Ok few things here:

  1. The site has to be hosted

  2. their are people behind the clicks. I.e. the site was developed by someone.

  3. The site needs to be updated

All of these i think are valid arguments as to why you may want payment. However, unless you have a group of dedicated peeps to respond to questions and you can guarantee answers, then I think the payment thing is out of the way.

This is a PHP thing not Micro-you-know-who = Opensoft mates (freedom of info)

Another thing to consider is paying everyone that responds to a query. Fulfill all of this then you can collect payments.

Oh... one final thing. Do your research well (this is a start I know) how many sites with forums

  1. collect payments
  2. Are as active; if you forum is inactive then it is usless.

Of course these are just MY opinion 🙂

    I am not sure I understand this one 100%. Does it mean that it will cost me money to answer someone elses problem? If it does it could get very expensive for someone who answers a lot of questions.
    I mean it would be very easy to clock up a lot of mouse clicks.

    For example (cumalitive total in brackets)
    I enter the site via phpbuilder.com and click the community link (1p),
    then I click the coding forum link (2p),
    next I view the first problem (3p),
    I decide I can't answer hat one so I click the coding link to go back to the main page(4p),
    I click the next link (5p),
    I decide this one I can answer so I click post reply (6p)
    I type my reply and hit preview reply (7p).
    I like what I see so I hit post reply (8p).
    It looks like it has cost me 8p so far but with no actual benefit to myself. and that is only one query.
    In the progress of answering 1 query I could post maybe 5 replies. each of these has cost me a minimum of 3p (click to view, click to reply, click to post reply). so it could cost 15p to answer one person. So if I answered 2 problems per day for each of the working days of the week it would cost me a lot. I might even end up paying £5 a month to answer questions on something thats an open source project. I may stop coming on if that is the case.

    Sorry if this seems a bit of a rant but hey I suppose it is.

    Mark.

      Paying per click would be the kiss of death to the forum here. I only recently realised how great this forum is as I had never really gone past the articles before. Now I often look about for an unanswered post if I have 2 mins to spare in the day.

      One click to the home page, another to the board, one to a subject, one to the message and another to reply. Do that just 4 or 5 times a day and suddenly you are paying $100 a year for trying to give something back (that's without even reading anything for your own benefit!).

      It does though bring the ever-thorny, point of funding sites into the limelight.

      I think that one of the most interesting funding models around is demonstrated by sites like Google Answers. There are times when I have been up against the clock and would happily have stumped up a few quid/bucks/whatever for a quick answer to a PHP question.

      Maybe something like this could be considered here, not as an alternative to the way things currently run, but as an addition to. The site could take slice to help with costs, those that like to help out could get some pocket money for doing so, and panicking despots like me could have people rushing to give them piece of mind .

      I love all the free advice here, and always try to give some back when I am able to help. There are though times where I know that the problem is a little more in depth and some incentive would make me feel less guilty about posting!

        my idea is this, some kinda of trade system based on "credits" people who anwser questions get a certain ammount of credits and then they can use those credits to "buy" things like ad space or traffic or something. you could even do it based on the number of post the person makes. or something like that..

          heres the anwser i just thought of this:

          you make a community non-proffit membership site. id say follow the classic porn site business model, except that the proffits from each month would be devided amongst the sites members who meet certain requirements. the requirements could be posting a certain number or having some kind of "helpfulness rating" that people could vote on and the top X number of people with a high "helpfulness rating" would get the money.. that way the people who need help can support the people giving the help. what do you think of that ?

            That could be very difficult to admin. First the posting helpfulness thing I asume that would run like the post rating system that currently runs. Or rather currently sits doing very little. At time of writing this only one thread on the first page actually has a rating. This one.

            The vote for the top ten could be abused. It could be turned into a pure popularity contest with the person who spends time just chatting winning. But on the other hand using number of posts in a month is not too good either. Someone might post hundreds of messages in a month but be talking uter drivel.

            The method described by matbennett is a reasonable one though allow the general forum to continue and have an experts section that you can pay for the answer, or even the code itself. Sort of a programers pool.

            Mark.

              have a look at universalthread.com. I've been a member since 96 I think and have never paid and have, on occassion been sooo close to paying. However I'm not as active on the forum as I am here and my involvement in the vfp world is not as intense. Lots pay to be there and they get additional features.

