wow.. users want half decent signatures and instead of giving them that, they get limited even more

first forum i've ever been on that seems to do the opposite of what the people on their forum want

 

Is this policy something that was newly introduced by the company which acquired myG37? Or has it always been around?

 

Has nothing to do with the acquisition of Driver.

 

OMG, all these whinners about sigs and that they don't care about them when they find they have to step up to the plate and unzipper their pockets and grab some coin, hypocretes.

If the sig policy here upsets you go to the forum where it doesn't but stop crying about it like you just fournd your g/f in the rack with your best friend. Whimps

 

Bottom line guys is, they are the rules and you either follow them, or leave. Thats about it.

 

So I guess no one has a really good reason for us to be Premier members other than..oo..sigs and avatars?

Such a friendly crowd.

 

There are many reasons to become a Premier Member..


And quit bashing the staff, just because you don't get want you want doesn't make us 'unfriendly' so stop whining.

 

Damn I coulda sworn I just posted this but it disappeared.

One more question. On G35Driver, there's the same character restriction for the sigs, but they at least are allowed to use HTML tags. How come the policy is different here? I would think it'd be the same...

 

The post of reasons for being a Premier member disappeared as well. Maybe they're reworking the policy?

I've run a BBS a long while back and I've always had to tweak policies etc. to make it work better and attract more members.

 

Ah, is that why the HTML tags are no longer working . . .

 

I have no problem with the signatures, but I'm not sure about the moderators' attitudes . . . wow. No need to get feisty.

 

You know I haven't been here long but this is one of the most backwards forums I have seen. I'm an Internet marketer, I make a healthy income doing it. So I am going to assume this site wants to turn a profit, or at least support itself. Feel free to ban me or whatever, but I'm going to give some advice. Please don't feel offended in any way.

One line signatures is just silly for several reasons, and charging members for "premium access" is also silly for several reasons.

One line signatures hurt both the membership and the forum itself. First, signatures include text, which search engines love. Now the more search terms your site can rank highly for the better off you are. More visitors = more members. Second, members post content which in turn enhances your site and once again gets you better rankings. They are improving your site, for free in a sense (Web 2.0). Whether members know that or not, they are contributing to something that you own and some (if not all) will feel shafted paying for a membership just to have more than 1 line signature.

Premium Memberships also hurt the forum and the members. Sure you make "Um, $20" per premium member, whoopty doo. How many premium (paying) members do you have? Probably not many. You need to work off the volume model, just like Youtube. Offer a free service in exchange for their content, sell advertising space to offset costs. Look at the thousands of other car sites out there, they all sell advertising space to pay the bills, not charging their members. Why? Because it is ten times more profitable. Charge the vendors, not the members. Vendors love it because they have a whole group of people ready to buy their products (targeted marketing), and members love it because they have a great (free) community to contribute to.

Take it for what it's worth but your marketing guy needs to go back to school. There are several other g37 forums out there, and they have far fewer silly rules.

Respectfully yours,
31337

 

Hey 31337, just want to respond to this as a user. I don't speak on behalf of myG37.com. The problem with the sig, IMO, is not the number of lines but people posting pics in that section and ones larger than the previous allowed size. And if you read this thread, that is what most people seem to be complaining about. And as you should know linking to other sites (with you do for the pic) doesn't help out this site. The admins should be working on this and we will see what they do.

Premium access is also a good idea, IMO, because the users get additional benefits for having this. This is a free community and not a requirement which is nice and I highly doubt myG37.com makes their money through Premium membership or else they would be driving people to get it (which they don't). It is just a why for dedicated users to help support the site and get some benefits. As you mentioned, this site as most sites are supported by ad revenue but think about this: How many sites have you gone to that were loaded with ads to include the wording in the posts by users and the only way to get around that is to pay their monthly fee? This site doesn't do that, at least not yet. This site is great for users especially the free ones because of this reason. It also has a clean interface unlike other G37 forums out there.

Also on the comment about the more text on the site the better for search results on search engines, you are not entirely correct on this. Most search engines search for words (string of words) but most rank based on the quantity of quality sites pointing to your site. This helps to get ride of bad sites (which post text that are popular search strings) and helps sites that run off of Java and such. I created a site for my old church a couple years back and I got them to 1st thru 3rd on search results, not because of the words on the site, but the number of sites that I had linking to the site I created. One of the main reason spam bots join forums and post links to a site. Again, this is just my thoughts.

 

I have seen and sent a few PMs out to members throwing up HUGE pics in there sig. If you have been on here during high access times... you will know that the server error has been floatin around a good bit. Not everyone abuses the rules but there are a few here who ruin it for everyone...

I will tell you I have been on other forums where non premier members could not use the search feature and could not access the off topic forums... You dont know how good you have things until there gone... just dont take things for granted and obey the rules... its simple.

 

Okay, after reading those last two posts, I have just one question: why is the signature line limited to one line of text without HTML? It seems like you want to ban images and links to other sites in the signature line, which you can do without limiting the sigs to one line, correct? Just wondering . . .