Restructuring the Marketplace

My vote was to just split the Shared and Reseller / VS what is now the majority to split everthing .... [...] So perhaps it can be based on traffic and the amount of posts per day - week etc / if it is in high demand / then splitting everything may be a good idea. I say the split for Shared and Reseller for sure as that is two different types of visitors

That is an excellent point, Dave.
Definitely something to consider. We can always take step-by-step approach to splitting advertising forums, see how they adapt, move on to the next busy thing.
 
If nothing else, I would split VPS and Dedicated/Collocation. I think there will be enough activity on both to justify the split.
 
Please, Please, Please
Do not add a free hosting section here. Although this thread is a bit old, i just wanted to add my opinion and why.

1. You will have a bunch of people signing up just so they can post their free hosting offers. Thiink of the time you will spend vetting each of these accounts before enabling posting rights.

2. We all know the false claims of unlimited whatever in hosting. Think about the free aspect of hosting, nothing is free in online or offline. There is always a catch. Free hosting claims are worse than unlimited hosting.

3. Once a free hosing company posts their offers, some will attempt to seed the rest of the forum threads. It would be a moderation nightmare and horrible experience for the other members.

4. Think about how challenging it is already to moderate advertising forums for paid hosting. Your moderators will never sleep if free hosters are given posting abilities for advertising.
 
Do you have plans for premier membership to reduce posting delays?
No such plans exist. While the marketplace is moderately busy as it is, allowing more frequent posting of same ads is not something that I find enticing. Instead of paid membership, we have very affordable stickies that companies can choose to go for, in which case they don't even have to worry about remembering to post an ad every 3-5 days. Stickies are always above all other ads.


Please, Please, Please
Do not add a free hosting section here. Although this thread is a bit old, i just wanted to add my opinion and why.
Daniel, thank you very much for such a structured feedback.
Given that this is a web hosting forum, I had to bring it up initially (in spite of being against it personally). The good news is that I have cooled off to the idea of "free hosting" marketplace pretty quickly after asking. :) I am glad majority of our members are on the same page on this.
 
I voted for Split absolutely everything
If you have a small forum it would be ok to keep common thing together, but the forum is growing, so it's ok to separate things.
 
Thank you to everyone who took the time to study the proposal and to vote.

In the coming few days we will be moving forward with the plan to restructure our web hosting marketplace. In accordance to the will of the majority, each hosting product will inherit its own advertising forum.

Please stay tuned for further updates.
 
Update: I am happy to say that today we begin the big Marketplace move. Since we did not gain the critical mass of volunteers required to effectively move/copy marketplace threads into the new structure, we had to come up with an alternative solution. A custom solution was developed that allows for invisible processing of threads without having to move them all at once. It will take more time, but rest assured that we will have a team of people who will hopefully be able to go through over 16,000 threads efficiently (keep in mind that each thread has to be looked at individually).

I, for one, hope that everything will go through in a smooth way and none of you will experience any inconvenience in the process. In the meantime, you may continue to use the advertising forums as you normally would as it will not impact our work behind the scenes.

Wish us luck!
 
A little update. So far in the first 2 days we have processed 11% (1,870) of 16,700+ advertising threads. Things are moving along.
 
When we were starting the move, I predicted that this particular task will take 21 days to complete, judging by the results of the first couple of days. Today, on the 22nd day of processing, I am happy to say that all threads have now been individually processed. I expect to have the new Marketplace structure in place sometime over this coming weekend.

BIG THANKS go out to everyone who has assisted, participated and otherwise stayed connected through this process! :thumbup:

Off to the next challenge!
 
I am very happy to inform everyone that we have finally released our new Marketplace! You can now custom tailor your ads to specific products. The new web hosting advertising structure is as follows:

Shared Hosting Offers
This forum is intended for web hosting companies to publish their shared hosting special offers.

Reseller Hosting Offers
This forum is intended for web hosting companies to publish their reseller hosting special offers.

VPS Hosting Offers
This forum is intended for web hosting companies to publish their VPS hosting special offers.

Dedicated Hosting Offers
This forum is intended for web hosting companies to publish their dedicated hosting special offers.

Cloud Hosting Offers
This forum is intended for web hosting companies to publish their cloud hosting special offers.

Colocation Hosting Offers
This forum is intended for web hosting companies to publish their colocation hosting special offers.

Other Hosting Offers
This forum is intended for web hosting companies to publish their special hosting offers for services that don't fit in any other advertising category: email, backup/storage, streaming, adult, website builder solutions, SEO hosting, etc.


Primary rules remain the same:

- All members are limited to 1 (one) advertising thread per 7 (seven) days. (Except Cloud, where 1 ad per 30 days limit is in place).
- Thread bumping is NOT allowed, unless new information is added.


Enjoy it, folks. Just remember to advertise the correct product in the right forum.
 
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