Has anyone

[Harry]

Besides labrocca done up a paid subscriptions plugin? And has anyone at all done up a multi paid subscriptions plugin?

One of those things that i never understood why it has yet to be added to the core? Most sites now rely on donations or is a business and this sort of thing would make MYBB much more attractive to such sites. Not to mention it may give some a incentive to buy stuff from the paid guys if they themselves have a means of income ( via donations etc ) to pay for it.

Don't need it for myself but constantly see others asking for it.  Would rather not send them to him. Thus wondering if someone else has done it and if not perhaps someone would? If i knew how to code this would be first on my list.

[ZiNgA BuRgA]

PayPal offers a simple code for donations, which anyone knowing how the template system works, can easily embed onto the forum, so the only issue here is paid subscriptions.

Well, none of the forums I regularly, or even, irregularly, visit have paid subscriptions of any sort, though I guess this feature may be used more in specific types of forums (but not really forums in general).  Most forums are really a discussion platform, rather than something involving payments.
Then again, MyBB has a number of things which don't get used too often in general anyway.  I think they mostly implement stuff which are relatively not too difficult, and stuff requested by many people.  I haven't seen that many requests for a paid subscription feature, so they probably decided not to bother with it.  Another thing could be its reliance on third parties to handle things correctly (ie must interface with Paypal) which isn't exactly a nice thing.

As for modifications, I personally don't have any interest as I don't charge people for stuff, so I haven't bothered making one.  I suppose many other authors feel that way too, especially if they're releasing stuff for free.
That's my guess to your issue anyway... >_>

[Harry]

(06-14-2010 05:20 PM)ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:  PayPal offers a simple code for donations, which anyone knowing how the template system works, can easily embed onto the forum, so the only issue here is paid subscriptions.

Well, none of the forums I regularly, or even, irregularly, visit have paid subscriptions of any sort, though I guess this feature may be used more in specific types of forums (but not really forums in general).  Most forums are really a discussion platform, rather than something involving payments.
Then again, MyBB has a number of things which don't get used too often in general anyway.  I think they mostly implement stuff which are relatively not too difficult, and stuff requested by many people.  I haven't seen that many requests for a paid subscription feature, so they probably decided not to bother with it.  Another thing could be its reliance on third parties to handle things correctly (ie must interface with Paypal) which isn't exactly a nice thing.

As for modifications, I personally don't have any interest as I don't charge people for stuff, so I haven't bothered making one.  I suppose many other authors feel that way too, especially if they're releasing stuff for free.
That's my guess to your issue anyway... >_>

Thanks.. Was not aware of that with paypal. My thinking was for sites that maybe give a little extra thanks for donations. Guess that is how it could be used? Pardon my ignorance on it. I never used one of these on any of my forums.

I have seen a few ask for it and i know of a few as well who just went elsewhere and did not use MYBB because it lacked this. MYBB has not really made much traction into business/professional type sites and i suspect this is a part of it. Plus this is the only BBS without one in the core or with a plugin/mod freely available. Thus why i think it is a great idea.

BTW.. I never understood that argument some make. I suspect there is many sites without any income period and thus dont have the money for such a thing. Now if they had the ability to make some money then a greater chance they may buy something else. Catch my drift?  If i was a plugin author trying to make money THIS is one that would be free. I would be pushing it hard too. That way it increases my odd's of more sites having the means to buy my paid stuff. Some are really not to bright when it comes to this stuff.

[ZiNgA BuRgA]

(06-14-2010 05:41 PM)Harry Wrote:  BTW.. I never understood that argument some make. I suspect there is many sites without any income period and thus dont have the money for such a thing. Now if they had the ability to make some money then a greater chance they may buy something else. Catch my drift?  If i was a plugin author trying to make money THIS is one that would be free. I would be pushing it hard too. That way it increases my odd's of more sites having the means to buy my paid stuff. Some are really not to bright when it comes to this stuff.

I think that's a bit of a quirky way to think of things.
For one, most (legitimate - not some stupid 13 year old thinking "zomg I can earn moniezzz!") admins should be able to cover the cost of hosting if they plan to actually accept payments for things.  The subscriptions to paid sites are really cheap compared to the cost of hosting.

Of course, there probably are situations where someone tries to start up something with no monetary capital on free hosting, and actually intend to purchase modifications if they had the money (or unwilling to send funds to PayPal), but I think this is rather a small minority.

[Harry]

(06-14-2010 07:08 PM)ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:  

(06-14-2010 05:41 PM)Harry Wrote:  BTW.. I never understood that argument some make. I suspect there is many sites without any income period and thus dont have the money for such a thing. Now if they had the ability to make some money then a greater chance they may buy something else. Catch my drift?  If i was a plugin author trying to make money THIS is one that would be free. I would be pushing it hard too. That way it increases my odd's of more sites having the means to buy my paid stuff. Some are really not to bright when it comes to this stuff.

