JonDMiller
Publisher/Founder
(NOTE: The software changes have been made but still gonna leave this here for folks who didn't see it when it was posted, and so I can refer them to it. There is a mobile version of the site we are working on. Tweaking it now, should be good to go shortly)
We'll be making some changes in the coming days, probably early next week.
We'll be upgrading the forums to vbulletin 4.2. Your posting history, post counts, etc, will not be changed. Will be a look and feel change to get used to, similar to what CycloneFanatic just went through on their forums as they upgraded to 4.2 as well. Once that takes place, there will be some fun things I will be able to do within the forum areas, such as create historic easy access archives to any Iowa related video on youtube, weekly video interviews from youtube, etc...lots of cool mods available within that software that I am excited about.
We'll also be changing the home and content pages to a new Wordpress theme. It will be much cleaner, more white space and more items moved from the page into drop downs. The developers did exactly what I asked them to do last year to arrive at our current design, but I went overboard in a lot of ways. Less is more...and more white space is better.
The app will be going away for a while. There is an ownership issue with the company who designed it that is most easily solved by amicably parting ways and redesigning a new one. The guys who designed it did a great job and I will certainly look their way again for the redesign. I am also going to look into a site design that will be more mobile friendly, too. This will be something we investigate during the next few months and arrive at a solution very early in 2013. I may be able to do something like what my friend Josh Borne has at www.caneinsider.com/forum.php until we arrive at a more permanent solution. If you are on a mobile device, click on that link.
ADS: Advertising will still be included, as that is how we pay the bills. The audio on ads will be a part of what we do going forward. We will have them on the home page and content pages, but NOT on the message board pages. In fact, these ads create the kind of revenues that will allow me to drastically reduce the number of ads displayed on the forum pages, which is where people spend 95% of their time when they come to the site...literally.
I'd like to ask for your help here. I will commit to greatly reducing the number of ads on the site if you are willing to visit our home page and our articles each day. We typically don't have more than three articles in any one day of the sports seasons. If you could visit the site when you roll into work, or before you leave for work, or on your lunch break, via a computer (not mobile device), turn your audio off for a few minutes if you don't want to hear the audio and visit those pages, it would be an enormous boost and help to our efforts here. It's the best way you can 'repay' the financial investment I have made and continue to make into this website, which is four figures per month and will also allow me the flexibility to add more writers to the bullpen.
Obviously, I can't make anyone do this but I'd greatly appreciate it and it would take just two or three minutes each day. That's it. I will cut the number of ads you see on the right side of the page down to just two, remove the ad after the first post and reduce the number of banner ads on the home page and content pages, too. Ultimately, I'd like the ads to be 100% locally sold and I recently made an investment into a partnership with a local ad agency who will be selling ads into our local spots.
So in all, we'll be reducing the number of ads displayed on the forums by around 50%, a serious reduction. In order to do this, I'll need your help in reading the articles and visiting the home page once per day for about 10 seconds, until the ad loads. You can click away after the audio begins. I appreciate it.
If the numbers show that people are doing this regularly, I will be able to reduce banner ads on the message board pages even further, potentially down to just three or four of them.
I am committed to the free model. If you can do this for me as I have requested, it will make a big, big difference and I want to reinvest some of those revenues back into the site.
Also, the new content platform will be a part of something pretty exciting, too...something that will also be tied in to a free recruiting feature. More on that one the change is made.
Thanks for reading, thanks for visiting the site and thanks for considering helping us out as I have outlined above.
If you have feedback you'd like to share with me, you can send me a PM or an email Thank you
We'll be making some changes in the coming days, probably early next week.
We'll be upgrading the forums to vbulletin 4.2. Your posting history, post counts, etc, will not be changed. Will be a look and feel change to get used to, similar to what CycloneFanatic just went through on their forums as they upgraded to 4.2 as well. Once that takes place, there will be some fun things I will be able to do within the forum areas, such as create historic easy access archives to any Iowa related video on youtube, weekly video interviews from youtube, etc...lots of cool mods available within that software that I am excited about.
We'll also be changing the home and content pages to a new Wordpress theme. It will be much cleaner, more white space and more items moved from the page into drop downs. The developers did exactly what I asked them to do last year to arrive at our current design, but I went overboard in a lot of ways. Less is more...and more white space is better.
The app will be going away for a while. There is an ownership issue with the company who designed it that is most easily solved by amicably parting ways and redesigning a new one. The guys who designed it did a great job and I will certainly look their way again for the redesign. I am also going to look into a site design that will be more mobile friendly, too. This will be something we investigate during the next few months and arrive at a solution very early in 2013. I may be able to do something like what my friend Josh Borne has at www.caneinsider.com/forum.php until we arrive at a more permanent solution. If you are on a mobile device, click on that link.
ADS: Advertising will still be included, as that is how we pay the bills. The audio on ads will be a part of what we do going forward. We will have them on the home page and content pages, but NOT on the message board pages. In fact, these ads create the kind of revenues that will allow me to drastically reduce the number of ads displayed on the forum pages, which is where people spend 95% of their time when they come to the site...literally.
I'd like to ask for your help here. I will commit to greatly reducing the number of ads on the site if you are willing to visit our home page and our articles each day. We typically don't have more than three articles in any one day of the sports seasons. If you could visit the site when you roll into work, or before you leave for work, or on your lunch break, via a computer (not mobile device), turn your audio off for a few minutes if you don't want to hear the audio and visit those pages, it would be an enormous boost and help to our efforts here. It's the best way you can 'repay' the financial investment I have made and continue to make into this website, which is four figures per month and will also allow me the flexibility to add more writers to the bullpen.
Obviously, I can't make anyone do this but I'd greatly appreciate it and it would take just two or three minutes each day. That's it. I will cut the number of ads you see on the right side of the page down to just two, remove the ad after the first post and reduce the number of banner ads on the home page and content pages, too. Ultimately, I'd like the ads to be 100% locally sold and I recently made an investment into a partnership with a local ad agency who will be selling ads into our local spots.
So in all, we'll be reducing the number of ads displayed on the forums by around 50%, a serious reduction. In order to do this, I'll need your help in reading the articles and visiting the home page once per day for about 10 seconds, until the ad loads. You can click away after the audio begins. I appreciate it.
If the numbers show that people are doing this regularly, I will be able to reduce banner ads on the message board pages even further, potentially down to just three or four of them.
I am committed to the free model. If you can do this for me as I have requested, it will make a big, big difference and I want to reinvest some of those revenues back into the site.
Also, the new content platform will be a part of something pretty exciting, too...something that will also be tied in to a free recruiting feature. More on that one the change is made.
Thanks for reading, thanks for visiting the site and thanks for considering helping us out as I have outlined above.
If you have feedback you'd like to share with me, you can send me a PM or an email Thank you
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