Hi, I'm old here.

rich didn't invent electricity, i did; rich is the devil!

but yea stuff is pretty down here...there was naked boob pics up for a good day...i dunno how long. Not that that's a bad thing in general, but there's a time and place for everything.

oh, and welcome jestamalesta. always looking for newold people.

Hey guys... Yes, I am still around, aplogies for not posting much or sorting too much out.

Rich, that isn't a big problem... I'm sure you must have your reasons.

Just need to check on you, so you don't forget to look after this place every now and then.
Any updates concerning the upgrade etc.?

Yeah, your ideas pretty much reflect what I feel needs to happen....

:/ The problem is that its so much harder then it sounds. 'Making this place interesting again, go go go go' but alas at a community's core is people, and if those people aren't doing anything to make it community then it will never work. However if you tell them that ('you make the community, so if you want to improve it is starts with you') then they get annoyed and think you are nagging that they don't post enough. Weeeeeeee. I started a user challenge on yaxay because people complained there was nothing to do, and a whole 3 people entered. So i learned my lesson now I'm running a $75 x-mas card contest and setting up a newsletter to spam i mean notify my users that we exist and WEE WIN MONEY. I was going to wait until we upgraded to 3.6 but i figured a contest would make them actually look at the forum again.

Does this place advertise at all? You are PR 5 so you should have some decent traffic from Google. I wonder what your stats are line and if you could make more (if at least less annoying) money from a nice looking sponsor links rather then google ads.

Hey guys... Yes, I am still around, apologies for not posting much or sorting too much out.

Hello Rich! You joined up long after i was gone so we wouldn't remember each other. I used to harass people 2001-2003ish. Nice to meet you.
I'd be interested to know if those Google Adsense ads give you much revenue, and if you are able to tell which areas of the site they come from. (IE, tuts, forums, homepage).

The problem is there is no new content. No new tutorials being added, no news, no articles. The tutorials are extremely dated and "2000ish" (hell a lot of them were done in Mac OS9!) and have all been copied or ripped on other photoshop tutorial sites by now anyways. The "news" is four months old and doesn't even talk about the Photoshop CS3 beta and all the new stuff happening right now. The forum is inactive with old members occasionally posting in general and then the random newbs asking silly questions like always.

Regarding the skins/design of the site, Rich isn't a designer, he's a marketer that owns a lot of other web sites which is why the ads on the front page are the most eye-catching part. Pank was a photoshop expert that was innovative and original and created a site design that grabbed attention and was worthy of ripping. The current site is at least clean, but is nothing original or worth a second glance. It's hard to navigate and read because of the small type and low contrast, again drawing attention to the higher contrast ads rather than the content. The site is poorly coded, and very poorly optimized for search engines, making it unlikely that people will find it through Google. The content was dumped into the new layout without really considering how well it would work, so the content on a lot of pages breaks the layout because it's too wide or is otherwise strangely formatted. Since the content was dumped in, a lot of image links are broken, there are different font styles/colors used in different tutorials and they are all organized differently. Etc, etc, etc.

So yeah. That's my opinion.

Heya Malevolent_Jester, I remember you and more particularly your "abstract structures" you were doing in some apps...

I just checked out your blog and saw that you got a bearded dragon? That's pretty cool... I got one myself that is about 7 months old and the big baby is eating so many crickets, it's getting pretty expensive for such a small animal, but it's all good. It's funny seeing it running after its meal :P


TheDPQ, I can't say I remember you very well, but I sure remember yaxay! I used some tutorials there back then.

[QUOTE=deker]The problem is there is no new content. No new tutorials being added, no news, no articles. The tutorials are extremely dated and "2000ish" (hell a lot of them were done in Mac OS9!) and have all been copied or ripped on other photoshop tutorial sites by now anyways. The "news" is four months old and doesn't even talk about the Photoshop CS3 beta and all the new stuff happening right now. The forum is inactive with old members occasionally posting in general and then the random newbs asking silly questions like always.

