My question is simple;

Why do i have to be logged in to read the follow up posts to each thread??

I feel we are excluding hundreds if not thousands of potential fans worldwide by not enabling them to view each thread and see what we are all about

In my opinion we should be promoting the ICT brand to a world wide audience not restricting it to its members

I would like to point it out that this is NOT a dig at the mods as i'm sure they have their reasons why they have set the forum out like this

After the result today ICT find themselves in the strongest position they have ever been in so could we somehow be stunting the growth?

P.s i'm on the kopparberg tonight so i hope the above makes sense

Thoughts

dougal

Sensible question actually. Which deserves a sensible answer.

Simple answer is BANDWITH. We pay for the amount of bandwidth we use and now that we have moved to VPS hosting instead of 'shared' we pay 5 times the amount we used to !!!! For that reason, and because we pay this cost out of our own pockets, we restrict the display of full threads to registered and logged in members to save that precious bandwidth.

If someone is so interested in seeing what is written they can surely spare a couple of minutes to register? Registration is, always has been, and always will be FREE.

as a lurker more than a poster it is annoying

Sensible question actually. Which deserves a sensible answer.

Simple answer is BANDWITH. We pay for the amount of bandwidth we use and now that we have moved to VPS hosting instead of 'shared' we pay 5 times the amount we used to !!!! For that reason, and because we pay this cost out of our own pockets, we restrict the display of full threads to registered and logged in members.

Thank you, I had an idea it had something to do with money but i wasn't entirely sure

dougal

as a lurker more than a poster it is annoying

Login and set it to 'remember you'. Depending on browser/cookie options you will not have to login again if you visit within 7 days of your last login

OP makes a good shout. This forum would get much more traffic if it wasn't private. As far as I'm aware every other Scottish football forum is open for guests to read.

PS Kopparberg isn't good for your teeth OP.

Dont be saying that...Kapparberg pear cider is my tipple of choice tonight!

It's hardly excluding folk, it takes like 2 minutes. If that puts someone off then then they couldn't have been genuinely interested in the first place. It probably helps reduce the number of people who might just pop online to post crap also.

It would be like saying that the online shop Amazon is losing shoppers because you have to set up an account to buy stuff.

What some people perhaps lose sight of is that this is voluntary site. Become a sponsor Dougal?

My question is simple;

Why do i have to be logged in to read the follow up posts to each thread??

Scotty has already answered this part in regards the costs.

I feel we are excluding hundreds if not thousands of potential fans worldwide by not enabling them to view each thread and see what we are all about

I fail to see how a free to join forum excludes anyone? If someone has a genuine interest in ICT then they will register, if they are just digging for dirt and/or looking for gossip then registering may put them off. From experience, this stops a lot of selective picking of things from this forum turning up on in places and being used in ways we'd rather not see.

In my opinion we should be promoting the ICT brand to a world wide audience not restricting it to its members

I do take a little bit of an exception to this statement, but will put it down to your claims that you're new to the forums and as such are not aware of just how much CaleyThistleOnline and it's members have done since day one, and continue to do now, to promote ICT and help anyone with an interest in the club.

I would like to point it out that this is NOT a dig at the mods as i'm sure they have their reasons why they have set the forum out like this

Then maybe it would have been best that you stopped after the opening question!!!

After the result today ICT find themselves in the strongest position they have ever been in so could we somehow be stunting the growth?

I've seen nothing to suggest this would be the case.

At last count we were sitting at a figure of around 8 Million Page Views per annum (and climbing). I don't know the figures for all the other forums, but from the ones I am familiar with we are doing very nicely in that regard and the figures would suggest that we are doing more right than they are.

We could do lots of things to increase our site statistics, but we value quality over quantity. We believe that people see enough of the site as a "guest" viewer so that if they are genuinely interested they will register.

If visitors are going to be influenced by anything, then it will be the content and quality of discussion...and that's something we can't do by ourselves. In that regard, it's up to the site members to ensure they are doing their bit to "promote" ICT.

