CGA banner links?

[seismograph]

I start complaining, because webpages under the CGA framebanner doesn't work for me. That might be the jscript and not the fault of the contentcreator, who has nothing to do with CGA. ..even if the banner suggests something like that.

Such frames with a banner work for 99% of all users and pages. .. i don't care anymore, because my point was ignored!

 

However... a popup banner is much better in compatibliy and do not destroys the logical integrity of a webpage. ..nothing legal or illegal, just a question of respect to contentcreators!

[ingo]

Originally posted by Jeff Mottle:

quote:

---

...Maybe thats what my browser called "block filtered content" Sadly the naked women are gone too.....

You do realize that banners are the only thing that keep this site running...right. Well actually i didn't realized it , that leads us to the usual discussion about advertising against paid access....

[seismograph]

better talk about product placements then paid access...

 

Jeff, did you ever thought of asking companies for providing bandwidth/traffic on their servers for the CGA gallery or the board?

 

Instead having product banners you can add a "powered / sponsored by" company link/banner on each of CGA's pages.

 

I also think a redesign of the CGA webpage can cut down traffic. ..the htmlcode of your frontpage have nearly 90kb in size. ..that's without images.

 

anyway, nuff said.

[Jeff Mottle]

I agree that paid access would most likely fail. While there are certain sitautions where this can work, I don't at all envision it being able to work on CGA.

 

Bandwidth is not what costs the most amount of money, so that is really a mute point. However the cost of the dedicted server is quite costly. I've been offered space on servers in the past by a few companies, but I have resisted for a few reasons. One, the CGA server has a lot of custom software installed to ensure that things run as I want and two, The support and service I get from my exising host would be VERY hard to beat. Moving servers would almost surely mean more downtime for the site and headaches in admistering the site, as no company is going to give me carte blanche access to their server.

 

The server costs are not the only thing that cost money on the site however. I also need to pay for software, hardware, airline tickes, hotels, SIGGRAPH parties, scholarships, office supplies, long distance, profit, postage etc etc. I also hope that I will soon be able to pay contributors as well, but that is tentative based upon income next year.

 

Anyway, I'm not sure if you saw my informal poll a few weeks ago aksing about how you envision advertising on the site working on CGA2, but one of the possibilities was a single company sponsoring the site with "sponsored by" banners as you indicated. The overall consensus from people is that they would prefer to have multiple advertsiers as many like to know about the new products and services that companies are offering. Frankly I'm a little torn on the situation as a single site sponsor would mean gurateed income for the site and more realestate for content and less advertising. On the other hand shutting out other advertiers and re-designing the site to only accomodate one sponsor is a dangerous game as I'd be putting all my eggs into one basket. If that company ever stopped sponsoring it could mean the end of CGA if I could not find a replacement. Finding a company that is willing to fork over the $$$ of 7 advertisers is no small feat.

 

I am considering this direction very carefully now as I do have a tentative offer on the table to have a single sponsor for the site for one year. It definetly show how much faith this company has in CGA, which is fantastic, but there are still a few things for me to decide and how much of a risk I'm willing to take.

 

In terms of the home page being 90K....if you saw how much code is involved to make that page run you'd know why. That page makes alot of calls to the database to retrieve information. The entire page get the images and text from the database.

 

This is an intersting thread, so keep your thoughts and feedback coming.

[ingo]

Originally posted by Jeff Mottle:

.....The server costs are not the only thing that cost money on the site however. I also need to pay for software, hardware, airline tickes, hotels, SIGGRAPH parties, scholarships, office supplies, long distance, profit, postage etc etc. I also hope that I will soon be able to pay contributors as well, but that is tentative based upon income next year....

Airline tickets for the website ? Seriously you think about the cga as a whole, while we talk "only" about the website.

 

So i'm not sure if i would see the website as a marketing tool for the rest of cga, ie leave it free, or if i would like the website to be a "professional" solution, means we should pay a monthly/yearly fee for access to the forums, or parts of the forums (fori ?). I guess if you do the last you will initially loose a lot of members, but time will tell.

 

My main concern is that you now try to make the website nice for advertisers first, while on a paid website you can concentrate on your clients; and a special forum for advertisers with a special fee where they can post their ads would be an option too, and give the advertizers direct contact to the clients.

 

Just my two european cents (= 4 american cents )

[seismograph]

Well ..dedicated server... WHY?

 

Are you talking about cronjobs when talking about Software or do you *only* mean ASP/CGI/mysql stuff?

I think many of your pages can be done really much much more effency.

