web site premium membership

darkangelism · 04-10-2005, 02:28 PM

on my site i am havig premium members but im not sure what i should offer besides an email address, i know duke wants to eventually add premium members here too

Duke · 04-10-2005, 05:04 PM

I've wanted to offer some type of tiered memberhship here since day one but I've often struggled with making it feature rich enough to make it worth signing up for.

Didn't you say you had forums, if so, it really isn't that simple to navigate too. In fact, I have yet to actually see the forums. My other question is why do you need a pre-load page to offer premium memberships, can't you simply make it part of the main page? This will help keep the navigating down to a minimum for new users as I'm pretty sure nobody new to your site will want to navigate too far to get to the meat and potatoes of the site.

darkangelism · 04-10-2005, 06:11 PM

I got annoyed with the new content mangement system, it made people register to see content, so im dumping it and going to phpnuke

Duke · 04-10-2005, 06:41 PM

Why don't you go with phpnuke, php, or asp?

darkangelism · 04-10-2005, 07:14 PM

lol, i went to phpnuke as i said in my previous post,

now i remember why i hate phpnuke, ill prolly switch again and keep the forums in phpbb and seperate from the articles section.

Duke · 04-10-2005, 08:46 PM

I'm not sure exactly how I missed that, my bad.

Why exactly do you hate phpnuke?

darkangelism · 04-10-2005, 09:16 PM

ok i switched to a new mangement system called drupal...it seems to work with articles and forums.

i hate phpnuke because i found it hard to work with, the setup is a pain and the documentation is vague, and it intstalls a lot of stuff that i dont need...this time it wouldnt access the forums properly.

dogula · 04-10-2005, 09:24 PM

I think vbulletin is a lot slicker than php-nuke. If you're going to be charging for your tripe you may as well get a nicer system.

darkangelism · 04-10-2005, 09:47 PM

vbulletin also costs a few hundred dollars, php-nuke is free.

Anyway my site is somewhat up now, i will still be adding features and content, but the interface is ok...www.dogsofliberty.com

Duke · 04-10-2005, 10:03 PM

v-bulletin is the lazy, rich persons way of setting up web forums. I personally dislike v-bulletin as there's very few nice looking skins out there for it and it's very cluttered and hard to get used to IMO.

There are other forum alternatives out there as well. In fact there's one that mimics v-bulletin but is free, I'll see if I can dig that bad boy up.

Merika · 04-11-2005, 07:01 AM

I know a handful of forums which have membership options (around $4-5 a month) which include email, addt PM storage amts, more bells and whistles under the avatar and a hosting site area for pics/smilies/signature blocks. Plus less of a chance of ever getting banned or booted off.

It seems some people are willing to pay for the additional services, while the majority are not. I'm not sure if I would or wouldn't....it would depend on the services I guess. I'm also not sure how many people would join if money was needed for initial membership. I would think it better initially
to get a good stable core group and then if you need money....let them know and try to offer them some extra things. Most would probably donate anyway.

That's just my opinion though.

Duke · 04-11-2005, 09:54 AM

You'll never have to pay for any of my sites, ever. Core membership such as you see it will always remain. I have thought about tiering membership but only because part of the proceeds were to go toward site costs with the remainder going to charities.

There would be bells and whistles included but I just need to get some of them functional before offering tiered membership. I'll also only offer it if the members agree it's a good idea at the time.

darkangelism · 04-11-2005, 10:11 AM

$4-5 a month for just that, wow, i was gonna offer a lot more then that, a personal blog, a photo album, and an @dogsofliberty.com email for $1 higher tiers would offer webspace, ftp access to a folder, a subdomain, multiple emails.

The site that is gonna offer the best premium content that i have found is www.leasticoulddo.com, they are a web comic and offer high rez version of the comic, flash animations and email.

Merika · 04-12-2005, 09:07 AM

I agree DA.... they've got a great site set up on there. I would think many of their members would be teens though....who generally don't have alot of money....but what do I know?

I like the idea of a free blogging area though.....especially if the site in real large or political in nature. People seem to really go for that. I saw that on another forum for premium membership.