P.s i'm on the kopparberg tonight so i hope the above makes sense

Thoughts

dougal

Unfortunately we've not yet come up with a system that prevents people from posting whilst under the influence.

I'm under the influence. And posting 

I think we're fairly safe until Bronson starts posting under the influence

OP makes a good shout. This forum would get much more traffic if it wasn't private. As far as I'm aware every other Scottish football forum is open for guests to read.

PS Kopparberg isn't good for your teeth OP.

I think this only highlights the point i was trying to make last night

I can understand money being an issue though, maybe we are just a bit tighter when it comes to cash up here in the north

Kopparberg is also not good for your health the following day

dougal

Edited November 21, 201015 yr by dougal

if this forums were opened up we would be bombarded by C*unty fans with their manure laced love. Keep it as it is i say!

OP makes a good shout. This forum would get much more traffic if it wasn't private. As far as I'm aware every other Scottish football forum is open for guests to read.

PS Kopparberg isn't good for your teeth OP.

I think this only highlights the point i was trying to make last night

I can understand money being an issue though, maybe we are just a bit tighter when it comes to cash up here in the north

Kopparberg is also not good for your health the following day

dougal

May be tighter in the north of Scotland but the site owner lives in Canada. Running a site this size is not cheap and the money has to come from somewhere. To expand it as people would like would cost a deal more. People can have what they have or they can be asked to pay a membership fee. Personally I'd rather it be as it is.

We have already expanded the site ........ it gets bigger every year.

When we were on Freeserve (independent site) = everything free. 1/2 million page views a year roughly.

When we were on Rivals (part of network) = everything free. 1.2 million page views was our record.

When we were on SportNetwork (part of network) = everything free. We increased up to about 3-4m page views per year.

When we moved to our own ('shared') hosting = we paid for hosting + domain name(s), everything else free. 6m page views in our first year.

When we outgrew our free forum software we purchased the commercial IPB package and now pay a yearly maintenance fee for it which allows us to have access to tech support and upgrades. This is on top of our other costs such as domain names and other software or licenses we use on the site. Our 'shared' hosting offered 'unlimited' bandwidth but in reality this was not true - slowness/errors is the usual result of a big site on shared hosting as you have seen more recently.

When we outgrew shared hosting (recently) we moved to VPS hosting which is significantly more expensive and has metered bandwidth. If we go over our allowance we are charged a premium for every Mb over it that we use.

That is the potted history of our site and it is one of the primary reasons why we choose to allow only registered users to chew up our bandwidth ... as stated above, it is a two minute process to register and there is no cost involved so I do not see it as a barrier to expansion or growth and our site stats bear this up. Current page views on track for between 8 and 9 million this year.

Goin back to the 'brand' ..... It is not our role to expand the ICT brand worldwide, and even though I feel we have actually done a significant portion of that role over the years, that responsibility lies with the club. We have never turned down a request for assistance from them and continue to work with them on a number of future plans where we may be able to assist, but until or unless the costs are not coming out of our own pockets, the forum will stay as it is.

As the original question has now been answered quite openly and fully, I think this thread may have run its course (for now)......

So Dougal if I'm following your logic the fact that P&B does not require registration to read brings 'thousands' of new people around the word to follow and become enlightened in Scottish football where before they would not have been interested? They would otherwise be tempted elswhere?

So Dougal if I'm following your logic the fact that P&B does not require registration to read brings 'thousands' of new people around the word to follow and become enlightened in Scottish football where before they would not have been interested? They would otherwise be tempted elswhere?

It's hardly rocket science!!!!

I'm not saying thousands would necessary join up to P&B but that site certainly seems more welcoming than CTO

P&B and all other SPL clubs forums gives the lurker the option to read on while CTO doesn't unless they register which IMO puts the majority off

It certainly doesn't help enticing new fans

dougal

Since you're so confident that opening the site viewing to everyone will be of such huge benefit to our following, we'll agree to change it if you agree to foot the cost for the next 12 months. If after that time we have hundreds of new fans then we'll refund your money....if we have thousands of new fans then we'll refund you double your money.

