What do you want from OSempire?

[OS-Mark]

Your wish is our focus, vote for what your hoping for and thats what we'll expand on. If you have questions or comments feel free to post a reply.

You may choose more than 1 option in the poll

[Burta]

You know me mark... I'm a custom mods man - any mod that can help with the SEO and marketing of a topsite.

[useful idiot]

I agree with Burta, anything that helps with SEO, the skins are always nice to have as well, but ultimately the mods are what I'm looking for.

[PPNSteve]

free mods, i bet, will win.. i like the idea of all of them being made avail here though

[OS-Mark]

I thought we would see more interest in skins, but it does seem mods are where its at Paid mods are a little more rewarding because I can buy food, guitar strings etc with the earnings lol. Many people wont pay for mods so those who do will benefit a little more from them by having a unique topsite feature.

[Burta]

I personally think paid mods are the way to go - I'm more than happy to pay for something that is good quality - and I think you personally gain a lot more out of it than if you were to offer free mods. That said I'm not talking about you charing hundreds of dollars for like a simple rewrite mod or something - but I'm sure most people can afford $5 - $10 for a mod, and maybe what you can offer to supplement the mod is an installation fee. Like maybe you can charge $20 to have X number of mods installed. That way people who want to save some money can install the mods themselves.

[KellyW]

Cookies!

Just kidding, I think a version of Topsites with all of the OSempire mods would be really cool. It would be fully loaded with options and tweaked as much as you can get. What more could anyone want?

Problem with custom paid modules is you may do a few but who knows if alot of people would buy it. Peoples interests and desires for options and mods vary so much. Some like the plain stuff, some like it with all the bells and whistles. I think a OSempire version would be great and just add all of the mods settings to the admin panel and give people the option to turn them on and off then they could use the ones they want to.

[OS-Mark]

Originally Posted by KellyW

Cookies!

hehe we already put some of those on your system

Just kidding, I think a version of Topsites with all of the OSempire mods would be really cool. It would be fully loaded with options and tweaked as much as you can get. What more could anyone want?

the only thing I can think of is it will take a fair bit of time to update this "OS" version, people might want the features of the latest/greatest ATS release faster than I can update the OS version.

Problem with custom paid modules is you may do a few but who knows if alot of people would buy it. Peoples interests and desires for options and mods vary so much. Some like the plain stuff, some like it with all the bells and whistles.

agreed, I really dont think many would pay for mods, especially since ATS is a free script. But that is why I launched the poll to see what kind of interest there is for it, but it seems its slow going getting people to even vote lol

I think a OSempire version would be great and just add all of the mods settings to the admin panel and give people the option to turn them on and off then they could use the ones they want to.

agreed, it also makes installation and user->user support easier in the long run which is easier on me.

[KellyW]

Mark, I wouldnt think it would be that much trouble to update the version of the ATS core files. They havent done alot of updating the last 2 years. Only 2 revisions I think. In phpdig they even have a Mysql updater in case there are any changes or tables that need to be added. May take quite some time to set it all up though and get all of the options in. With adding your modules in and giving the admin the ability to turn them on and off it may be more beneficial to use Smarty templating so you can use the variables. Then you could ask us to port our skins over

[OS-Mark]

It is a lot of work, and a lot of support. I would prefer and add hooks to the aardvark core files so they would need to be changed as little as possible to add all the features. Using Smarty would definately have its benefits, but that just makes upgrading that much more time consuming. Personally I quite like the aardvark template system, it keeps the content and design very seperate which at times smarty tempaltes get rather sloppy with all their conditionals. Might be cool to just add a few smarty inspired ideas into the aardvark tempalte system. Something to think about anyway.

[KellyW]

Yea thinking about it support would be crazy for something like this. Also i wouldnt suggest converting all of the templates to Smarty just using a few tags like you mentioned to pull data to make it easier. Ive battled the validation issues with using smarty and its not fun.

[disturbed]

Originally Posted by OS-Mark

... Many people wont pay for mods so those who do will benefit a little more from them by having a unique topsite feature.

Hey Mark,

Question from one of my clients ...

Are you saying here that if they pay you to write custom mods, that they won't be sold or given away or added to some version of toplist code? That the feature they want's code is to be used only on their site?

Yeah, I know ... we all love open source ... but business people will be way annoyed if they pay for a modification and then suddenly their competition has gotten that mod for free. It hurts their business.

Thanks for any info on what is really meant here.

[OS-Mark]

its a good point, I usually only release the mods if the cost was $10 or so to create it. In the future, "custom mod" customers will have the option to purchase exclusive license so the mod will not be redistributed.

[disturbed]

It''s good to know that you will set a policy and make it clear to those who hire you to code for them what exactly they are buying. I wonder if the Aardvark community as a whole has a policy?

It's confusing as the PN community seems to think if it's custom it belongs to whomever ordered it but the CubeCart modders write it and then stick it up on their site to sell it if you don't make it really clear to them that you are in esssence buying the copyright to what you had them code as a "work-for-hire". Those are the two communities I usually work with as those are the programs I set sites up in. A couple of times I got bit by the client because I wasn't careful about the ownership of what they paid for ... not good!

Now I've gotten paranoid and I ask first! Thanks for the info.

[WarriorPrincess]

Love to see more skins... but didn't realise there was mods... so will check what's out there too.

[asnimetop]

Id love to see more free mods that make my topsite better.. Having a website is not good without this things.. even if it was a great skin!

[Go_on]

more free mods

[OS-Mark]

well it seems some other members are starting to contribute mods and skins now which is REALLY nice to see. Be sure and leave feedback and thanks for those who work hard developing these free addons for everyone to enjoy.

[vertos]

Is there a forum for problems with the script? we are having an issue with the graphic that is placed on other websites displaying the correct stats.

Thanks.

p.s

(Apologies for posting in the wrong forum)

[Basti]

Yes there is, just start a new topic where this topic is located.

[genbright2]

i have no problems on use free stuffs of even to pay for a real good service.
but i would like to find a nice and usefull guide/tutorials subforums
cos i had alot of hard work and have to learn everything by reading alot of posts to learn the ways to customise my aardvark codes
so ... pls create a tutorials subforum

[alviurn]

What would created a super chart mod for money?