We have gotten into a situation where I've been completely overrun with pretty much everything. 50,000 is the average number of emails received each day (most of which are spam of course), 19/20 phone calls we receive have nothing to do with anything (want to sell printer toner, want to partner for something, buy company, etc.), even fax machine gets 99% spam faxes. Just the email alone is to the point that the most recent emails I've been able to get to are over 2 months old. Most things we've done have grown 10x more than expected (or wanted), so now we are doing 50 different things mediocre at best simply because we don't have the time/resources to full devote to everything. So because of that, this week we are going to be changing a bunch of things. Not entirely sure what all those changes are going to be, but expect some. Hopefully we can get back to being great at doing less things instead of sucking at too much.
ah! great, would wait for the update about what all chances are going to be made So I think DP will be down for Sometime ????
well i am looking forward to many new and innovative changes here.. its been long since i have been here.. but lately i have got stuck to it.. thanks for making it so huge and SPAM FREE
Are you able to give us some hints as to what the changes are going to be? *yes yes im a nosy sort...*
So we should not expect a Major Change ??? Still some changes Please keep us Update what changes were made
Shawn, one of the best ways to escape from feeling like you're stretched a mile wide and an inch deep would be to go to a paid annual subscription for DP membership. I would pay a reasonable fee in a minute(!) for the value that DP provides. I suspect most serious webmasters would, too. It would eliminate tons of the spam and frivolous posts, emails, etc., if people had to pay for the privilege. And you could eliminate such things as the General Chat and the Politics and Religion sections that generate more heat, passion, and flaming than edifying content. I belong to a college sports forum which faced a similar problem. The open sub-forums get flamed and spammed nonstop. So they took the most important ones (football and basketball) and set up a "premium membership". They have thousands of paid members for just the one university. And by limiting access to those premium threads to paid members only, the spam and flaming are virtually non-existent. And the thread content is, for the most part, excellent. I would seriously encourage you to sharpen and narrow the vision. Go to a paid Digital Point. I think that the result would be much easier for you to oversee. And I suspect that the result would also be closer to what I think is your goal — that is, a truly professional fraternity of webmasters, sharing info at a high level of expertise. My two cents.
Bad idea on many levels and it wouldn't solve the issue at hand, which is not the forum but the other DP enterprises.
One of the things that makes dp such a great place is that it's free imho. Nothing irritates me more than to search google for something, get a result that looks promising and find I can't read it because it's on some paid forum. I 'might' pay to be a member here but that's because I'm already dp addicted but honestly, can't really afford paid memberships as a general rule as I'm not that successful yet. Many members are new at this and we all were once and making it a paid forum would potentially exclude thousands of members. Of course, Shawn can and will do what he likes but my 'vote' is against making this a paid forum. My suggestion is delegation.... that's how successful managers of any operation remain successful. Lisa
Ouch, how boring this place would be without. (not really true, but true) Paid ? This place is very lively and fresh now, because its free.
Yea - the feeling of over stretched sucks, My wife and I were just talking about this on the ride home last nite as well, We need to adjust our business as well , I have that same issue , responding to emails and pm's consumes way to much of my time , I just read a cool time management post on a blog as well, I think you should create a "premium" membership here, I really think that would weed out TONS OF BULLSHIT..... I would sign up for that for sure,