Did you send us notice you were buying or selling links on our site? How are we supposed to notify you if you don't tell us? No, that was just upgrading MySQL.
Shawn - it looks like you have a bunch of pissed off people on your hands, but oh well. There will be a backlash for a little while, but the members will get over it. Other big sites like vulletin.org, v7n,,,, all limit the number of links members can have in their signature. Its a way of controlling the number of outgoing links. Which I fully understand. You may want to exclude regular members from being able to have a picture gallery. That would be one extra perk for premium members and reduces the sites overall backup size.
I haven't really seen anyone pissed off to be honest. I'd say more people like it than dislike it (by a lot). As far as taking away galleries, nah... The galleries aren't really a spam issue at this point, and that was the main reason behind the signature links.
If anybody has time to make that many posts on a whim, I'm sure they wouldn't have a problem paying the Premium Membership cost anyways.
We established in the premium membership topic, people will complain no matter what. I think in this case most people are annoyed they got no warning as opposed being restricted to the number of links they can have. More worried about their earnings and reputation taking a hit rather than what's best for the forum. *shrug* I don't get why everybody is complaining to be honest. As a victim of people making money out of my projects without permission (reselling my phpBB3 styles and what have you) I can totally understand why this has been done, and really - we out to be grateful the mods talked Shawn out of hiding the sigs from search engines in the first place. At the end of the day it doesn't make that much of a difference. If you sold your sig space and now it's been removed, and haven't paid for a premium membership - tough sh*t.
If I recall correctly, last time I read this thread, I read that non-Premium members could have two external links and two internal links. Is this the case? If so, then why am I getting the following error: ... For trying to use this signature text: [plain][I]Regards, Nick [/I][URL="http://www.lineolatedparakeet.net/forums"]Lineolated Parakeet Forum[/URL] | [URL="http://www.talkparrots.com"]Parrot Forum, Articles, Discussion and Photos[/URL] | [thread=1396495]vBulletin Installs and Management[/thread][/plain] Code (markup):
It shouldn't be. Regular members have 2 external and four internal links available. Might be a bug though.
You sure you didn't have something else in there? I just demoted myself to non-premium, tried that link and it was fine. Adding a 3rd URL tag to the signature you posted did give me the error (so I know it's checking).
The two signature link seems like the best move. SitePoint went ahead with the nofollow rule and they seem to have gone off the radar these days. DP's still number one for me, but I'm not sure if the nofollow rule would go down well at all. You'd see an influx of rival webmaster forums stepping up to it I think. Glad you got talked out of it.
SitePoint TRIED the nofollow route but got inundated with even more spammers trying to artificially inflate their post counts so they could get the rel="nofollow" removed. It got so bad that the moderators there (myself included) were spending hours each day just cleaning up threads and issuing warnings/infractions (and even bans). So finally the company said "screw it" and removed the ability of non-logged in registered users to see them. The sigs are still there, you just have to be a registered member and logged in to view 'em. </offtopic>
SitePoint still has one of the best marketplaces on the web and will always have the regulars, the problem with the nofollow ruling is that it will cut off the large following and from my experience it is the busiest forums with thousands of members online at once that tend to get the most attention i.e. DP, Warrior! Webmaster World has always done well without even allowing any kind of links, I think it may help that they have Google reps on there.
At least they remain dofollow. One of the main reasons I am active here is because of the dofollow links in my sig. Who is considered a premium member?
Someone who has bold username and user title. Get yours Here: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/payments.php
I think hiding all the links from SEs will be a real nightmare for many members I am little disappointed with having two links cut off, but I am glad to still have 2 visible links. I am thinking about upgrading: but the price looks a little high. Can you consider lowering the price? As a spammer will not pay any money whether its less or more, to get 4 links in Signature. Even if you change the price to $20 per year spammers will not pay it. Are you still thinking about other changing like: nofollow or making links invisible etc? Or this premium membership feature will remain unchanged? [Off Topic Question: I sent PM to few Admins about my recent blog link not working. They tried to help but it is still not working, for like 5 or so months. Is it possible that you can take a look into this matter. Thank You]
Yes, we can all see the immediate value of your signature links personally, and the value it brings to the forum.
You still can. My own signature is proof of that, and I'm not giving Shawn a dime. (The secret is on page 2 of this thread.)
It's a slap in the face to the DP members that have been around a long time. I've been a member over 3 years...I guess that's why so many of the well known members have moved on.