Contacts with IGN and moving our website over there

Zelknolf · Post by **Zelknolf** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 12:56 am

danielmn wrote:I as well get a bitter taste from getting paid by ads...

I understand this, and share the notion to some degree, but I think it's worth entertaining the notion of ad revenue supporting central hosting, as Hialmar suggested. The benefits from that seem to outweigh the sacrafice from showing ads on our forums, at least to me.

JaydeMoon · Post by **JaydeMoon** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 1:13 am

Shootz... I wish someone would drop me hefty bucks to walk around with their company plastered all over my shirt, shoes, ties, socks, hat, car, house, wallet, what have you. I'll wash that bitter taste away with a trip to the mall, the electronics store, Disney World...

Senor T · Post by **Senor T** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 1:29 am

Thanks for the more info, Hialmar. If ALFA already has the funding in place to maintain an independent website, and would not otherwise benefit from saving the money, then I really think we should keep our setup as-is and use the IGN option as a fall-back just in case.

Basically, if we have the funds as it stands, the question becomes, 'what does ALFA gain?'

(Aside from the ability to buy Disney World for Jayde.

)

danielmn · Post by **danielmn** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 1:34 am

Senor T....the money donated could be used toward machines capable of supporting NWN2 servers, for starters....

It is a bitter taste...but if in a years time they are paying us in total for a new rig to host....it is something to consider. As I said, I like being independant...but I also like having the ability to have the work we've done up and running...

Rotku · Post by **Rotku** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 3:39 am

I agree with AL here.

Souvarine · Post by **Souvarine** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 4:40 am

Ads wouldn't be any worse than trollish posts. We already have the latter, and they attract our attention far more than any add (well, if they aren't fluo pop ups we have to click off), so if we can get paid for it, gees...take the opportunity by all means.

On the other hand it would mean that i wouldn't have access to the boards at work

Grand Fromage · Post by **Grand Fromage** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 5:32 am

I'm all for staying here. Since it's being paid for by donations we aren't picking Hialmar's pockets unfairly, and ads and having others in control of the site both suck.

Hialmar · Post by **Hialmar** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 8:52 am

The more I think about it the less I like IGN.

I have read their TOS and found a good number of bad points for us.

I'm not sure if I can repost the TOS here but basically the points I have noted are:
- we have to host our full website with them (at the very least that's a problem with our vault)
- I would be the person contracting and cannot give the site passwords to anyone else. This can be a problem when we change Infra Admin.
- all downloads have to go through fileplanet and we need to ask IGN permission to host them elsewhere. That can be a problem with worldgate.
- then there are the kind of ads:
* banners
* disruptive ads :
a. A videostitial, or streaming video ad. This is served on a random rotation based on user sessions and does not display on every page. They claim somewhere else its 1 every 10 pages

b. A network-wide prestitial. This is a full-screen ad that serves as the entrance into the IGN Network and is served on a per-session basis.

I'm not very glad about those two kind of ads. The banners I can live with.

I'll ask about them to the representative but I'm unsure of what they will decide. I mean they won't re-write a contract in legalese (and hire an attorney for that) just for us.

Swift · Post by **Swift** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 9:39 am

If it is simply about helping to cover hosting/domain costs, we could just stay here and toss some google text ads on the site.

Sure, its not that great of a solution, but at least we could decide (to the best of my knowledge anyway) which pages we insert the ads into, and additionally make a little money from it. I don't think members would have much issue clicking through a couple of ads now and then if they knew the benefits it was bringing.

Edit: That all sounds very horrible tbh Hialmar. Reading that, i would very much prefer not to go with them.

Electryc · Post by **Electryc** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 10:12 am

I thought this would be like the nwvault, but the fileplanet and the disruptive adds give change my positive feelings about the new host. Whatever you decide is fine by me, and I wont complain about it if you go the ign route.

Hialmar · Post by **Hialmar** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 3:21 pm

I have checked some of the hosted sites and they don't seem to have the disruptive ads.

On the other hand I have seen such ads when browsing nwvault in the past.
You get to an ad page instead of the one you wanted and you have the choice to skip the ad by clicking on a top bar.
I wonder how they decide to show them or not.
Maybe it's only if you come from google.
Edit: tried that and it's not working this way either.

Marklos · Post by **Marklos** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 4:36 pm

That full-page-ad-click-at-the-top-to-get-to-where-you-were-going-initially is a PITA. I've tried to side-step it, but seems I run into it two to three times in a row, sometimes. I agree with AL. The more I look at it, the more I don't like it. Let me show you something.

This page kills me. I was thinking of playing on this til I saw their website.

http://www.forgottenrealm.ca/

ugh!

Electryc · Post by **Electryc** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 11:41 pm

Hialmar wrote: I wonder how they decide to show them or not.
Maybe it's only if you come from google.
Edit: tried that and it's not working this way either.

I noticed an increase of adds myself, if you don't log in under your account.

Grand Fromage · Post by **Grand Fromage** » Thu Jan 17, 2008 12:08 am

The fact that they use interstitial ads at all is enough reason not to go there. Fuck those things, they're the most annoying garbage on the internet.

Hialmar · Post by **Hialmar** » Thu Jan 17, 2008 10:36 am

I think that we won't go IGN route.
Too many bad things in what I've found so far.

If at one time in the future the Infra donations fail to cover the expenses then we will re-think about this but so far we are good for some time.