Lets Make a new Adverts.ie

sw33t_r3v3ng3

I know some people here are extremely talented when it comes to web development so why not make a stand and build an actual community based site for selling unneeded items.
Seeing as the majority of people on Adverts will be closing their accounts, they will need somewhere else to go !
So who's up for it !?!?!?

Kenny Logins

sw33t_r3v3ng3 wrote: »

I know some people here are extremely talented when it comes to web development so why not make a stand and build an actual community based site for selling unneeded items.
Seeing as the majority of people on Adverts will be closing their accounts, they will need somewhere else to go !
So who's up for it !?!?!?

Here go. Just follow this. :pac:

http://thenewboston.org/list.php?cat=51

sw33t_r3v3ng3

Kenny Logins wrote: »

Here go. Just follow this. :pac:

http://thenewboston.org/list.php?cat=51

Haha thanks, only problem is i cant do it all on my own :P

flutered

i have not got a clue how to do it, quite a few offered their services on the present talk to adverts thread, a few pms and you should be ok.

sw33t_r3v3ng3

flutered wrote: »

i have not got a clue how to do it, quite a few offered their services on the present talk to adverts thread, a few pms and you should be ok.

Hopefully something can be made of this !

Creamy Goodness

No, just no.

I'm pretty peeved about how they went about implementing (not thinking of all the possibilities) and informing people this 'success fee' and how they handled answering questions about it but you don't realise the sheer amount of time and materials (both people hours and infrastructure) that goes into a site like adverts.ie.

sw33t_r3v3ng3

Creamy Goodness wrote: »

No, just no.

I'm pretty peeved about how they went about implementing this 'success fee' but you don't realise the sheer amount of time and materials (both people hours and infrastructure) that goes into a site like adverts.ie.

Believe me i know, i've worked on sites before. But wouldn't it be cool for a community to get together and work on something great ?

CrazyFish

I think you underestimate the amount of work it takes.

sw33t_r3v3ng3

CrazyFish wrote: »

I think you underestimate the amount of work it takes.

As you can see that doesnt go down too well

Gordon

OSI wrote: »

How do you plan to fund this site?

You could charge people a small fee when they sell something?

sw33t_r3v3ng3

Im assuming people who wanted a good free community site wouldn't mind donating. That could possibly be looked into

Call Me Jimmy

Not taking it too seriously but I feel adverts was an evolution am I right? Sure, technically it could be done, but I think the factors for its success were rooted in its association with the boards community. A lot less marketing needed to get it off the ground and wasn't it initially (possibly still is) basically a vbulletin forum?

CreepingDeath

sw33t_r3v3ng3 wrote: »

Im assuming people who wanted a good free community site wouldn't mind donating.

Bit of a contradition!

Boards & Adverts are just VBulletin sites as "Call Me Jimmy" said, probably tweaking the look and feel to set it apart from the stock vbulletin install and injecting adverts into it.

Looks like VBulletin has a VBulletin Cloud hosting option.

So for between $15 - $60 per month they would host/run the forum for you.
You'd just need a few chumps to moderate it for free

Jonny Blaze

I already spoke with someone via pm to see if there is much interest in this.

Could definitely help contribute.

As you say creepingdeath, there are tools and frameworks out there that would take a large part of the sting out of developing something similar.

It wouldn't even need to have all the features of adverts in fairness.

Just a functional site which doesn't look like complete muck would do the job.

And if we're only trying to recoup the actual run costs with no profit whatsoever we could possibly achieve it through ad rev alone.

AWS and rackspace do a free years virtual cloud hosting which we could make use of and at least give us a year to get off the ground re: running costs / ad revenue.

EDIT: Also, there have been several suggestions of alternative pricing strategies that have spun out from the adverts discussion that a lot of people seem like they would be much happier with so that could be worth a look.

livEwirE

This is a brilliant idea guys. A free alternative to adverts with a pm system is badly needed!

