In response to someone asking where to buy a HD10, our warden posted:

"Please try to support our Sponsors, that help make these forums available and with not ads, pop-ups etc. Zotz will give you an honest, fair and competitive price (don't forget to mention you're a member here). Thanks for your help."

Just food for thought: I recently purchased an HD10 cam soley because of this website and would have bought from one its sponsors, but never have seen any ads on the site. Furthermore, on sites like AVSforum.com I look forward to see who their sponsors are so I know who to trust. I have always bought from AVSForum sponsors. I like to see ads and sponsors as it give me places to shop that I know are trustworthy. My opinion is I would like to see ads...good for this website, good for trustworthy places like Zotz, and good for me... just my 2 cents...

We have a list of sponsors on our sponsor page:

http://www.dvinfo.net/sponsors/index.php

<<<-- Originally posted by Lisa Lee : I like to see ads and sponsors -->>>

Aaarrrrggghh! No! No ads! That's what makes this such a great place. If you like ads then there are plenty of other places to see them. Maybe there should be more periodic postings of where to buy, or maybe a more prominent link to the sponsor page. But PLEASE, don't spoil this great site with annoying ads.

Ads are annoying, but Lisa's case presents have a legitimate concern about the visibility of DVinfo.net sponsors. Maybe as a compromise, one or two Wranglers could make the sponsorship prominent in our sigs from time to time? I'll start.

That's a great idea, Robert -- and I've changed my sig to match yours. Thanks for the tip!

I'm very reluctant to put ads on the message boards as we have enough of them on the main site, but I might work in a text link to our Sponsors page (http://www.dvinfo.net/sponsors/index.php) somewhere that's visible from the boards, perhaps as a single button along the top row.

Great idea, Robert. I've added it to mine, so between the 3 of us, about 10% of all the posts have this tag. That should get the message across..

Chris,

I think a sponsor's button at the top with the rest would be very appropriate, allowing anyone wanting to see ads to click away! The perfect solution in keeping with the cleanliness of this site. Thanks for all your hard work.

Clay

Or maybe a sponsers forum that gives a brief description of each sponsor and a link to their site. Of course it would be a closed forum that people couldn't respond to.

Thanks Clay!

Adrian -- you know what, we have this already... see http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=22.

;-)

Well maybe we need to make it a little more comprehensive and visable, like in the main forum list

I guess its just me who likes the flashy ads...perhaps I'm a shopaholic or something. I think the sig idea is good, I might have noticed those.

Lisa,
Thanks very much for prompting us to consider the matter.

Personally I think adding anything like popups or huge flashy banners would detract from the quality of the site. I understand the sponsors need promoting in some form as that's the obvious arrangement between them and Chris but please don't turn it into some carnival like site ;)

Cheers
Aaron

Kill The Pop Ups! (http://www2.b3ta.com/realistic-internet-simulator/)

I think this has been posted here before, but what the hay...

I got up to 67. It gets hard when they show up half on screen, and you have to move them back into the center to close them.

It's not that realistic because you can't double click the upper-left icon of the window to close it.

And because you can't install Google toolbar.

Chris,
Would there be a way to work in a "Sponsors" link around the top of the main forum page? Or maybe even a button like the "home", "search", etc. are? I don't know how tedious it would be to code just for a link or if the forum software would even allow it.

matt

Matt,

See the post earlier on this thread that Chris made....he suggested that exact same thing! Great minds think alike...

Doh! I thought he was talking about having it linked in the moderators' sigs. I apologize.

matt

Well, this brings up a question I've been wondering about. When B&H became a sponsor, a link was cited and we were asked to use that link so B&H would know dvinfo members were going to B&H's site. I marked the link as a "favorite" and have been using it to access B&H's site. Since I know zero about tracking, however, and the page that comes up is the usual front page of B&H's site, does marking the link as a favorite and accessing B&H from my favorites menu do any good for dvinfo?

Second, I agree with the idea of showing the sponsors on the first page of the discussion forum. Maybe their logos at the top with links. I wandered into the site and set up the discussion forums page as a favorite, which means that I usually bypass the front page completely, which then means I tend to overlook dvinfo's sponsors (though much of what they carry is targeted more at pro users than at the home movie crowd like me).

On the other hand, and here's my gratuitous comment of the week, please don't do what camcorderinfo is doing. I think I'm about to stop visiting that forum completely because of the way ads now intersperse each new post! Worse than pop ups and pretty demeaning to those posting (how'd you like to be a lead-in to an ad for a sponsor about whom you may know nothing). At least Yahoo only does it once in awhile in its groups and not after every post.

Patricia,
Actually, bookmarking that B&H Photo link will probably not work to support us because the identifying tag in the URL disappears as soon as the main page loads.

If you know how to manually edit and/or set up your bookmarks, here's what it should be:

www.bhphotovideo.com/?BI=155

Thanks, Ken. I think I managed to do it. At least, when I opened the favorites window in msie after clicking organize, I managed to edit the address to the one you gave me. Hope it works.

Ken,

I would assume this would be a good thing for one to do if they bookmarked most of the sponsers? Or, does it matter?

Clay...

Good question. But I don't think that any of the other sponsors have given us tracking codes. So you might as well just bookmark the main links to their sites.

At this point in time, B&H is the only sponsor that tracks the hits from DV Info. The rest of our sponsors just rely on you telling them where you found 'em when you call. Thanks,

The idea of putting some kind of button or link at the top of each forum page, ala "DVi Community - Support Our Sponsors," is a much better solution than signature tag lines. It keeps the button, which would direct us to appropriate links (and perhaps instructions for making our own shortcuts), visible at all times but is not as intrusive as ads, pop-up or otherwise.

Perhaps I'm unusual, but I pretty much ignore signature tag lines. They tend to be static; once you've been hanging around for a while you know what the tag is going to say. That makes it boilerplate, with no reason to read over and over again. Sooner or later I forget it's there and become insensitive to changes.

The advantage of the top of every forum page is that it is always visible when the page loads no matter what you happen to be reading. There's enough room there to put in a tasteful link without taking up forum real estate.

Will