed threads, in order of their last post, and you can set it up to automatically subscribe to a thread when you post to it. It seems to me that this wouldn't take up much disk space to implement, and the bandwidth hit would be negligible.

renaldow

Would there be ice cream?

Boot

deleted inappropriate comment

twikoff

show post count for premium members and everyone will rush to sign up

MJKTool

Im willing to bet alot of people would sign up just for that!

Holly E. Ordway

Thanks for the detailed description of the plan! It sounds perfectly reasonable to me, and I'm very glad to hear the commitment to keeping the "core features" open to all members. I hope it will be profitable for DVDTalk!

PixyJunket

If I pay for membership can I please have my username changed to PixyJunket to match my email, AIM, website, etc? I know it's a huge, radical change from my exsisting name..

GeoffK

I'm happy to do that for you now.

PixyJunket

Thanks!! Looking forward to the premium services!!

Venusian

along the lines of thread tracking, I have a problem with the current system. I come on here and read for a while. then i exit IE, if I come back within a few minutes, the system forgets what I looked at the last time and a lot are marked unread, even the ones I'm the last poster in. If I don't come back for a long time, it seems okay. any idea why?

bishop2knight

If we get enough DTSL (DVDtalk SmallBall League) managers to pay for the extra service, can we make DTSL the "Official" dvdtalk.com SmallBall League?

RoyalTea

will premium users be able to spy on the other users?

matome

Wow, didn't even know this premium service idea was being thrown around! Well, I'd definitely contribute. I would've liked avatars implemented (small and non-animated) for quick poster identification, but overall it sounds like a good idea!

Blade

The forum has 15 minute lag on it, so that if you don't do anything in the forums for about 15 minutes, it considers you "logged off" and any posts made after that will be "unread" when you come back.

However, if you exit and then come back in less than the 15 minutes, then, to the forum, it looks like you never left, so the previous unread tags are still there. Although, that doesn't really explain why threads you made the last post in are marked unread.

In any case, at the bottom of each forum, and at the bottom of the forum list page, there are tiny lines of text that read "Mark this forum/all forums read." If you click on the appropriate link before you exit the browser, then, even if you come back right away, the read/unread tags should be right.

Hope that helps.

Venusian

actually i tried that too and marked the forum read and it did the same thing. everything previously unread was unread this time too

GeoffK

No

Blade

Sounds like your cookies for DVDTalk might be messed up.

The only thing I can suggest is to check out the Cookie section of the FAQ in this forum and reset your cookies for DVDTalk. That might help. It might not too. Sorry I couldn't help you out more.

caiman

To be perfectly honest, I'm disappointed about the avatar thing. I would have really liked to have that feature added. Especially for $30. Ouch.

TomOpus

I agree with caiman. I'm all for supporting the board this way and it's not a deal breaker, but it would kinda be cool to have avatars.

One idea could be to have a basic Premium Membership and have Options that could be added for a few $. Maybe avatars could be a extra $5 or $10/year. I'd be willing to go this route.

However it turns out, this is a really cool idea and I hope it's very successful.