Draco

OSI wrote: »

Boards and Adverts long outgrew vBulletin and have spent years seperating themselves from it. In fact Adverts is entirely new codebase built from scratch. Boards is almost entirely a new codebase itself and only relies on vBulletin for some legacy and low level stuff.

It took a team of devs (that went from 3 to 6) 9 months to build the first incarnation of the the non-vBulletin version of Adverts. There was then a team of 4 that continued to main/update the site, occasionally supplemented by a couple of other devs to build the apps. I'm not sure exactly how many devs they have at the moment as I've not been talking to them in a while, but I'd say it's still 4 or 5.

On top of that is a support team dealing with users and sales.

It's a much, much larger project than people realise or give credit for.

mloc123

Jonny Blaze wrote: »

AWS and rackspace do a free years virtual cloud hosting which we could make use of and at least give us a year to get off the ground re: running costs / ad revenue.

AWS give you a single micro instance for free... have you used one?
It is not powerful enough to handle a simple munin install with 2-3 people accessing it... let alone a site which you would expect to cater for thousands.

What do you think the ball park annual costs for hosting a site the size of Adverts is? Ignoring the initial costs of buying hardware.

Jonny Blaze

Draco wrote: »

It took a team of devs (that went from 3 to 6) 9 months to build the first incarnation of the the non-vBulletin version of Adverts. There was then a team of 4 that continued to main/update the site, occasionally supplemented by a couple of other devs to build the apps. I'm not sure exactly how many devs they have at the moment as I've not been talking to them in a while, but I'd say it's still 4 or 5.

On top of that is a support team dealing with users and sales.

It's a much, much larger project than people realise or give credit for.

Of course it would be a huge effort but that doesn't mean it can't be done.

Sure how many millions of man hours are pumped into open source projects?

With experienced developers (who have less time and energy to devote) guiding younger more inexperienced developers and providing a road map from which to work, the main difficulty would be in sourcing people who have the will to make a sustained contribution.

Mullins07

LOL.

Let's write Adverts using vBulletin.

Oh wait...

https://web.archive.org/web/20060428050911/http://www.adverts.ie/

So in 7 years we can expect your site to be as good as Adverts.ie is today?

Jonny Blaze

mloc123 wrote: »

AWS give you a single micro instance for free... have you used one?
It is not powerful enough to handle a simple munin install with 2-3 people accessing it... let alone a site which you would expect to cater for thousands.

What do you think the ball park annual costs for hosting a site the size of Adverts is? Ignoring the initial costs of buying hardware.

I know and yes I totally agree, they suck..

But im thinking options here. Not to mention you would be lucky to get that kind of traffic early on anyway i would imagine.

As I said earlier as well, there have been alternative pricing strategies proposed elsewhere that may or may not work.

snubbleste

Why not just start using craigslist? http://dublin.craigslist.org/
It works very well. Basic and simple.

sw33t_r3v3ng3

CreepingDeath wrote: »

Bit of a contradition!

Boards & Adverts are just VBulletin sites as "Call Me Jimmy" said, probably tweaking the look and feel to set it apart from the stock vbulletin install and injecting adverts into it.

Looks like VBulletin has a VBulletin Cloud hosting option.

So for between $15 - $60 per month they would host/run the forum for you.
You'd just need a few chumps to moderate it for free

How do you propose getting the $15-60 for it ?

rovoagho

I know the work that goes into a site like Adverts.ie, and to suggest it's insurmountable is simply nonsense. The work involved is minimal, you could start a site in 10 minutes flat using one of the hundreds of PHP scrpts (or Perl, or whatever takes your fancy) to get started, and build on that, just like Adverts.ie did with PhotoPost. And at least two people, including myself, offered free hosting for a year up to and including a physical server.

The hard part in building a site like this, as anyone who actually knows knows, is in building a userbase. The technical hurdles are trivial at best. The userbase is already there, in the people that are disgusted with the way Adverts.ie has handled - and continues to handle - this car crash of a change.

sw33t_r3v3ng3

So who thinks they would be interested in contributing ??