              I don't know if Michael Fournier pays his moderators but there are key personalities there and they are given a heap of kudos which no doubt helps their profile in the contract world.

              3 problems I see:
              alot of people post a few times, move onto other things (or give up) and wouldn't want to spend money on something they don't believe they will use for the stated period
               there are so many wannabe sites trying to get the postings that phpbuilder has that, if they stay free, people will move to them. Bit like nightclubs being flavour of the month. People might move around.
              * $12 a year isn't much but that's actually about $30 of my local dollars and that's a night out for me. Others may find the $12 onerous depending on their local economy. I like that we are united by our "programming language" rather than geography, politics etc. I'd hate to see the site become USA only.

                a month later

                I began as purely a consumer of this sites goods - now however I feel that I am more 50 50 as a consumer and a producer. I think that a subscription service of 5.00 a year or something cheap like that would also stunt the growth of the community as I would not have paid to ask my questions here because I had no idea what kind of service I would have been able to get.

                I would say that there are times that it takes some time for questions to get answered however if I was paying I would expect answers almost immediately and that just isn't possible.

                  that may not be a problem with current members that like the community, but someone new to the system thinks, crap i have to pay for advice on something, yeah that is real world, but there is enough free advice out there, they may say, so you may not get new members to come and help the community grow, i am kinda particular for the donations idea, i think many of us would willingly donate cuz we can to help, but being forced is another thing, i myself would pay "something" to be a member of "this" forum anyway

                    a month later

                    Sure that'd work- except: where would i insert the penny? i don't have a coin acceptor on my computer, do you???

                      well ya see there could be a paypal sort of donation thing, then you simply use your CC, voila

                        Well what if you're like me and you're not old enough for a CC or just don't have one? Then you'd be left out...

                          ask mom, dad, friend, or don't donate, thats why it is called donating, you don't have to pay

                          or if nothing else i could give you my address and you could mail me cash, check, or money order, LOL

                            well, i read through a portion of the posts and here's my thoughts for the peeps. first off, do we even know if the site admins are having a hard time financially with hosting the site? i mean sure, it's not free for them. but nothings free for any of us, and they decided that they wanted to host this site free in the first place. i feel that i probably would donate a small amount to the people that host this site, but not to the people answering questions simply because i would never ask people for money about me helping them with something. when i enjoy doing it, and don't mind doing it for free. imho, yeah the money would be nice, but, php is open source, this is all an open source project per say, help should be free as well.

                            i'm sure many of us who have been here for a little while, see the benifits that come from the people that are here, and if the site is struggling to make ends meet, we would help out in any way that we could. whether it's different hosting or just 5 extra bucks to cover hosting for this month. whatever! but like i said, i don't know if they are struggling finacially or not, but if they are, i'd 'donate' long before this thing went under.

                              we would help out in any way that we could. whether it's different hosting or just 5 extra bucks to cover hosting for this month

                              I agree, one off 'donations' would be an acceptable method of doing payments to cover hosting and such. I think the idea of micro payments per click could very rapidly hit problems, where say a 5 or 10 dollar payment is small change if it was a yearly fee. It wouldn't take many people making donations to soon add up.

                              i'd 'donate' long before this thing went under

                              As would I. It would be a shame for a good, helpful site to go under while there is so many out there producing arkward help sites and charging an arm and a leg for the software in the first place. ( Microsoft I'm looking at you ).

                              The donations idea is definately better than a forced payment at attracting new people to the site. If they ask a question and get a good answer they may go 'great site I'll tell my mate about that' but If they have to pay and then don't get a good answer, (From what I've seen very few and far between) they may tell all there friends how terrible the site is and they had to part with money to find this out.

                              O.k. thats my two penneth worth thrown in the pot for now.

                              Mark.

                                I definitely agree that forcing someone paying on clicking the content of this site will make a giant step back on PHP development.
                                As long as I go surfing the web, this site this the best site offering many solutions to all problems facing by PHP users, slowly but sure PHP builder become the most greatest PHP development site, and maybe the second site (after PHP.net) that people will turn their face to find out their solutions.
                                Since PHP is free -- why should PHP builder have to pay? -- why don't just use the strategy using by PHP.net regarding with how to finance their site?

                                  a month later

                                  Per Click? Damn...
                                  PHP is still OpenSource right?

                                    On the bright side if they were to charge users on this site I'd be guaranteed to see more traffic on some of the php support forums I've attempted. 😃

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