How could you let this happen to you?

Moonglobe

Just wondering about the VisualStudio.NET banner add up top now.........how could you let this happen to you? your site is so free of evil and you go and let M$ put up an add.........how much are they paying you?

Cogen

I have no problem with the content of the visual studio .net banner, since in my opinion visual studio is a very good product.

The problem I have is with the way the banner works. It is extremely annoying that it drops down. I use the buttons on the top of this site quite a bit, and I am constantly going over the banner to move the mouse to those buttons. Every time the banner drops down and it's annoying.

In my opinion, it's not a good idea to force a user to "go around" a big area of the screen with their mouse to avoid a mouse over. Once I read the banner, I don't care to read it again, but because you locate it directly under the site buttons, it's in the way.

Mordecai

Use a banner blocker if you don't want to look at the ads.

jstarkey

You're killing the site by doing that, mordecai. We need the advertisers, they're the ones paying for you to use the site.

stick_figure

But there are pretty sick programs (I think Privoxy is one of them) that download the ads, filter them, and then decide if it's an ad or not. Since they do download the ad itself, the ad company counts it as a hit as far as I can understand.

Mordecai

No, since I don't click on the ads anyway, it's no different. I still download all the ads as if normal, so the servers don't know. I don't need any of the products that are going to be advertised on this site, most likely. I haven't seen one yet that I did.

stick_figure

That's right, some of them do count by clickthrough. As a matter of fact, most. Doy. But then that defeats the purpose of targetted advertising. If I had money, thinkgeek's ads at sourceforge would have paid of big for them by now. So far I haven't actually checked out an ad on this site... Targeted advertising is interesting.

Cogen

Originally posted by Mordecai
Use a banner blocker if you don't want to look at the ads.

I could do that, but this is the feedback area of the forum, which is why I wrote what I did. If many people feel the same way as I do, it might be useful for the developers of this site to know! If many people disagree with me, then the developers can disregard my concern.

It's never a good idea to put features on a site that most of your visitors get annoyed with!

jstarkey

I've brought this issue to our Sales VP's attention.

On a related note, I've been trying to compile a new list of leads for our sales dept, relative to PHP. What kind of products do you think would be best advertised here?

I know that's a weird question for anyone who's never had to fund a huge site, but it's all part of the cycle.

Example: say you use PHPEd and love it. If we advertise PHPEd and they start getting a nice ROI, then they will obviously want to grow the app - benefiting you. Also of benefit to you is that PHP Builder will have more funding to grow.

Sooo, which PHP and/or web development products do you think will take off in the coming years?

jimson

before i start my comment, i put up an IMHO first. no offend intended.

first, in my opinion, there is nothing wrong with the M$ banner, just make sure the banner is not porn then it is OK..

second, i would prefer phpbuilder to put up more M$ banner. If microsoft willing to pay, that is good. We use their money to guide all humans to learn PHP, isn't that good... or ur guys have spare money to fund phpbuilder ?

Sooo, which PHP and/or web development products do you think will take off in the coming years?

IMHO, .Net will have influence in the coming years. I am not trying to support them, but imagine the wealth Bill gates got. His wealth can really turn things. I think nobody will doubt with the power of money.

i would be happy if, microsoft, ibm, oracle, willing to advertise in phpbuilder. We are not going to use their apps becoz of their ads.

the spirit and concept of opensource is generally not make money, they only earn a little for customization. So, to advertise, it will be hard to them.
only those giant company have the money to throw into internet.

Generally, i am sceptical about internet marketing.
if phpbuilder have more money, maybe they can provide us more, more features forum and so on... jstarkey would be happy too.

IMHO, i don't really care about what ads is gonna show up, (just make sure it is not porn ads)... and make sure the ads is beautiful... so my eyes will be happy to see it.

the flashkit ads is somehow a newbie works...
i see this ads (80+) times already and kinda bored (i never click it)... perhaps a random ads will make my eyes happy... 😃
perhaps if the ads is somehow beautiful... i will click it.

jstarkey, are u going to use that flashkit ads until 21 august 2003?

a VisualStudio.NET banner doesn't mean phpbuilder is associate with VisualStudio. and $M.. those who can really understand know that, phpbuilder just get their money to guide human into PHP... 🙂
bandwith = money
domain registering = money
employee salary = money
network, database, maintenance = money
pc, workstation , server = money
hardisk, ram, processor = money...

all these need money...

jstarkey, IMHO, perhaps, if u list out the cost to do phpbuilder, they will start understand that it is not so easy to get the fund...

all of us know, dot com is sinking, it is far more harder to get investor to invest or to fund a dot com stuff...

i think the main income for phpbuilder is just rely on the advertisement money... if we cut the investment from the $M peeps, we are gone.... sure we don't want this thing to happen right...

about the ads blocker...
IMHO, the ads blocker is used againt those sites who generate multiple countless windows to advertise.. why use this stuff againts the phpbuilder static ads... ? a 19,542 bytes won't kill ur modem... and once loaded, it is cached inside our browser... so the next load is faster. This is where i don't really understand... 🙁

IMHO anyway... no offend intended... perhaps u guys can think, how to make more income for phpbuilder.... 🙂

Elizabeth

Just some suggestions for potential ad campaigns:
-Zend (any of their products)
-Dreamweaver (although highly debated on its merits, still a popular topic of conversation here)
-php|architect
-PHP Conference (php-con.com)
-PHP Meetup

You could also contact other open source development tools for possible ad campaigns such as:
-MySQL
-PHPEdit
-Any of the other PHP Editors mentioned that are in use by PHP Builder members (UltraDevEdit comes to mind.. I know there are numerous others)
-PHP MyAdmin
Perhaps you could provide advertising at a much reduced rate for open source... or combine the reduced rate with a trade of banners on each other's sites.

