Hey all,
I wanted to share a few quick updates regarding SFF.N as we look forward to the new year!
Supporter Tiers
We have some updates to our supporter subscriptions, which we've already (quietly) rolled out for a little while now. Our supporter tiers are a way for community members to contribute directly to our hosting and other costs, in exchange for some neat features. Historically, our supporter benefits haven't been as robust as they could be, so we've added some perks and brought others down from higher tiers to lower ones, in order to boost their value to the community.
You can take a look the various supporter tiers here, but some highlights across them include:
Bronze
Silver
Gold
As a part of these enhancements, there is one important change to Trade/Vendor listing privileges (and grandfathered perks more generally) that I want to call out. We have decided to make these a benefit that require an ongoing supporter subscription to use on an ongoing basis, rather than our existing policy of extending such perks to any past or present supporters. Given this, any grandfathering we have done to date for former supporters will end. To be clear, this change is not motivated by a desire to boost supporter subscriptions, particularly since folks can still temporarily pick up a supporter subscription to make a listing; rather, we have made this change to better filter out abusers, simplify moderation, and try to engender more trust in these subforums in general.
Serving ads for guests
Aside from establishing a more sustainable and fully-featured website, one focus of our development this year has been to try and make SFF.N more financially secure. To this day there are bills I pay out of pocket each month to keep the lights on. However, in the long run, we want SFF.N to be self-sustaining such that there is no question about whether the forum, newsfeed and and beyond remain online and active.
We’ve already made some changes internally to reduce our cost overhead without impacting the forum experience, but to close the remaining gap we need a way to collect revenue from the >99.9% of folks who don’t support us directly. The way that’s done online is with ads, and so we will soon start to roll out ads for guests of SFF.N – namely, those browsing SFF.N who aren't logged in to an account.
Naturally, that means there is a very easy way to avoid ads altogether: simply be logged in to SFF.N! This is intentional; our goal with ads is to monetize traffic from passersby who are simply skimming (and thus don't contribute anything to balance out the cost of their usage), while minimizing the impact to community members who are regularly active and do contribute. After debating alternatives like mandatory ads for everyone, ad-free supporter tiers, site wide sponsors, and so forth, we think that this approach has the best chance of balancing financial security with the ability to continue providing an ad-free experience accessible to all. That said, we will be continuously exploring opportunities to support SFF.N financially, and ensure that SFF.N continues to support the SFF community - and feedback from you all to those ends is always welcome!
-
2019 has been quite the interesting year for SFF, and especially for SFF.N. Since January 1st, we've all but rebuilt the website; covered another round of trade shows; and witnessed a bevy of hardware and industry developments that have brought challenge and opportunity alike to the SFF ecosystem. Even so, I am sure 2020 will be more eventful yet, and I can't want to experience it alongside you all.
As always, thanks for making SFF.N and the SFF community what it is. You guys are awesome. Here's to big things in small spaces in 2020!
Best,
– Joshua
I wanted to share a few quick updates regarding SFF.N as we look forward to the new year!
Supporter Tiers
We have some updates to our supporter subscriptions, which we've already (quietly) rolled out for a little while now. Our supporter tiers are a way for community members to contribute directly to our hosting and other costs, in exchange for some neat features. Historically, our supporter benefits haven't been as robust as they could be, so we've added some perks and brought others down from higher tiers to lower ones, in order to boost their value to the community.
You can take a look the various supporter tiers here, but some highlights across them include:
Bronze
- Custom Titles: Normally the title beneath a user's avatar is generated based on the number of posts they have on SFF.N; Bronze supporters additionally have the ability to change this to anything they want.
- Trade Subforum Listing Privileges: Although anyone can comment/engage on the Trade subforum, only supporters can create new threads listing items to buy, sell, or trade.
- SFF.N Supporter Discord Channel Access: Thanks to our new Discord integration, we now have a Discord channel that's exclusive to SFF.N supporters and staff.
Silver
- Additional Forum Themes: All users can use the Dark Red or (OG) Dark Blue theme, but we've made two new dark themes (Blackout and Throwback) as well as two light themes (Light Red and Light Blue) that can be toggled at the bottom left corner of any page on SFF.N.
- Media Uploads & Media Galleries: Wish you could just upload your photos to SFF.N directly when making a post? Now you can – and you can even compose galleries of images to share as a group (see the above link to the SFF.N styles gallery for an example).
- Vendor Marketplace Listing Privileges: Much like Trade listing privileges are a benefit for Bronze supporters, Vendor Marketplace listing privileges are a benefit for Silver supporters who verify themselves with SFF.N staff.
- Enhanced Profile Pages & Forum Threads: You can now upload banner imagery to your user profile, or to any thread you start (in much the same style as subforums), providing a little extra creative latitude for yourself and your content. Here's an example of this on a user profile (you can see this in action for threads right here).
Gold
- SFF.N Staff Discord Channel Access: Want to join an even more exclusive Discord channel that's a direct line to SFF.N staff? Want to overhear our musings and ramblings, particularly during trade shows? Now you can.
- SFF.N Live Recording Session Access: Whenever we might record a video, podcast or other bit, we're plugged into Discord on a channel you can tune into.
- SFF.N Game Server Access (Coming Soon): Minecraft is great, so we're building a Minecraft server exclusive to Gold supporters. Stay tuned for more info.
As a part of these enhancements, there is one important change to Trade/Vendor listing privileges (and grandfathered perks more generally) that I want to call out. We have decided to make these a benefit that require an ongoing supporter subscription to use on an ongoing basis, rather than our existing policy of extending such perks to any past or present supporters. Given this, any grandfathering we have done to date for former supporters will end. To be clear, this change is not motivated by a desire to boost supporter subscriptions, particularly since folks can still temporarily pick up a supporter subscription to make a listing; rather, we have made this change to better filter out abusers, simplify moderation, and try to engender more trust in these subforums in general.
Serving ads for guests
Aside from establishing a more sustainable and fully-featured website, one focus of our development this year has been to try and make SFF.N more financially secure. To this day there are bills I pay out of pocket each month to keep the lights on. However, in the long run, we want SFF.N to be self-sustaining such that there is no question about whether the forum, newsfeed and and beyond remain online and active.
We’ve already made some changes internally to reduce our cost overhead without impacting the forum experience, but to close the remaining gap we need a way to collect revenue from the >99.9% of folks who don’t support us directly. The way that’s done online is with ads, and so we will soon start to roll out ads for guests of SFF.N – namely, those browsing SFF.N who aren't logged in to an account.
Naturally, that means there is a very easy way to avoid ads altogether: simply be logged in to SFF.N! This is intentional; our goal with ads is to monetize traffic from passersby who are simply skimming (and thus don't contribute anything to balance out the cost of their usage), while minimizing the impact to community members who are regularly active and do contribute. After debating alternatives like mandatory ads for everyone, ad-free supporter tiers, site wide sponsors, and so forth, we think that this approach has the best chance of balancing financial security with the ability to continue providing an ad-free experience accessible to all. That said, we will be continuously exploring opportunities to support SFF.N financially, and ensure that SFF.N continues to support the SFF community - and feedback from you all to those ends is always welcome!
-
2019 has been quite the interesting year for SFF, and especially for SFF.N. Since January 1st, we've all but rebuilt the website; covered another round of trade shows; and witnessed a bevy of hardware and industry developments that have brought challenge and opportunity alike to the SFF ecosystem. Even so, I am sure 2020 will be more eventful yet, and I can't want to experience it alongside you all.
As always, thanks for making SFF.N and the SFF community what it is. You guys are awesome. Here's to big things in small spaces in 2020!
Best,
– Joshua