 

Loading images from DB is the worst thing you can do..."let's bomb the db with binaries" ..even if it protects your content(images) from beeing stealed, but even for that problem exists smarter solutions (depending on your system):

code:

---

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?url which is allowed(/)?.*$     [NC]

RewriteRule .*\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|bmp)$ http://redirecturl [R,NC]

 

Support for Software????

You are running a dedicated Server, so you should know what to do, else a managed server is a better solution than pay for support.

 

You may mean different scripts as software.. maybe this board... congratulation, you have choosen a board, which tends to produce sometimes more serverload than YABB. ..it's not worth the money.. go with a managed Invision Board, it's cheap and really fast.

 

I also need to pay for software, hardware, airline tickes, hotels, SIGGRAPH parties, scholarships, office supplies, long distance, profit, postage etc etc

Was that serious?

..is it an online comunity or a cashcow? :???:

 

 

Say, not everything is needed to be visible on your frontpage since it's a newspage. ..also your metatags confuses me.. that's at least 4-5kb -->

I bet a reduced version of the frontpage can be done with 60-65kb ..which would mean 25% less traffic.

 

anyway, better we go on to shape that topic with a sharper knife, because every banner on a webpage hurts and especially if the webpage do not belongs to CGA.

 

[ December 02, 2003, 10:18 AM: Message edited by: seismograph ]

[Jeff Mottle]

Seismograph,

 

Mabye I'm just reading into your posts or you are having a bad day. I'm at a loss as so why you feel the need to trash my decisions, my site and how I run this site. There is such a thing as being contructive. As far as I'm concerned you're just being rude.

 

 

Loading images from DB is the worst thing you can do..."

The images are not in the database, just the names of the files that actually exist on the server, howver doing BLOB and placing the images in the DB would be faster and more robust. I'm not sure what DB you use, but MSSQL works quite well this way. I've done it inthe past with sites much larger than this, but did not do it with CGA as it started life as an Access DB.

 

Support for Software????

In a way yes. I lease MSSQL Server so I do get support for that. But I also have support for any other server issues that come up. While I'm a fairly knowledgeble server admin, I don't know everything and they always provide a response within 15-30 min.

 

congratulation, you have choosen a board, which tends to produce sometimes more serverload than YABB

I've not had any problems with it, but I am moving to Vbulletin very soon. They are workign on the convertor now.

 

..is it an online comunity or a cashcow?

You see statements like that just piss me off. If you knew how many hours of my life I've put into this site and how much time I spend maintaining it, you would not make statements like that. Yes CGA started as an online community, but guess what I'm not going to stop eating or paying my mortgage so you can have a forum to hang out on or news to digest. While I love the people on this site and the community as a whole, I think you are out of line with that comment. Things like sending people their prizes for challenges, flying to SIGGRAPH to cover the show and giving away a scholarship ($1000 of which CGA contributed last year) are hardly what I would call frivilous expenses. Nor are the software and hardware I have to buy so that I can maintain and adminisiter the site from my office. While I do make money, I'd hardly call it a cashcow. And even if I was making alot of profit so what. The site has not faltered in the quality of content it provides, nor have I been influenced by advertsiers. Just because I have been able to come up with a valuable resource means I should do it for free?

 

Anyway, you seem hell bent on trashing what I've done, so as far as I'm concerned think what you want. It's a free world. In the mean time I'll run CGA how I want...after all it is MY company.

 

Sheeese!

[seismograph]

calm down... have i hit a sensitive point?

It's like a tightrope walker... right?

 

now... what about popup banner, instead ..just call it what it is.. destroying webpages and webdesign?

*g* i'm sure you still haven't understand my suggestion ... you don't get paid per click. ..so what will a proxyserver do when a popup comes? ..you still get your hit, but not me.

[kainoa]

Jeff:

And even if I was making alot of profit so what. The site has not faltered in the quality of content it provides, nor have I been influenced by advertsiers.

Amen brother!

 

seismograph:

what about popup banner, instead ..

Are you high? F#CK POPUPS

 

Pls excuse me. But that's just nonsense. I love this site, I wouldn't change a thing. :ebiggrin:

[Jeff Mottle]

*g* i'm sure you still haven't understand my suggestion ... you don't get paid per click. ..so what will a proxyserver do when a popup comes? ..you still get your hit, but not me.

No the banner code is cache defeating and will not cache.

[xgarcia]

Everything is fine the way it is now Jeff. If it's not broken don't fix it. I for one think you're doing a tremendous job, especially since this is not you're full-time day job. The frontpage, at most, loads in about 3 seconds on my cable modem, usually 1 second.

