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The Future Of AMS?
If you are a user of the AMS module, please post your ideas of improving on, or expanding upon the current development model used where donators of $10USD or more are given the priviledge of getting early access to new versions of AMS a month or two before it is publically released. In posting these ideas, please keep these criteria in mind;
1) All development costs MUST be met before AMS goes out the door. AMS is released under GPL, so once the code is released the opportunity for being able to cover costs is greatly reduced, and I am NOT prepared to met the costs of developing AMS from my own pocket alone.
2) Human resources are not infinite. The idea of relying on the sale of support services to cover the cost of development has been floated. Quite a good idea, but not one I am able to consider as financially and skill set wise I am not able to offer this at present.
3) Respect each other, and keep it clean :-).
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For the record, I have no problem with asking for such modest donations, just to get early access to AMS new releases. The fact is, everyone gets the modules eventually. I can't judge what the revision cycle of AMS will be like, as I only started using it a few weeks ago, just before the 2.4 release. I like the module, and when I saw the chance to get the new release early, I took it. That was my choice. I have been much more frustrated by trying to use other modules, where the developer has got the job 80% done, then abandons it because of personal pressures, costs, or whatever. While I have great respect and admiration for those who DO develop and release completely free modules, the AMS approach is completely acceptable to me. I would gladly pay similar modest donations for some other modules if I thought it would stimulate some more development. Finally, having donated a modest amount, I feel that I have just a little bit more of the ear of the developers, and that is worth paying that small amount for too.
In summary, it didn't offend me and I jumped at the chance to get the module a little earlier than I otherwise could. I think the main point here is that you reassure everyone that there is no personal profit involved. From what I've read, the opposite is probably true.
Barry
Thanks Barry,
I can very much assure you that I have not profitted financially from AMS. My partner and I split the bill for AMS 2.2 down the middle which came out to be $400USD each, however I got $125USD of that back with the orignal donation drive of AMS 2.2. I also contributed $80USD of my own money toward AMS 2.4, meaning my personal out of pocket expenses for AMS is $355USD. Also keep in mind that the Aussie dollar is only worth about 75c in American dollars, so this out of pocket expense is really more like $470AUD for me.
Great feedback Bizzware. I had already decided that I need to change the way I announce new versions on Xoops.org. The problem as I see it is that if I only announce new versions of AMS once they are publically released, then donations will be rather stunted. For instance, the latest announcement of a donator release of AMS 2.4 on Xoops.org seems to have generated close to $100USD in donations. I can't be sure, but there were half a dozen donations made within a few days of that news item being posted, and no donations had been made for weeks prioir to that.
What I think I will do from here on is once we have the specifications for a new version, and Mith has priced it I will put a news post on Xoops.org that specifies everything that is to be done, and ask for donations to meet the target. I'll also specify that those donating to the project will get "beta testing access" which will give them access to the new version of AMS a month or two before it is publically released. I actually think this will work, and in hindsight I don't know why I didn't do it in the first place. I think the main reason being that I think people are more inclined to make a donation when they know that they can download the module pretty much straight away. If they donate and then have to wait several months while other donations are collected and the module changes are actually coded they might not bother. Worth a try at any rate.
I think that nothing is free in life....
As I know.... in the USA, there lots of payment TV Channels, and people pay for viewing them....
All work is need of a recompense !!!
And more, if the work is a good work....
A donation of a minimum of 10 USD for a good work as AMS, I think that is nothing.....
For young people using Xoops.... they must thing on saving one day of going and eating a Burger's menu, and they will have 10 USD .... I don't know exactly the price of the USA... perhaps should be two days.... :-)
Regards from Barcelona
Jordi Saldana
How about adding the following features:
1) An advertising module so that it's easier to add banner code to the top of articles, as well as adding rectangle and half page adds to the side of articles, like they do on sites like news.com. The way it's done now, it has to be done within a theme, but if you are like me and have a lot of advertising, and promos, it'd be nice to be able to seamlessly incorporate them into the the articles themselves instead of (or in addition to) using the blocks.
2) The ability to TURN OFF stats without hacking themes. I for one thing displaying the number of times an article or forum item has been viewed is pretty cheasy and for my puposes I don't want that information displayed publicly. The same goes for article size, about the only thing I want displayed is Author Name and Date.
3) I'd really like the limit to the headlines removed.
4) Is there a way to set the AMS so that I can run advertising campaigns by Topics? The way the system is set up now you can set blocks to display by Modules, ie top page, news, etc., but at the moment there's no way to get blocks to display by news topics. I use blocks from my advertising code, and my advertisers are starting to get real picky about where blocks are displayed. So it'd be nice to be able to display campaigns by topic area, ie movies, dvds, games, etc... And not just plop them on "all pages" or throughout the news module
Hi malexandri,
1) We did investigate creating more advanced banner management functionality, but after having a look at a dedicated banner ads module such as PHPAdsNew it very quickly became evident that it was beyond our resources. Anything we could afford to implement and maintain would end up be more of a limitation to webmasters than an aid, so we opted for the idea of implementing functionality that would allow users to easily insert the code from their dedicated ads manager right down to a per article level. This is probably all we will do with the banner feature I would say, but may consider offering additional banner areas for each article in the future.
2) You can use custom templates to do this. This is precisely what the template functionality in Xoops is for.
3) Not sure what you're referring to here :-?
4) You should be able to do this by setting AMS to display in topic mode rather than classic.
Location: Sweet Home, Oregon
Joined: Jan 2005