I think that's a bit of a quirky way to think of things.
For one, most (legitimate - not some stupid 13 year old thinking "zomg I can earn moniezzz!") admins should be able to cover the cost of hosting if they plan to actually accept payments for things.  The subscriptions to paid sites are really cheap compared to the cost of hosting.

Of course, there probably are situations where someone tries to start up something with no monetary capital on free hosting, and actually intend to purchase modifications if they had the money (or unwilling to send funds to PayPal), but I think this is rather a small minority.

Not really. I know of a number of sites ( some very large ) who totally rely on donations etc for this sort of thing including hosting etc. Thinking more about it that one site ( big board ) i linked to about another plugin ( wondering if it was possible ) has their donation system built like this. Basically if you donate you get some added stuff. The donations is what keeps that place running. Plus more and more do try to avoid free forum hosting at all costs now because of it's limitations. Talking about access to he database etc so people can move on to paid hosting when the need comes and or when they can. So they will start out with very cheap hosting which can be had. I still think if a site is able to make money then they would be more willing to spend money on other stuff.

Then there is the issue of limited places to go for some plugins such as this one. As said labrocca i *believe* is the only one who has such a plugin? His however is for single paid subscriptions. So there is a need for it and especially a need for a improved one over what he has.


I strongly believe this is why those like SMF/PHPBB remain on top because stuff like this is available and not to mention for free. yet the morons on MYBB expects someone to pay for this and i dont give a damn about it only being 10 dollars. That is still 10 dollars someone would have saved by going to SMF/PHPBB and thus why they do. yeah MYBB is very good but when it comes down to it people are gonna cut corners and the other two options do get the job done. Till those on MYBB start seeing this again i strongly believe MYBB is not going anywhere fast anytime soon. Not till there is alternatives for everything including this. I'll say here and now if i really needed this one thing i would switch to another system before going to labrocca for it. believe it or not there is many others who do just that and refuses to use his stuff because of the hack site he runs. Thats not my reason but all know how forum owners are where that sort of thing is concerned. It is just a huge turn off no matter how one explains it.

[ZiNgA BuRgA]

I think you're misunderstanding things on a number of levels.
I strongly doubt these big sites rely solely on donations - they probably are funded primarily through advertising or affiliation or similar.  I've seen a number of forums do this.  Donations just provide extra income to the forum owners (after all, users don't know how much the owner is really earning through ads).
Generally, subtle advertising can more than easily cover for hosting costs.  I'm on a dedicated server here, and not the cheapest one ($66/mo).  My site doesn't even need this much power - it could easily do fine on a $10/mo VPS server with 1GB RAM, but ad revenue easily covers for this server (and I'm too lazy to switch).  Any forum which gets a decent amount of traffic, and has advertising, I will seriously doubt relies on donations to keep afloat.  And even if it does, the owner must really consider the stability of such an income stream - typically these can vary a lot, and if you have to match payments with earnings in this situation, you're either going to have to leave a big margin of error, or be willing to contribute funds yourself (or let the site go down, which is unlikely for a large forum owner).
As such, a subscription payment is hardly anything compared to the hosting they have to manage.

Of course, the above is only for established forums, which probably won't convert to another system, so it's rather a moot point.


I think the rest of your post is a bit of an overstatement...

[Harry]

(06-15-2010 08:14 AM)ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:  I think you're misunderstanding things on a number of levels.
I strongly doubt these big sites rely solely on donations - they probably are funded primarily through advertising or affiliation or similar.  I've seen a number of forums do this.  Donations just provide extra income to the forum owners (after all, users don't know how much the owner is really earning through ads).
Generally, subtle advertising can more than easily cover for hosting costs.  I'm on a dedicated server here, and not the cheapest one ($66/mo).  My site doesn't even need this much power - it could easily do fine on a $10/mo VPS server with 1GB RAM, but ad revenue easily covers for this server (and I'm too lazy to switch).  Any forum which gets a decent amount of traffic, and has advertising, I will seriously doubt relies on donations to keep afloat.  And even if it does, the owner must really consider the stability of such an income stream - typically these can vary a lot, and if you have to match payments with earnings in this situation, you're either going to have to leave a big margin of error, or be willing to contribute funds yourself (or let the site go down, which is unlikely for a large forum owner).
As such, a subscription payment is hardly anything compared to the hosting they have to manage.

Of course, the above is only for established forums, which probably won't convert to another system, so it's rather a moot point.


I think the rest of your post is a bit of an overstatement...

feel free to register and ask these people how they keep the site up and running. http://www.easternuswx.com/bb/index.php?act=idx

Note no ads etc. The two largest sites in that niche ( that one is the largest ) are like that.