Here's what im thinking. Use a free web host (000webhost they do the job for a short period of time) for the first few months, until ad revenue were to get up to a point where it would cover costs. A domain name could be bought for no more than €10(would also be covered in ad revenue).

The site could be built using PHP, MYSQLI, Javascript, possibly ajax.
There would be a developers only part for the site. All ads would be listed free and any money we make, which would be through ads would be used to upgrade the site at a later time.

Any other ideas ?

Kenny Logins

sw33t_r3v3ng3 wrote: »

So who thinks they would be interested in contributing ??

Here's what im thinking. Use a free web host (000webhost they do the job for a short period of time) for the first few months, until ad revenue were to get up to a point where it would cover costs. A domain name could be bought for no more than €10(would also be covered in ad revenue).

The site could be built using PHP, MYSQLI, Javascript, possibly ajax.
There would be a developers only part for the site. All ads would be listed free and any money we make, which would be through ads would be used to upgrade the site at a later time.

Any other ideas ?

:pac:

sw33t_r3v3ng3

Kenny Logins wrote: »

:pac:

Great skills at making text bold

goinginside

Hey guys,

Im defo interested in contributing, I've got some spare hardware tucked away that I'm to give up for the cause. I think we could be really quick putting the site together with PostGres and a visual basic GUI.

Count me in!

mloc123

goinginside wrote: »

Hey guys,

Im defo interested in contributing, I've got some spare hardware tucked away that I'm to give up for the cause. I think we could be really quick putting the site together with PostGres and a visual basic GUI.

Count me in!

What hardware have you? Have you access to hosting (power, rack space, aircon and bandwidth) also?

Kenny Logins

sw33t_r3v3ng3 wrote: »

Great skills at making text bold

I was going to swap the 'e's for '3's but thought it might make me look a little childish.

Draco

Jonny Blaze wrote: »

Of course it would be a huge effort but that doesn't mean it can't be done.

Sure how many millions of man hours are pumped into open source projects?

With experienced developers (who have less time and energy to devote) guiding younger more inexperienced developers and providing a road map from which to work, the main difficulty would be in sourcing people who have the will to make a sustained contribution.

The point is not that it's impossible but that it is a large body of work that took a concerted effort to create and maintain. The idea that you could build and run a site like Adverts *as it is now* as a side project is ludicrous. Just dealing with user enquires would consume a massive amount of time (time that would have been otherwise spent of development).

There are plenty of well maintained open source projects, just as there is an entire wasteland of abandoned , unfinished, unusable open source projects.

Sure, you could set up something reasonably quickly with a vBulliten plugin or a one of the WordPress plugins ones and hope it works with no modifications. Would it work or look as well as the current adverts? Would it be customisable enough to handle all your requirements? One-size-fits-all plugins rarely do.

Users don't just magically appear either - it's another thing that takes time, effort and money to attract. Sure there's a ground swell of users looking around right now but how many exactly? Once you've all of them, where you get more? What about buyers? Where are they coming from?

AWS gets very expensive very quickly - it might be ease to use and setup but by god do they know how to charge.

By all means, be annoyed with the new fees on Adverts.ie but don't think that a new site could pop up over night to replace it.

sw33t_r3v3ng3

goinginside wrote: »

Hey guys,

Im defo interested in contributing, I've got some spare hardware tucked away that I'm to give up for the cause. I think we could be really quick putting the site together with PostGres and a visual basic GUI.

Count me in!

If you look at both adverts and boards, they're both built from scratch. So why not just start from scratch ourselves ?? It would take more time but if its going to be done anyway why not just do it first thing ?

String

sw33t_r3v3ng3 wrote: »

So who thinks they would be interested in contributing ??

Here's what im thinking. Use a free web host (000webhost they do the job for a short period of time) for the first few months, until ad revenue were to get up to a point where it would cover costs. A domain name could be bought for no more than €10(would also be covered in ad revenue).

The site could be built using PHP, MYSQLI, Javascript, possibly ajax.
There would be a developers only part for the site. All ads would be listed free and any money we make, which would be through ads would be used to upgrade the site at a later time.

