We’re going on six months now without a way to subscribe. You’re obviously paying Discourse for enterprise hosting, and I’m guessing you’re one of their bigger customers. A portion of site visitors will not see the adsense ads, some even after disabling their adblockers; those that see ads often find them laughablyill-targeted.
I’m worried about the financial state of the message boards. I imagine revenue is down drastically while expenses are up. The Sun-Times may not be doing all too hot themselves, what with the pandemic. I don’t know. I’m afraid someone over there will see a red figure and shut everything down.
(I could be wrong though, maybe ad revenue covers operating costs, or even exceeds potential subscription revenue.)
Anyways, I’m sure Discourse (or the tech-savvy Teeming Millions) can help find and install a subscription plugin. Then we can get back to giving you money! If that’s not an option or priority, a few reassuring words about the financial situation would set me at ease.
Tritto. I’ve been reading a lot longer than I registered or paid.
I think I have 5 months to go for my subscription but… I’d like to pay so I don’t feel bad about having always blocked the ads.
My original suspicion was that subscriptions, like several other administrative functions, were controlled by TubaDiva, and that, with her sudden passing, there wasn’t anyone who was empowered to do those sorts of things.
That may still be the case, as I don’t remember seeing anything about a new administrator being named (though I may well have missed it).
Hmm. It’s possible they had to upgrade the hosting plan due to higher traffic than the business plan allowed. That, combined with the sudden loss of revenue after Google’s search algorithm changes (according to ecg), may have been part of the motive behind Cecil’s modest proposal. See also,
Crap! I wanted to say that. And since they give no cost associated with the super duper plan, it’s even more pointless to guesstimate what membership may cost. I was a little surprised we got 800,000 page views a month, which at first seemed high until I realized I probably accounted for 10,000 of them.
I asked codinghorror in that thread if he could give us a rough estimate of the plan cost, but he didn’t answer.
I always go for the coffee mug because it’s easier to cover the logo up so I can re-gift them as Christmas presents.
On a more serious note, it seems like we were probably not on the brink of death in June. IIRC, at the time, codinghorror said there was already a way to do subscriptions and they were working on a beta donation setup on a UK site. Since they never appeared, I would guess it’s because the Sun-Times didn’t feel the need for it, if they gave us any thought at all.
Best case now, NPR continues to ignore us or they actually are hands on enough to institute money making opportunities. I really have no doubt the board could support itself by subscriptions/donations, we’ve done it before.