Why not charge for RavenNuke?

Hangin' Around Joined: Oct 15, 2006 Posts: 28

Not for the software, as there'll always be unscrupulous individuals that rip that off unfortunately Sad

Charge for support in the Forums.. just something nominal so as not to dissuade people from joining. You guys work your butts off , and deserve recompense.

Did you like all the big words ?

$5 a month ? For years now I've gone to different support forums, and a lot of people want answers straight away, some even get rude if they don't get answered. Considering it's FREE people should pay more respect, and imo a little something for your efforts to help them.

I've not much money, but I could afford this as I'm sure most others can.

Thoughts?

Site Admin/Owner Joined: Aug 27, 2002 Posts: 17088

This thread should get lively Wink

. I will stay out of it to see where it leads. We have had several discussions over the years.

Worker Joined: Jul 06, 2005 Posts: 172

I would pay an annual fee for this type of service. Perhaps the best way to make something like that viable would be to have a corporate support option. I use RavenNuke on a corporate level, so having good support available even if it costs a couple hundred bucks a year or something would be fine with me. Getting the software to do what I need it to do helps me bring in revenue, which can easily be passed to the people who do the work.

Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2009 4:57 pm

how about regular support and premium support
how this would work is regular members post in the forums requesting help and premium members get regular support plus access to special forums with lists of all know issues and fixes also with the option for (non php minded people) to be added to a que where somebody will fix the issue for them providing the user wants to hand out the ftp info

Worker Joined: Sep 28, 2006 Posts: 241

Not to be a one of the few to speak against this but most folks use free portal software becaus eit is exactly that "free". I am pretty certain Raven knew the support that would be required by taking on such a task. He is not one to just jump into something with out thinking it through from every angle.

registered · Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2009 5:49 pm

i'm against that Sad

RWS should sell support to it's clients not users.

registered · Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2009 5:50 pm

I hate to say it but the way PHPNuke would release the latest to the club only would probably be the best idea. If you charge for support, either another site will offer support in an attempt to gain members or future users will switch to another CMS. It is a shame that people will use and use and never give back, but that is the nature of the beast....

Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2009 5:58 pm

I am against it. I don't want to get into how this might affect a user's choice to use the CMS. I am purely looking at it from a developer / moderator / support person's perspective. Now I want to say off the bat that I like helping people, and will do all I can to try and fix their problems. I am only speaking for myself here BUT I do not want to feel obligated to have to help someone solve there problems.

registered · Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2009 6:06 pm

Palbin wrote:

I am against it. I don't want to get into how this might affect a user's choice to use the CMS. I am purely looking at it from a developer / moderator / support person's perspective. Now I want to say off the bat that I like helping people, and will do all I can to try and fix their problems. I am only speaking for myself here BUT I do not want to feel obligated to have to help someone solve there problems.

I can tell you from experience that is a huge factor. You end up supporting your product and many others too. Take Clan Themes for instance. A person buys a theme from us and the first time something fubars up it obviously must be the theme that caused it. Even after you prove them wrong, you have lost a customer.

To keep that customer, you have to help them work through their problems caused by others work.

This happens twice a day on CT if not more. I spend the majority of my time supporting others hard work and if I want to keep my customer base I have too support all their problems. It quickly becomes an obligation and bloodline of your business.

If you plan to charge for anything even if it is just $1. You can expect this to become fact. I am not against of course, but that point is a good one.

I consider my problems a very small scale to problems a move like this might produce. I know what it feels like from both sides of this fence and I can walk away from someone who isn't a valued customer much easier.

Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2009 6:15 pm

I don't like to pay for support. I'll donate plenty, but somehow it seems different.

I agree with thoth, though, it is really annoying to read angry, or rude posts from people who EXPECT something for nothing.

Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2009 6:21 pm

I would pay way more than $5 for support. If you say you would never pay for support then you have never been on the other end of that stick. Support is a never ending job, period.

You take a look at some of the other phpnuke communities that have removed or closed their forums claiming stupid stuff like spam. Not even close to the truth. If I closed the CT forums I could spend the majority of my days watching Family Guy reruns.

The problem is until you been a developer and had to support something, you think a support charge is ridiculous. In which lies the problem, that is 99% of this audience.

The best way to charge for support is in the price of the product as a surcharge or separate option. That has always been the case.

Involved Joined: Sep 15, 2008 Posts: 352

It all depends on the direction Raven wants to go.. I can say charging for a product that used to be free brings many.. many.. headaches.