I know of plenty of others as well not even in that niche. I know this may seem strange to a few but that is how a good number of the largest sites have started and still go on to this day. Thus donations.

Some such as that site refuses to put ads on their sites for a slew of reasons. Most don't care to have them because of how intrusive the ads are. Thus ugly and clutter up the site. My one site ( MYBB ) is currently run totally off donations and is covered for atleast the next few month's. Ofcourse it is not that big either.

In either case it is not a great incentive to switch forum software when you don't have these options. Plus it doesn't help with growing sites who use MYBB and thus you end up with what we have and thus alot of come and go sites who use MYBB. So i wouldn't say my statement is overstated either.

[ZiNgA BuRgA]

(06-15-2010 08:42 AM)Harry Wrote:  is currently run totally off donations and is covered for atleast the next few month's

Then you have plenty of headroom to spare for a small subscription payment.

(06-15-2010 08:42 AM)Harry Wrote:  In either case it is not a great incentive to switch forum software when you don't have these options.

There are MANY reasons not to switch forum software.  I really don't think your idea that people can easily change between them is quite justified.
Switching has all sorts of issues, from old URLs breaking due to the new script using different filenames, to your users being unfamiliar with the system.  Forum conversion does occur, but for most people, not the way you put it.

I can take your point that not having this in the forum software itself can be a disincentive to initially chose MyBB (after all, why pay when you can get for free?), but claims that this is going to be heavily detrimental to its future success is a bit far and beyond...

[Harry]

(06-15-2010 09:54 AM)ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:  

(06-15-2010 08:42 AM)Harry Wrote:  is currently run totally off donations and is covered for atleast the next few month's

Then you have plenty of headroom to spare for a small subscription payment.

(06-15-2010 08:42 AM)Harry Wrote:  In either case it is not a great incentive to switch forum software when you don't have these options.

There are MANY reasons not to switch forum software.  I really don't think your idea that people can easily change between them is quite justified.
Switching has all sorts of issues, from old URLs breaking due to the new script using different filenames, to your users being unfamiliar with the system.  Forum conversion does occur, but for most people, not the way you put it.

I can take your point that not having this in the forum software itself can be a disincentive to initially chose MyBB (after all, why pay when you can get for free?), but claims that this is going to be heavily detrimental to its future success is a bit far and beyond...

The future depends on whether or not what we have currently continues and thus limited options for some of this stuff. MYBB has already HAD several years ( back to 1.2 release IMO ) to do all that. Talking 4years as of Sept if i recall correctly?

As for switching.. Look at the recent huge migration from vB to IPB over the vb pricing crap. You know as well as i do that MYBB can do just about everything IPB does. Only difference is the support. Yet MYBB picked up very little of that action. These were well established sites too and not just some small random forum. I believe this is a huge part of the problem. I use BOTH MYBB and IPB and am well aware of what they can do. Not to mention IPB doesn't exactly have all that great of a modification community itself. You can get some awesome custom skins but that is about it. I have a hard time believing all of those users require that much support either other then perhaps to help make the switch which costs to do as well.  IPB has had it's share of issues as well since the release of 3.0! Mainly browser related though.

Really nothing else explains why people such as them who went from vb to IPB continue to avoid MYBB. We all know it is a great scipt that can do anything IPB etc can do. Sure it has it's little bugs but what doesn't? Development continues at a decent pace as well. That leaves this and thus lacking mod/plugins for MYBB for things such as this paid subscriptions plugin. Ofcourse the community forums is not exactly welcoming either and i admit probably plays a role in this.

[ZiNgA BuRgA]

(06-15-2010 11:24 AM)Harry Wrote:  As for switching.. Look at the recent huge migration from vB to IPB over the vb pricing crap.

I'm not sure how large that is exactly.  All vB forums I visit still are on vB.  Just because you see some people do it, it doesn't necessarily represent the larger community.  Most webmasters, from what I can tell, want something set up, and then being able to forget about it, and not to have to hassle with conversions.
But anyway, for these group of people converting, that's because it's a commercial system that you have to keep paying to use (or receive updates).
If they offered free updates forever, then you can be sure many people wouldn't want to change.

(06-15-2010 11:24 AM)Harry Wrote:  You know as well as i do that MYBB can do just about everything IPB does.

I strongly doubt that.
But I haven't used IPB to be able to judge there, though I know it does come along with a lot more modules.

(06-15-2010 11:24 AM)Harry Wrote:  Really nothing else explains why people such as them who went from vb to IPB continue to avoid MYBB. We all know it is a great scipt that can do anything IPB etc can do.

Even so, you're method of judging things is too simple.
There are lots of factors, including information gathering issues (not everyone wants to spend time researching forum systems, or perhaps dig deep in code to see its quality) to personal preferences.