OTWA gets ass-raped by infopop at $1000 a month to use OpenTopic. Jim says they’re going to move to Infopop’s Eve, only because (in my opinion) Jim can’t figure out how to export and import his data to anything else.
In this thread, Jim makes that scary claim that NO popups will ever show up on OTWA, and they will not “load” the site with banner ads. You know what that means….
Cost? Well, that depends on how you look at it… Until just a few short months ago the cost was more then several times our current cost, Right now, we are down to about $12,000 a year. I hope to cut that further with this move, but OpenTopic is not going to continue to be developed either, so to stay with it would just cause MORE problems down the road… So a few people offering to send in money, while appreciated, and needed, can’t determine our move at this point because of the long term, month to month costs. This is WHY we are waiting until the move is complete before we are willing to address people supporting us with cash. One thing I know for sure? We WILL NOT load the site with banner ads, we WILL NOT have advertising pop-ups!!!!
http://community.otwa.com/3/OpenTopic?q=Y&a=tpc&s=386293084&f=5232924457&m=4391013&p=3
Well… there’s a lot to digest here.. so I’ll just ramble and if I missed someone’s concerns, please point it out to me.. and I will address it…
Also, I skimmed some of threads about this in some of the other forums and quite frankly, there’s a lot of miss-information being posted. There are people that are already leaving before they even know what is going to happen… I’m amazed!
Clarification of a few points and issues… (in no particular order)
JAVA is NOT the same as JavaScript. there is JavaScript all over this forum. you DO NOT need to turn on JAVA, or JVM, or JIT compiler, just JavaScript.
The demo board that I posted for anyone to go to is setup so that anyone with older, non-supported browsers can’t get in, this is an OPTION on the new platform to avoid users having problems USING the site. I’ve been able to access it with every browser I’ve tried, including netscrape 6.2.
I have the logs from this site (OTWA)… and according to the logs… there is only a FRACTION of a percent that will have problems on the new platform according to what they have installed on there systems. But I’m sure even these users will have a few options once I get access to the new platform.
we are not a small site. last month (Feb.) we had just shy of 2.5 million page views. We can’t use some of the more basic message forum software, we HAVE to use something that uses a REAL DATABASE, not a flat file database.
Platform? OpenTopic is owned by infopop, UBBThreads is owned by infopop, and Eve/UBB.x is owned by infopop. I never said I was leaving infopop, I said I was leaving OpenTopic.
Cost? Well, that depends on how you look at it… Until just a few short months ago the cost was more then several times our current cost, Right now, we are down to about $12,000 a year. I hope to cut that further with this move, but OpenTopic is not going to continue to be developed either, so to stay with it would just cause MORE problems down the road… So a few people offering to send in money, while appreciated, and needed, can’t determine our move at this point because of the long term, month to month costs. This is WHY we are waiting until the move is complete before we are willing to address people supporting us with cash. One thing I know for sure? We WILL NOT load the site with banner ads, we WILL NOT have advertising pop-ups!!!!
Cost again? Transferring the data to a new platform means mapping the existing data to new database, if that database does not support the same fields, those fields can’t be used, meaning the board may or may not work if its not done correctly. Also, you just can’t hire someone that claims they can do the tech work, (even if they can)… I have to hire a reputable company, a company that I know, a company that I trust with YOUR data, and a company that has a LOT to lose if they mess things up or things go wrong… A company that I can lock into a contract that protects your data… A company that I would feel secure in handing over 20,000 users names and passwords to (in other words, the database) Quoted cost… $6,000-$10,000 minimum.
Now for the timeframe…. we just got the site back about 30 days ago… BUT… we just got control of the OTWA.com domain about 5 days ago… meaning we have to move things quickly at this point or start writing checks…
Now for infopop… They are a good company!! I trust them… OTWA was scheduled to ‘turned off’ on the 6th of this month unless we either moved it, or picked up the contract. (this was part of the transfer) – Well, infopop was willing to work with us to get the site moved, they will willing to do this WITHOUT a new contract, WITHOUT advance payment… They are not a greedy, screw you company, they are a good company. So our choice was paying an outside company 6-10k or working with infopop to get this done. (even if we chose the UBBThreads option, which we may eventually end up on)
Also… a far as losing people that won’t be able to use the new platform, I would be even MORE concerned about this if it was really losing them because they COULDN’T access the new board, not because they CHOOSE not to allow their browser to access it… (I can change setting on the demo site for testing also)
Also… as you have probably figured out by now, this move has NOTHING to do with adding bells and whistles…
So… what did I miss? Oh.. the future of OTWA… Simply put, OTWA will grow into the Online Traders Web Alliance and play a major role in the industry or it will be ‘just a chat board’ – that will be up to YOU.
It doesn’t matter what I do, some people will be happy, some people will not be happy. It will ALWAYS be that way. That is why there are so many paint colors in the world.
So… What did I miss? What would you like me to address? What would you like to talk about?
-Jim
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