"Open Source Matters"

Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2009 6:56 pm

floppydrivez wrote:

Palbin wrote:

I am against it. I don't want to get into how this might affect a user's choice to use the CMS. I am purely looking at it from a developer / moderator / support person's perspective. Now I want to say off the bat that I like helping people, and will do all I can to try and fix their problems. I am only speaking for myself here BUT I do not want to feel obligated to have to help someone solve there problems.

I can tell you from experience that is a huge factor. You end up supporting your product and many others too. Take Clan Themes for instance. A person buys a theme from us and the first time something fubars up it obviously must be the theme that caused it. Even after you prove them wrong, you have lost a customer.

To keep that customer, you have to help them work through their problems caused by others work.

This happens twice a day on CT if not more. I spend the majority of my time supporting others hard work and if I want to keep my customer base I have too support all their problems. It quickly becomes an obligation and bloodline of your business.

If you plan to charge for anything even if it is just $1. You can expect this to become fact. I am not against of course, but that point is a good one.

I consider my problems a very small scale to problems a move like this might produce. I know what it feels like from both sides of this fence and I can walk away from someone who isn't a valued customer much easier.

Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2009 7:25 pm

I am just saying "free" is like a magic word to me. I would never have tried RN or tried to get support here if it wasn't "free". I strongly believe in supporting things I believe in, especially if I partake in them. I am not a developer, don't know PHP, and am barely able to find my way around HTML so, this website and the products distributed here are a life line to me - so far 5 sites I administer use RN - therefore, I support it. End of story.

Posted: Sun Sep 27, 2009 12:40 am

I have always contended that regular support should be free. It's not an opensource issue to me and never has been. I have always hoped that donations would make it all worthwhile. There are many who do give and I am very thankful for that. There are a few who give regularly, some even in this thread Wink

Having said that, let me steer the discussion a little to see what you think. I am prepared to release RavenNuke(tm) WebSVN. This will give web access to the RavenNuke(tm) trunk file (our real time development file). This will give you instant access to the latest and greatest code on a real time basis. You've seen this before at many sites where they offer nightly builds, etc. The code may be tested or not. And we will support bug issues to an extent. But, I don't plan on releasing this for free. I haven't finalized anything (yet) and this thread gives me a good forum (no pun intended) to discuss it. My thoughts are along the line of maybe $50/6 months. Theme and script developers who publicly advertise RN developed themes/scripts will get a substantial discount. For those of you who don't know what I'm referring to, see these screen shots.

#1 - Opening screen
http://www.ravenphpscripts.com/images/forums/websvn_1.jpg

#2 - After selecting RavenNuke76 from screen #1
http://www.ravenphpscripts.com/images/forums/websvn_2.jpg

#3 - After selecting Changes from screen #2
http://www.ravenphpscripts.com/images/forums/websvn_3.jpg

#4 - After selecting Trunk from screen #1
http://www.ravenphpscripts.com/images/forums/websvn_4.jpg

#5 - After selecting html from screen #4
http://www.ravenphpscripts.com/images/forums/websvn_5.jpg

#6 - After selecting config.php from previous screen #5
http://www.ravenphpscripts.com/images/forums/websvn_6.jpg

#7 - After selecting Compare with Previous from screen #6
http://www.ravenphpscripts.com/images/forums/websvn_7.jpg

Posted: Sun Sep 27, 2009 4:48 am

Raven,
I would have no problem in $50/6 months. I doubt I would use the SVN too much but I would enjoy a private forum where we could discuss things that are not open to the general public. There are a LOT of things that I do that I would never post in the open but if access was restricted to the paid members, ie: power users, I would think that would be a popular option. Maybe something to consider to go along with the SVN tree to add "Added Value".

Dawg

registered · Posted: Sun Sep 27, 2009 11:21 am

Dawg, "Added Value"... spoken like a good business man. Wink

Posted: Thu Oct 01, 2009 5:36 am

WoW didn't expect this level of response Smile

I can see it from every angle, as a user of software who occasionally panics when things go wrong and I can't work out why. When you've a site with regular members and have built it to be popular, any error or issue is compounded by the members needing to get their service.

I'm not suggesting charging for the software, that isn't workable I don't think, there'll always be unscrupulous idiots like phpnuke-downloads.com who then grab a copy and charge everyone else for access Sad

The site that I run, no one has made a donation in months , but it's almost a full time job keeping track of everything and offering support. To me that amounts to me paying a large amount of time and money for others to enjoy a service, which I'm sure is the situation that raven has. It seems the least we could all do is to help with his running costs, whether thats access to SVN or a private support area. It does as palbin says raise the question of "obligation" but to me anyway, raven and team do what and when they can, which imo still deserves financial support.