 

Siemsograph: Start your own CG portal site and let's see how well you can maintain it. Buy the hardware, hosting, bandwidth, then design it and advertise it so people will come. Hmmm...didn't think so.

 

[ December 02, 2003, 08:02 PM: Message edited by: xgarcia ]

[rafael_l]

I agree with xgracia, Jeff, the site is working well, and looking great. If their is not a thing broke, then why fix it. I connect at 56, or dial-up, no DSL or Cable in my area, and still it take's around 10 sec to load. I am happy being a turtle, but slow speed make me wise. I have been trying to set up a site as CGA, for more than a year, so I can imagine the amount of time and dedication from Jeff into this site. There is no other site like this, and I have searched around, but have not found one as unique and special as CGA.

 

So Jeff keep up the good work, you are doing great.

[Jeff Mottle]

Thanks for the positive feedback guys. I won't be changing too much of the layout, but I want it to read more like a magazine than a website and I want to give it a fresh look. As far as banners, I won't put any more than there already are, but I may change their positions...still working on that.

[seismograph]

Just tell me another newspage which use framebanner / deep linking! ..just show me..

 

I prefer to call it frame banner,..btw, because the additonal frame has nothing to do with the content below of that frame. ..so it's not deep linking for me.

 

You boys still don't get it!!!! ...deep linking is nothing which is usual on newspages, because no1 have a contract with contentprovider which would allow deep linking!

Deep linking of free webspace provider is legal since they have a kind of contract.

 

Also Deep linking like on neoseek.com have to do with the contnet itself, because you have to rate it, but there is no ad in the frame

 

Deep linking rules are the dumbest thing I've seen.

You know there are some basic rules on the web, but you ignore it...

It's hypocratic to face warez the way i can see it on the left, but ignore another illegal issue.

 

@xgarcia:

I know the difference between an online comunity and a commercial page... and that's the reason why i pluged in to this discussion...jeff don't get paid for clicks... damn, do you know the difference and the tricks?

 

[ December 03, 2003, 02:44 AM: Message edited by: seismograph ]

[nisus]

Hi all,

 

In Belgium we have a saying - de beste stuurlui staan aan wall - which freely translates into: '

It's always easy to critic when you're on the outside OR The best managers are the one not doing the job OR it's easy to comment on others, but hard to do it yourself...

 

Imho Jeff is doing a marvellous job by supplying us a HIGH QUALITY portal with up-to-date NEWS (from our business!) and a FORUM to talk about OUR interests. Also he is providing much more (challenges, sholarships,...) and fun, a hobby, an edu/entertainmaint...

 

I really don't care if Jeff makes a lot of money out of it, but I do care if he doesn't! To me, he SHOULD make lots of money so it's well worth to stick with CGA whenever something burns out.

 

I don't care how he runs CGA, it's his brainchild! I know but one thing: Jeff is doing a great job, because otherwise CGA simply won't be here! So try to understand his choices because MOST PROBABLY they have a good reason why he does so.

 

So if one doesn't see it, one is probably not DEEP enough involved.

 

Jeff, keep up the good thing!

Seismograph, use a little tact in critisizing.

 

rgds

 

nisus

[ingo]

Well youre right nisus, one can say the critic in a nicer way.

 

But otherwise i understand seismos frustration too when Jeff post the message against no support for illegal software but on the other hand does himself things like putting a cga frame above a new window from a different website or do deep linking, which as every serious webdesigner knows are illegal too.

 

So i hope both sides calm down a bit and think a bit more before posting a message.

 

Regarding the sponsoring of one sponsor only this is surely a nice opportunity, but on the other hand one have to take care that it fits well and doesn't distract other people from visiting the website. And as said in my messages before a vendor forum with paid access for the vendors to post their press releases or other messages will be an option too.

[Jeff Mottle]

First off let's clarify your terms so you don't confuse people.

 

Deep Linking is when you link to any page other than the home page. For example if the news was on www.company.com/news/article1.htm then deeplinking would be linking to that link directly instead of www.company.com. This is what I find ridiculous and is what I ignore. I and about 99% of the internet do this, so I'm hardly alone.

 

Framing content is when you wrap exterior content in a frame from your own site. And just to put your mind at ease, here are just a few sites in our very own industry that do this:

 

http://www.cadwire.net/

http://www.architectureweek.com

 

I hardly see the comparision of framing content or deeplinking to posting warez. Granted some may disagreee with it, but deeplinking is hardly going to get my company sued like pirating 50 copies of max and selling them on a forum.

 

Anyway, this is my last post on this thread. I've got more inportant things to do, like read post by the others on this forum who don't feel the need to so rudely attack the way I do everything. I am always open to contructive ctiticism and to suggestions. That is how this site got to be the way it is, but I can tell you right now I don't respond to your rude and arrogant attacks.

