DSF - Moving Forward - We want to hear from you!

[socialgiraffe]

In general I think it works perfectly. There are a few things that I personally would change.

Members that do not pay for the site sort of bug me. I would make it that you can only see a VERY limited amount without becoming a premium member. £10.00 a year is nothing for the information that I (and many others) have handed over to complete novices. We save them treble that in the blanks that they do not waste in the first week let alone any other benefit. Perhaps limit it to a maximum of 5 posts before they have to pay.

I do not use the discounts (unless I remember to) and they are a nice billy bonus. However the site is not free to run and needs maintaining and some admin that I why I personally pay my £10.

Tagging would be really nice

I do not think it is wise to have a "bad supplier" section, in general I think DSF members are pretty fair. A specific section to do this only invites trouble as you are effectively encouraging the slating. As long as a bad review is based on fact and is not too aggressive then no harm in everyone seeing it. It's also nice for suppliers to have the ability to respond as there are always two sides to every dispute. Positive posts are the way forward

[pw66]

Al suppliers have their own section to do this in the Supplier Forum.

But it is very obscure and not at all visually attractive. I have just looked at that section for the first time.
I was thinking more of a section similar to the 'Industry News' pages of Images Magazine, or P and P, set up as a home page for the forum. Anything to keep members engaged for a bit longer.

[webtrekker]

Personally, I think that restricting the main sections of the forum to Premium members only would not be beneficial in the long run. People need to see what they are going to get for their money, so I would suggest making all the main areas (or even the whole forum, barring the introduction sections) 'read only' and posting restricted to paid members only.

[Smart Mart]

Can you not scale the premium membership? ie the more they pay a yearly sub the more discount they get off suppliers-if you can negotiate with the suppliers a bit more that is?

I don't pay a yearly subscription-i'm not tight, i just wouldn't use the discount enough.I have had a bit of advice from here but i've also given it out a bit,which is a fair exchange-in my eyes anyway!

[UK Printed Mugs]

I think at the end of the day the "pros" on the forum are premium members (or those that value the content) who use the discount and discuss more supplier positives/negatives. Therefore rather than there being just one premium members thread it should be categorised just like the open categories and then we can make a decision as a premium member where we post.

In terms of more supplier discount I think this is going to be unrealistic. A tiered pricing structure is normal with most suppliers and the 10% is a fair whack based on no minimum order quantity.

Oddly we had our new Xpres account manager, who is very nice and came to our studio this week, contact us today with his new discounted pricing for the items we tend to buy most. AND GUESS WHAT? The "new" rates are more expensive than the 10% discount we already get with the DSF discount!

Now, perhaps we should change the subject to which kind of cursor icon we could change to rather than the default browser pointer...and whether we should add a mouse trail as well... Jokes!

[Forgetful8]

As a new member, I would like to add my tuppence worth! I am, or have been a memeber of many different forums for a variety of interests.

I know VB is old and clunky, but - it's a solid layout. Easy to follow and gentle of the eye. Some forums have moved to big, bold layouts - and frankly, they're a pain in the arse!

This 'ere forum isn't a show of "ooo...lookee here...how flashy" - but more "yup...come on in and have a neb!"

Thanks for that. Yes you're right, no supplier will want to hear negative comments, especially if they're paying to advertise! I know a lot of the time we're all guilty of only posting reviews/comments when something goes wrong although there have been a few 'well done' posts recently which is good.

To an extent, that's human nature. Apparently, a bad review travels 10x quicker than a positive.

Obviously nobody likes being told their doing badly...I think honest reviews are important, buy do need carefully monitoring. And most definitely give the suppliers a chance to respond. I don't agree with a section hidden away from suppliers.

Might be worth offering a voluntary sign-up to reviews by the suppliers?

Any review system must allow for both positive and negative reviews, otherwise it's very biased system and doesn't reflect the truth.

Beginners section.....something we've looked at before. I know some members find it annoying when new members come on-board and ask "What printer can I use" "Why don't my Epson inks come out onto T-Shirts" and so on. I looked at having a Sublimation 101 section with all basic topics covered but for the time involved in doing this I'm not sure it would be that beneficial. Maybe we could have a "I'm new and don't know where to post" forum

Having a Beginner's Section would be useful - whilst the search function is useful, it can be a bit of a pain, returning 5 year old results. So people comment in those and get told "it's a 5 year old post, create a new thread" or people create a new thread and get told to use the search function.

A volunteer moderator could select certain threads and put them into a beginner friendly section. Another option would be tutorials. I know the Ford Owners Club have a tutorials section with all content created by the members. It takes time to build a good set of tutorials. Also, it's a little different in that here you could face the ussue of not wanting to help the competition (to be fair, I haven't witnessed anything like that here - pretty much everyone os helpful & friendly).

I think this forum is an incredible tool. I would welcome a "Reviews" section (for Premium Members only) whereby certain members could give honest photographic/video reviews of anything sublimation e.g. hardware/substrates. I think it would be going backwards in free speech not to allow negative reviews as well as positive but all with disclaimers of course. Although all posts would be subject to moderation before going live.

An equipment review section would be very useful. Real reviews from real people. Granted, you're always going to get positive and negative reviews for the same kit - Epson vs. Ricoh springs to mind.

[UK Printed Mugs]

Justin - Would it be possible to move the top advertising banner into the header and then make the logo the same height (90px). Due to the height of the logo in the top header, hot news, the advertising banner and the 'similar threads' then I don't actually get to view the first post without page scrolling down.

I've mocked up how clean the page could look by hopefully just making some simple changes to the template without losing anything important (moving things around if possible).

CURRENTLY - Don't see any post

vB_ID:5105

dsf-proposed.jpg (101.79 KiB) Viewed 11 times

PROPOSED - Cleaner and get to read first post quickly (the important part of the page)

vB_ID:5105

dsf-proposed.jpg (101.79 KiB) Viewed 11 times

[Justin]

Funnily enough I was looking at that change again last night UK Mugs. I avoided it for a while because I thought it better to keep that area clear for future development or just for a cleaner appearance. I'll look again. I think it was a good bit of coding needed but I might be wrong.

I wouldn't want to shrink the DSF logo that much and that top abetter would need a little more space top and bottom. Maybe a slight change of the logo to make it wider would also help.

[robhil]

Sorry I am not going to be much help, but this forum has been a mine of very useful information for me and I'm sure many others, Agree with a review page but other than that if it aint broke don't fix it. Thanks to Justin and all moderators.

Also meant to say £10.00 is not alot of money I would pay more if required.

[mrs maggot]

My tongue is in my cheek as I type. You could have a basic section, and then once people had a good read and look round, they could apply to enter the actual forum by completing a questionnaire, based on the 20 most common question posts from the past year, this would show that people had read the basic section and were ready to move into the forum, think of it as a citizen test.


But on a serious note, can I please stay signed in for longer than it does at the moment, drives me insane always need to sign back in if I leave it for more than about 10mins