I realise in the spirit of open source, charging for anything seems somewhat out of kilter, but at the end of the day raven and the team give us something awesome, fix it when it breaks and have a website to distribute it all. What do they get back from the public for such hard work? Satisfaction of a job well done is a big part, but not having to worry if you can continue because of finance is another.

By no means do I mean turn it "financial", all I'm wanting is for raven and team to get support for their venture. Its no fun working your ass off, spending hours of your time and then have to finance the whole thing as well. Its like having to pay to work instead of being paid, where surely the people who get the service should at least assist with costs.

Rant and a half eh ? Very Happy

Anyway, I'll be interested to see how this goes. Whatever happens I'll do my best to help and support raven and team.

Posted: Thu Oct 01, 2009 8:09 am

thoth,

Well Said!

Posted: Thu Oct 01, 2009 7:17 pm

Many thanks!

Thoth wrote:

The site that I run, no one has made a donation in months , but it's almost a full time job keeping track of everything and offering support. To me that amounts to me paying a large amount of time and money for others to enjoy a service, which I'm sure is the situation that raven has. It seems the least we could all do is to help with his running costs, whether that's access to SVN or a private support area. It does as palbin says raise the question of "obligation" but to me anyway, raven and team do what and when they can, which imo still deserves financial support.

Hang in there! I was a one man army with a vision when I started out also Wink

When I released RavenNuke(tm) v1.0, I was the sole Developer, Admin of this site, Moderator, etc. As of the release of v2.40.00 RC1, the RavenNuke(tm) Development Team numbered 13. As of October 1, 2009, it now numbers 19! The amount of talent, expertise, knowledge, vision, self-giving, -- that now comprises this Team is truly awesome. Never would I have thought way back in 2005 that we would be where we are and this Team would be what it is. I am so thankful. for w/o this kind of effort and dedication, this site would not be what it is and who knows about RN.

Here are the current Team members (* = New Member):
CodyG
Dad7732
* Dawg
Evaders99
FireATST
FKelly
* FloppyDrivez
* GazJ
Guardian2003
JakeC
JEstrella
* Jlajax
KGuske
Montego
* Nuken
Palbin
Raven
* SpasticDonkey
Susann

Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 1:59 am

Hello to all.

I readed aloth abouth payed support,donations and so on and so on.
As one of osc2nuke dev's , i questioned many times how we could make a profit of our work.
Please read profit as a way to cover spended time on the code.
We came to conclusion that it didnt worked.At the end of the road we discovered that once you start asking $ for whatsoever ,people go away.They simply move to something that is free and well supported.
I also must say that the actual investments to keep the site alive isnt a big deal.It isnt that much , and if you arent able to pay for it , there is alway's someone out there ( someone of your users) to give you a server space to continue your work.
But i dont think that is the actual problem.
To give my simple ,hard and direct answer i say:
If you created a soft or script for free , and arent personal able anymore to continue it for free, you have a few options.
1 -is you go ask $ for it and loose your members/users.
2 -you pass over to someone else who is willing to continue the work in the same spirit.
3 -you stop begging your users to donate ( every one sees the block to donate on the homepage) and continue as before , with maby a little less or even some more spirit.
4 -you stop your work , just by that.

and number 5, my favorit:

use your creativity , find good alternatives to make some $ in relation to what you doing.Create modules or themes people would like to pay for.Users/Members see them as "extra's" , and are not a part of the main code.

i dont try to be hard with my opinion, i try to be realistic.it is also a little warning so that the wrong choices arent go to be made.

Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 6:05 am

All I will say is that without Raven we most definitely wouldn't be where we are today and begging obviously does work because the target was met last month. Wink

Sometimes people just need to be reminded. I suspect many people are like me and go straight to the forums and don't even look at the home page, therefore missing the donations block.

Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 6:25 am

jakec wrote:

... I suspect many people are like me and go straight to the forums and don't even look at the home page, therefore missing the donations block.

Put the button in the Post a reply .tpl Razz

.

Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 9:40 am

I like some of whitehat's ideas. I agree that the main product and standard support MUST remain free, or else like he said people will go elsewhere.

But there are still some options like:

1) Paid support aimed at corporate users (like me) - could simply consist of a private forum and access to the what's-it-called development interface

2) Paid blocks/modules - perhaps ones catered to financial things themselves. I used to buy this kinda stuff all the time. Hell I've bought a few and never even used em Razz

I stay super busy all day, and when I'm having trouble with my site sometimes I really need quick support (and usually always get it here), so I wouldn't mind paying a monthly fee for it. Like right now I'm trying to find where to put the darn google verification meta tag.

Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 3:29 pm

sak wrote:

where to put the darn google verification meta tag.

includes/meta.php

Dawg