Contact myself or Scotty via PM and we can arrange for you to deposit the funds with us. About £300 should do to start with, if we look like spending more than that we can get back to you.

Since you're so confident that opening the site viewing to everyone will be of such huge benefit to our following, we'll agree to change it if you agree to foot the cost for the next 12 months. If after that time we have hundreds of new fans then we'll refund your money....if we have thousands of new fans then we'll refund you double your money.

Contact myself or Scotty via PM and we can arrange for you to deposit the funds with us. About ?300 should do to start with, if we look like spending more than that we can get back to you.

good answer!!!!

If the reason why you have to register is about money then there isn't really anything that can be done about it. I do think that if you didn't need to register though we would have a lot more users, maybe not just ICT fans but fans of other clubs. We used to get fans from other clubs coming on every week and there was always good banter from this.

Whenever i try and go onto another clubs forum and you need to register i end up leaving it, for one i mainly only want to read what they have to say and i don't like getting spam emails from then on after about a team i don't really care about.

Contact myself or Scotty via PM and we can arrange for you to deposit the funds with us. About ?300 should do to start with, if we look like spending more than that we can get back to you.

That doesnt even cover the hosting D !!!

Just been to the comedy club this evening but got a bigger laugh out of that CD. Status Quo me tinks....

And on a serious note - although I realised that a lot of effort goes into running this site it was only on reading this thread that I appreciated fully the effort and hours that has gone into running the site in it's various guises over the years....and allowing so many to benefit from what is truly a premium fan site.... Take a bow.

I was looking at additional costs....bandwidth, improved hardware to cope with increased traffic without slowing site for others etc. I also thought 2 or 3 smaller payments might be more manageable for Dougal.

Wouldn't there be more income from advertisers if the site was open to all?

the site IS open to all ... you just have to register. However, leaving the semantics of 'open to all' or 'guest' versus 'member' aside, the simple answer is no, there is no evidence to suggest we would generate more revenue with one model over the other.

Other than Google we do not have any paid advertisers and our Google income is pretty much unaffected by raw pageviews. Like every other site - P&B included - we cater to a fairly narrow 'niche' market (in our case, ICT fans, in P&B's case, fans of all teams) and whilst it is appealing to some advertisers, it does not have the same draw for others .....

We are not running CTO as a profit making exercise so this lack of advertising doesnt really bother us too much. If we can make most of our hosting costs back via Google Ads and supplement that with the odd bit of sponsorship or donations here and there we are quite happy. We prefer to use CTO as our own marketing tool to showcase the work we can do for other clients who come to us for web design help or projects.

I do think that if you didn't need to register though we would have a lot more users, maybe not just ICT fans but fans of other clubs. We used to get fans from other clubs coming on every week and there was always good banter from this.

and all those fans were registered .....

I cannot think of any forum where 'guests' can post. Its a sad fact that almost any forum that has done that is filled up almost immediately with porn and viagra spam messages .... (have a look at our old SportNetwork forum now it is unprotected) its also why - when users are registering - we ask them to click a link in their email to verify the account exists. These are known security issues facing forums and pretty much standard procedure if you want it to be remotely safe.

This is not to stifle our own users, it is to protect the site from all the crap that is out there constantly trying to find ways to get into forums all over the place so they can post this stuff. We tend to get about 6-10 attempts PER HOUR from known bots trying to login to the site and luckily, with one exception I think, our security has proved to be up to scratch.

Whenever i try and go onto another clubs forum and you need to register i end up leaving it, for one i mainly only want to read what they have to say and i don't like getting spam emails from then on after about a team i don't really care about.

One thing about us is that we never spam our users !!! In your profile there is an option to receive mail from the site administrators or not and any time we have sent out bulk mail for one reason or another, we have respected the option chosen in that field by users.