Or how about PHP User Groups? If there are some larger ones out there that can afford to advertise to get more members, then perhaps they might go for it.

I don't know if this is something you have thought about, but you could perhaps set up a second tier of membership to PHP Builder(like a gold membership or something) that people could pay a small monthly or yearly fee to join, which would give them perks such as:
-first stab at purchasing soon-to-be released products from Zend, or Macromedia, etc.
-discount on web development products, or free registered versions/upgrades on sharewares
-discounts on other PHP related products such as books, or attendance at conferences, etc.
You get the general idea. Of course, you would have to have a sort of partnership or agreement with these companies, but it's really a win-win for all.

I personally have no problem with the banners from large corporations, including M$... if that's what it takes to keep the forum free of charge to the users, then so be it. Might as well take their money and put it to good use 🙂

BTW I like the smaller banner ads you have put together- with the links and descriptions basically. Not too obtrusive and I find myself noticing them more than a flashy banner ad which your mind trains you to ignore LOL.

You guys have such a great membership list, and although I don't know what your CTR is on average- I'm sure your numbers are pretty impressive. You can throw your weight around a bit 😉

hth
-Elizabeth

goldbug

Probably can't hurt to have ads for other related open-source sites, not necessarily directly related to PHP, but appealing to tech-savvy folks in general. ThinkGeek or Gentoo Linux banners for example. Heck, maybe even start pushing the whole Apache+PHP on OSX angle and get some apple ads.

Of course, I too will have to second Elizabeth's recommendation about banners for meetup.com (it would be nice to have our local meetup consist of more than just Elizabeth, Buzzly, and I). 🙂.

Perhaps some for Sourceforge and Freshmeat, other OSDN sites too.

Of course, pretty much every site I've just mentioned would probably prefer something on the free end, as far as advertising budgets may go 🙂

Just my 2c.

stick_figure

I'd have to say, anything that goes on sourceforge.net would probably work. Mmmm... thinkgeek.com...

I think quality control was also brought up, and that's important that they aren't ads that can crawl out of their little box and cover the content. Makes me sick to think of those. That would be my pet peeve.

And about M$ ads, by selling to them you're supporting ASP and whatnot. That is comptetition to PHP, and so it could even hurt this site in the long run. If anyone clicks the banners. Newbs won't because it's not worth the money and they're already started with PHP, and veterans won't switch over. So maybe it isn't that harmful.

Also, it might be a good idea to move away from Flash and designer ads to the more plain server-side programming stuff. Usually those jobs are separate, I think, so it would be better to target a developer. Hard to think about what you would like to see more even if you don't like to see it at all... Gah, don't want to turn into a marketer.

Mordecai

IDEs should be advertised, I think. PHPEdit, Dreamweaver (I think that's the right MM product, not good with names), etc. Zend optimizer would be a best bet, most other Zend products (don't know what all they have, though).
But most of the time, advertising doesn't get to me (I don't have money and therefore don't look at the stuff in the ads), so I don't think my voice should be weighted that much in this conversation...

Bunkermaster

Ideas :
Automated testing companies (most are mainly focused on web testing at the moment)
- Compuware
- IBM Rational
- Mercury Interactive
- Segue (if they still exist)
- Empirix
- Parasoft

They have money let's take some

Also a good thing would be :
- Cobalt (Sun Microsystem web appliances)
- Sphera (IBM web appliances)
- and any other big bucks linux/unix web appliance...

stolzyboy

There is also another Macromedia product that beats Dreamweaver down, Homesite, a stripped down Dreamweaver, so maybe could get just a Macromedia ad

and i also agree with Beth about the mysql, apache, etc...

and agree with goldbug's OS X idea and getting Apple to throw some money phpbuilder's way, i'm sure Apple would like to get more advertisement away from M$ as possible for their development

and you could always talk to Computer Manufacturers like:

Dell, Gateway, MicronPC, HP, etc......

lots of possibilities

piersk

Originally posted by stick_figure And about M$ ads, by selling to them you're supporting ASP and whatnot.

But isn't it cool that MS are paying for open source software? 😃

stolzyboy

and we aren't selling out to M$, they are giving money to phpbuilder to put ads on this site, doesn't mean necessarily that you have to click-thru, though i'm sure some will

it really has NOTHING to do with ASP or .NET

jebster

The only thing that bothered me about any of the ads is the one that dropped down, but that is gone so I'm happy! 🙂

BTW, what about a page with a listing of PHP and PHP related books with affiliate links? Everybody likes books(I think)! Just a though...