[xgarcia]

Originally posted by seismograph:

You know there are some basic rules on the web, but you ignore it...

It's hypocratic to face warez the way i can see it on the left, but ignore another illegal issue.

 

@xgarcia:

I know the difference between an online comunity and a commercial page... and that's the reason why i pluged in to this discussion...jeff don't get paid for clicks... damn, do you know the difference and the tricks?

"Online community / commercial page". I've never though of CGArchitect as a commercial page. But there is much more than just the forums. Links to the forums take up, I don't now, about 5% of the front page. Seismo - you need to relax buddy. Like I said before, in your own spare time start up a new and revolutionary CG portal site for arch viz. Stop wasting your time criticising one you no hand in. Jeff heard your comments and addressed them but now you're just badgering. Please.

[mbr]

I'll admit that I don't particularly care too much for the animated adds (like that car flying by on the top ALL the time!). But I also understand that this is professional site, not merely a site for 3D folk. Given that context, it is sometimes nice to come here and look around for links to places I can buy trees or other resources. Ideally, there would be a separate place for the adds leaving the front page for forum posts and news.

 

But he's a one man show with no one (that I see) volunteering time to help manage the site (like furthering the programming and capabilities). Sites that do this successfully will have a team of qualified individuals donating significants amount of time, not to mention at least a hosting sponsor.

Computer Love Newstoday

are to very successful examples of custom sites specifically for the graphic design community. Neither has ANY adds, but the programming is quite complex. Both are great sites and I would welcome the next CGA to model itself after them. But I would not ever think about not frequenting this site, regardless of what Jeff does with it and the sponsors.

 

It's just a fantastic resource for a small, growing community. I'm just happy that it's here.

[seismograph]

@Jeff:

cadwire uses it's DB on the Frame, so you can say.."hey, are there any related links to the page below?" ..your frame is only the CGA Logo (which is my one and only point why i start to flame) and an AD (...)

That's the difference and that's the reason for my suggestion (the 5-6th time) to use popups, because they can be filtered out by users who decided to not need AD's.

 

@xgarcia:

CGA is a commercial page. Starting my own Page.. well, i'm involved in traffic blackholes, so i know what i'm talking about and when i say tricks i have always the visitor (community members) in mind.

That's the reason why i suggest using popups.

 

my last 2c. ..hopefully also the blue eyed have understand it.

[quizzy]

@mbr

moderating and managing the forum takes up 1 hour of my time every day.... (yes, I read every post)

 

Well, for me personally I hate popups. Yes, you can install software that gets rid of popups, but I like to keep my comp as clean as I can. Flash, animated gif, and finally a html blocking software... Empty pages.... nice..

 

Jeff, get more sponsors dude!! More banners etc... I don't mind... there are just 3 news topics that I have to focus on on the mainpage.. how hard can that be... And being a 3D animator, I love movement!!! hehehe BTW its all about the quality of the content, and if jeff could,by making lots and lots of money, increase the quality (paying contributors etc..) that would be excellent!!!

 

my 2cents

 

@nisus

de beste stuurlui staan idd aan wal....

[xgarcia]

I give up. This is not worth talking about anymore.

[Stavanja]

I’m the Editor of CADwire.net. I stumbled onto this thread last night after seeing several referral hits to our site over the past few days coming from the CGA forums, and I must say it has been an interesting read – so much so that I felt compelled to post this reply.

 

Let me start by saying that I’ve followed the progress of CGA nearly from its inception… (We named CGA our ‘Site of the Week’ back on January 20, 2002) As a web site founder myself, I can’t say enough good about the job Jeff has done in creating a useful industry resource that’s of value both to users and industry vendors (in other words – *advertisers*). Although I only know Jeff through email and telephone conversations, I do consider him an ally and not a competitor.

 

The first thing that struck me about this thread was that it was actually started by a user trying to understand how best to deal with the site’s ads and therefore help CGA stay financially healthy. Even better was that as more users quickly joined the thread, it became quite clear that a significant percentage of users are sincerely interested in seeing the site succeed. What more could a web site ask for in an audience!

 

The other thing that I noticed was the range of issues brought up in what started off as a seemingly straight forward topic. But what surprised me most were the misconceptions surrounding those topics. I’d like to chime in on some of those – most of them brought up by the now infamous ‘seismograph’ …

 

Ads, Popups, Revenue, and Site Design

-------------------------------------------------

There are many ways to pay for an industry news or publication site, but one way or the other each of them reaches into one of three different pockets – the owner’s, the user’s, or the industry vendors’. I know Jeff well enough to know that like me, he’s donated too much of his own time and money to build, promote, and operate the site.