Any other ideas ?

I honestly don't think there is any point, it would be pretty easy to create an ad site, the problem would be getting people to use it and with all the other alternatives I don't think you could get the numbers. The average person is still going to use adverts and I don't think we will see if the new success fee, will have an effect, for a couple of months. You never know, they may implement a new approach after all the drama!

sw33t_r3v3ng3

DrMorphine wrote: »

I honestly don't think there is any point, it would be pretty easy to create an ad site, the problem would be getting people to use it and with all the other alternatives I don't think you could get the numbers. The average person is still going to use adverts and I don't think we will see if the new success fee, will have an effect, for a couple of months. You never know, they may implement a new approach after all the drama!

Even just forget about the fact adverts is ripping people off for a moment. Why not just work on something community based and show it can be done, hell it might not be as good as adverts but it'll show them that we'll make a stand for what we want !!

Hank Scorpio

Why are people so annoyed about the pm system, is it because you can't make sneaky offers anymore or offer more money off thread?

Ideas like these always start off with great enthusiasm until people start to realize the huge amount of work involved, good luck trying though.

CreepingDeath

goinginside wrote: »

I think we could be really quick putting the site together with PostGres and a visual basic GUI.

Visual Basic ?

Thanks but no thanks, and no COBOL developers need apply either.

sw33t_r3v3ng3

nuxxx wrote: »

Why are people so annoyed about the pm system, is it because you can't make sneaky offers anymore or offer more money off thread?

Ideas like these always start off with great enthusiasm until people start to realize the huge amount of work involved, good luck trying though.

Its not just the pm system, its the fact that adverts was once a community site and they never bother to listen to the community that started it and also the new pricing. Its just Idiotic !!

goinginside

CreepingDeath wrote: »

Visual Basic ?

Thanks but no thanks, and no COBOL developers need apply either.

So much for the community spirit.

lajtel

I am currently paying for a webhost with 60GB disk space and unlimited data transfer.
I am not using this in a productive way and would be ready to host anything needed on it.

It's not much, but it's something.

String

If someone is planning on going ahead with this and wants community involvement I would recommend GitHub and keep it completely open.

sw33t_r3v3ng3

lajtel wrote: »

I am currently paying for a webhost with 60GB disk space and unlimited data transfer.
I am not using this in a productive way and would be ready to host anything needed on it.

It's not much, but it's something.

Well that woulld be web hosting sorted thanks to lajtel

sw33t_r3v3ng3

DrMorphine wrote: »

If someone is planning on going ahead with this and wants community involvement I would recommend GitHub and keep it completely open.

Is that a good idea, ive never really used Github much before ?

String

sw33t_r3v3ng3 wrote: »

Is that a good idea, ive never really used Github much before ?

Yes definitely if you want it to be open to everyone to contribute.

DublinerPL

lajtel wrote: »

I am currently paying for a webhost with 60GB disk space and unlimited data transfer.
I am not using this in a productive way and would be ready to host anything needed on it.

It's not much, but it's something.

Same here Hostgator Business Plan paid up to end of the year.

sw33t_r3v3ng3

DublinerPL wrote: »

Same here Hostgator Business Plan paid up to end of the year.

Things have just gotten a lot more tempting :P

travis1976

I'd give a hand to moderate/check ads/whatever, as long as it's not a 9-5 thing. I've got one of those.

sw33t_r3v3ng3

travis1976 wrote: »

I'd give a hand to moderate/check ads/whatever, as long as it's not a 9-5 thing. I've got one of those.

Wouldnt say so, whenever someones available would be fine!

travis1976

sign me up..

mloc123

What is the name of the new site?

sw33t_r3v3ng3

Great so we have about 10 people !!

sw33t_r3v3ng3

mloc123 wrote: »

What is the name of the new site?

As of now i don't have one. Im sure there is more creative people out there than me !

Kenny Logins

mloc123 wrote: »

What is the name of the new site?

wepromisefreeadsforever.ie