Regarding the skins/design of the site, Rich isn't a designer, he's a marketer that owns a lot of other web sites which is why the ads on the front page are the most eye-catching part. Pank was a photoshop expert that was innovative and original and created a site design that grabbed attention and was worthy of ripping. The current site is at least clean, but is nothing original or worth a second glance. It's hard to navigate and read because of the small type and low contrast, again drawing attention to the higher contrast ads rather than the content. The site is poorly coded, and very poorly optimized for search engines, making it unlikely that people will find it through Google. The content was dumped into the new layout without really considering how well it would work, so the content on a lot of pages breaks the layout because it's too wide or is otherwise strangely formatted. Since the content was dumped in, a lot of image links are broken, there are different font styles/colors used in different tutorials and they are all organized differently. Etc, etc, etc.

So yeah. That's my opinion. [/QUOTE]

I agree with everything you say there, I'm not fond of the new homepage at all. It would be nice to have a nice css website, with a higher usabillity and a lot of new content. Nothing new is thrown in, I myself don't have enough time to create tutorials or to track down new things happening in the design scene. Nor do I have enough experience to create fluent english articles that are news worthy. A journalist with a lot of spare time on his hands would be great...

To make this place stand out I guess we would need to focus on the quality of the content, not quantity. Like Derek said, there are a lot of tutorial websites out there, which have exactly the same tutorials as TeamPhotoshop. Content geared towards more experienced users is pretty rare, and users that need higher level articles would be more than welcome here.

I would like to learn a thing or two myself here. Right now, I'm just deleting spam threads and answering the most simple questions for new forum users.

Rich, if you read this at all, I would value your opinion about all of this a lot.
I guess you don't have a lot of time, but wouldn't it be a shame to let this website go to waste? You have experience with creating large websites or atleast with the marketing part of large websites, but do you have experience with the other stuff that goes along with it? Like, do you know how to attract new users and make the place a 'home' for them?
Have you been to TeamPhotoshop before, and do you remember how it was before?

TheDPQ, I can't say I remember you very well, but I sure remember yaxay! I used some tutorials there back then.

*weeps for Yaxay* We just recently got a new owner so hopefully we can improve.

The problem is there is no new content. No new tutorials being added, no news, no articles. The tutorials are extremely dated and "2000ish" (hell a lot of them were done in Mac OS9!) and have all been copied or ripped on other photoshop tutorial sites by now anyways. The "news" is four months old and doesn't even talk about the Photoshop CS3 beta and all the new stuff happening right now. The forum is inactive with old members occasionally posting in general and then the random newbs asking silly questions like always.

Its sort of a Catch-22. New people won't give new content because they find the site boring, and you can't get new content unless people are willing to post.

The "news" is four months old and doesn't even talk about the Photoshop CS3 beta

Who has controll of the news? If there is content worth posting about would Rich be willing to grant access to some of the mods to keep things up to date?

Also, love the newbies. They could turn into regular members. A lot of feedback 'why i liked yaxay' was mostly people saying they got help when they were new and were inspired by the skin and designs down by other posts. The trick is finding those willing to REALLY learn.

Rich not being a designer is fine as long as he is delegating or listening to designer's opinions when design matters are concerned. You can't get away from having ads, but perhaps there is more visually pleasing way of displaying them.

unlikely that people will find it through Google.

Does this place run any stats on the logs? There is always Google Analytics.

So yeah. That's my opinion.

<3 <3

To make this place stand out I guess we would need to focus on the quality of the content, not quantity. Like Derek said, there are a lot of tutorial websites out there, which have exactly the same tutorials as TeamPhotoshop. Content geared towards more experienced users is pretty rare, and users that need higher level articles would be more than welcome here.

It would be a lot of work but you could try running some workshops of some sort. Advanced 'user challenges'. Tuts are great for getting new people, and keeping the PR of the site high.

Rich, if you read this at all, I would value your opinion about all of this a lot.
I guess you don't have a lot of time, but wouldn't it be a shame to let this website go to waste? You have experience with creating large websites or atleast with the marketing part of large websites, but do you have experience with the other stuff that goes along with it? Like, do you know how to attract new users and make the place a 'home' for them?
Have you been to TeamPhotoshop before, and do you remember how it was before?

Do you guys have a staff forum? I mean where the admins meet with the staff and trying to work things out?

Yeah, we do...

Do the other 2 admins (looking at showgroups) ever show up?