Plus for Communities

[ex_uniquewo]

The Plus level is now available to communities. It is also the new default.

I couldn't help but notice that there is absolutely no explanation about the different levels and no mention that Plus is ad-sponsored - that is surely going to change of course.

Dear co-maintainers, we need a new test account ;-) And a comparison chart.

Comments

[foxfirefey]

Yes ma'am yes ma'am! ::scurry::

[ex_uniquewo]

LOL. I'm sure you're going to give us a great report.

About the benefits I'd say: polls, more userpics (even though you can't use them), more links, Component, custom mood themes, text messaging, domain forwarding. Anything else?

[foxfirefey]

Things to test:

* Can Basic members post polls to a Plus community
* Can Basic moderators/maintainers post polls to a Plus community

Our new tester is: the_unadvocates, name idea from kunzite1.

I am working on making us a wiki to make keeping track of all of this stuff a lot easier.

[burr86]

No and Yes, respectively.

[tallblue]

Yuck I just saw it logged out. I really hate the way it makes the site look.

[ironed_orchid]

It is also the new default.

Oh fantastic. Not remotely surprising, but, still, annoying.

[foxfirefey]

It does match Sponsored+/Plus becoming the default selected level for personal journals a month or two earlier. Given that, it would be weird if Plus wasn't the default level for newly created communities.

[ironed_orchid]

True. And, of course, communities tend to get a lot more hits than personal journals, so it makes (financial) sense to have ads on them.

[foxfirefey]

Ooooooh yeah. But it's the bigger communities that would need to go Plus. The new communities for the most part won't start out big; that kind of growth will have to come over time.

So switching existing communities to Plus is more important right now. Then the question is, what enticement is enough to get someone to switch, and stay switched? Right now, most of the benefits for the community can be had by switching into Plus, making the extra links/changing the layout/making the poll, and then switching right back out.

So, how do they get communities to switch? How do they get communities to stay switched? And how do they prevent member leakage from the communities that do switch?

[jencatd]

Just disabled ad block, and had a look at the community. The text ads are longer than the layout, and slapping a Google search thing above the entries-to-be to choose what ad to be served there seems a little cheeky to me.

Another thing changed for communities is being asked if you want to subscribe to a community when you join. If you tick the box, you get the "add community to your Friends page" page after that. It's a minor change that'll be more convenient to people who join communities without Friending them. I add most communities I join to my Friends page, so it seems like an extra "hoop" to jump through to me.

[ex_shattered767]

Same process as before, it's just been reworded. Before you could join and it would give you a check box of "add to your friends page", and if you checked it you were taken to that same "add community to your friends page" page. But there's no real change going on there.

[ex_uniquewo]

LOL. Yeah. It's so sad seeing newbies wandering to Support to know how they can get rid of the bloody ads. Same thing for the "big black bar" aka the Nav Strip.

Sorry for the late answer

[ex_uniquewo]

I'm not familiar with GJ but I think LJ-clones are sounding more and more interesting. I'm kinda rooting for LiveJourBal right now. Created by LJ Support people, quite small, seems to be up-to-date, no ads, you can purchase icons even if you have a free account, perm accounts cost $25.
However, I think if there was to be a new LJ it wouldn't be a clone; something inspired by it, yes, but with its own features as well.