 

By keeping the site free and delivering useful content to its users, it maximizes the size of its audience. To maximize its value to its advertisers, it needs to also deliver ad impressions. For an impression to count, it needs to be downloaded to a user’s browser. If an ad is blocked by a user, no impression is counted – therefore they aren’t supporting the site. I can’t speak for Jeff, but I know I certainly feel that on my site we deliver a useful free service. All we ask in return is to display ads relevant to our industry coverage while you use it. If you don’t want to see those ads, go to a site that doesn’t display them. Simple as that…

 

BTW how can you claim the ads don’t relate to you unless you see them? It’s not like we’re displaying questionable spam ads or even legitimate ads unrelated to our industries.

 

Regarding ad impressions, every site that displays ads must decide how best to structure its navigation and layout its pages in order to deliver both its content and ad impressions. They can layout pages that contain a multitude of ad placements, or they can structure a site that requires users to navigate through many pages in order to find what they need, thus sacrificing usability in order to generate ad impressions. In my opinion Jeff has done an admirable job with CGA finding a happy medium. The site is easy to navigate and doesn’t overwhelm users with an overabundance of garish ads. I’m sure CGA v2 will be more of the same.

 

Deep-Linking, Framing, and Content Ownership

-------------------------------------------------

This is a hot-button issue with me. Although some view it as a matter of etiquette, the fact is that there are *no* real rules regarding deep-linking. It has been litigated many times and has significant precedent-setting cases supporting it. Without deep-linking the web would be nearly useless. Can you imagine the web without Google or any other search engine? Web directories certainly have a use, but imagine searching for information by going to a directory to get a listing of web sites, then having to go to each of them and having to do the same search on that site over and over again? Think back to 1996 when Yahoo’s directory was the only way to go. The bottom-line here is that Jeff was right earlier, the web was indeed created to link documents together.

 

The issue of framing is another story however.

 

We began framing our links a few years ago. After seeing many other major sites (Ask.com, About.com) framing their off-site links in order to deliver more ad impressions, we decided to follow suit. In addition to delivering ads with our frame, we also try to be sensitive to the sites we link to by both providing a additional value (links to their home page and other related content we cover) and to make it very clear as to the web site we’ve linked to (“News from Xxxxx”, etc.). Despite our best intentions however, some publications don’t like to be framed, for now we let them opt-out.

 

The reason most publications cite for disapproving of being framed is one of perceived content ownership. For the record, there’s no need to come to a legal agreement with a web site in order to link to them. Likewise press releases are produced by vendors for public consumption in order to promote themselves and their products. They are free to both be copied and displayed on any site, or to be linked to by anyone. Republishing content from publications is different however. For example if there’s a news item or article from CNet.com site, it can not be copied and displayed on our site or any other without their permission. Since we only link to sites it’s usually not an issue for us. But for sites that have a blanket policy against framing, we’ve chosen to respect that by dropping the frame on our links to those publications. Those sites are by far in the minority however. Most publications welcome the referrals we provide – framed or not.

 

Flaming

-------------------------------------------------

I must say I have a great deal of respect for the amount of restraint Jeff displayed in responding to the blatant provocations by ‘seismograph’. I have little patience for someone from a competing web site stirring up trouble, especially by raising ethical questions in a flame!

 

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, let me close by giving kudos to both Jeff and the loyal community he’s created with CGarchitect. I’ve learned a lot watching its continued growth. Other industry sites should do the same.

 

Keep up the good work.

[vizwhiz]

o man how did i miss all of This ??

 

i have myself attempted to develop (from scratch) and to maintain an architectural resource website:

 

www.viz2000.com

 

i have put at least 1,600 hours UNPAID into this endeavor.

 

no income, i made the mistake of giving the sponsors free advertising in exchange for their presence just to build this site for the arch. viz community.

 

but, it came back to bite me in the butt, big time

 

i can no longer afford to maintain the website

i almost lost everything i had (no income etc)

 

and

 

there are more the 8,700 external links almost ALL of which are "deeplinks" to other website content

 

i am glad that Jeff's efforts are working out better than what i put together,

we all should be supportive of Jeff and help CGarchitect maintain and get better

 

i tried, now i am tired,

 

i have worked 3 40 weeks in the last 2.5 years. without a steady income maintaining a labor of love is really tough. but maintaining a website as a labor of love when you do have a primary income is really a LOT OF WORK above and beyond.

 

Thanks Jeff

 

Randy