posted by salim(780) 2 years, 10 months ago

LOL.

It is not. What others has to say about this?

posted by gavinjoyce(25.7k) 2 years, 10 months ago

What is the point?

posted by salim(780) 2 years, 10 months ago

check with digg. this is just for fun. no work so i got some weird idea to link dotnetkicks to itself.

posted by crpietschmann(11.1k) 2 years, 10 months ago

DotNetKicks is only as smart as it's users.

posted by locrain(400) 2 years, 10 months ago

To me it simply seems that the developer of dotnetkicks has not added new features to the page in a very long time. Its a shame, because i truly believe dotnetkicks has great potential to becoming the place .net developers will seek for help/guidance in their everyday work.

posted by gavinjoyce(25.7k) 2 years, 10 months ago

You are correct in that I haven't added any new features in quite a while. Having said that, the site is continuing to grow and the main feed has around 10 good stories each weekday.

As I don't make any money from this site (I have so far resisted temptation to add ads or jobs to the site) - I have to give priority to other projects that do make money. As soon as I find some free time I plan to re-implement the DAL for DotNetKicks using an open source tool (it currently uses nTierGen and LLBLGEN) and then fully open source the DotNetKicks software.

posted by salim(780) 2 years, 10 months ago

Sorry if i have hurt the feelings of someone. I did not want to do that. It seems i did it. :(

This site is very cool and is very good resource for .Net. We really appriciate the effort behind this.

I will not post something like this in future.

posted by gavinjoyce(25.7k) 2 years, 10 months ago

There are no hurt feeling here :)

posted by motionblur(0) 2 years, 10 months ago

Well, I for one am a fan of DotNetKicks and visit every day. Thanks for the website/resource!

If one or two ads is what it takes to generate a bit of revenue and add features to the site, why not? Just don't add them in an obtrusive way and I'm sure nobody will mind.

// disclaimer: I'm a Firefox/Adblock user, but allow ads for sites I support. ;-)

posted by superghost(2260) 2 years, 10 months ago

I personally would not mind ads. I believe DotNetKicks is worth its weight in ads.

posted by johnrummell(1255) 2 years, 10 months ago

I wouldn't mind a few ads either. It's awesome that DotNetKicks is free for its users, but I know it still costs time and money to develop, host, and maintain. Keep up the good work!

posted by secretGeek(115) 2 years, 10 months ago

dot net kicks is very good.
i think it's still waiting to 'take off.' i don't know if anything needs to be improved before it does just take off -- i think it's inevitable that it will happen. maybe some small improvements will take it to the tipping point (http://www.gladwell.com/1996/1996_06_03_a_tipping.htm). i hope it gets there!

some google ads -- only on the inner pages, not on the main page -- would be unobtrusive and would almost definitely be enough to cover your out of pocket expenses (though certainly not your time)

posted by drak(0) 2 years, 10 months ago

Also the websnapr images are always showing forbidden request whenever i come to the site.

Also - google ads often provide many helpful links to tools/software on a site that is completely focussed on the areas that i am interested in. Another vote for ads - not to mention your whole concept of sharing ad revenue with story submitters.

posted by miketrash(105) 2 years, 10 months ago

I really enjoy dotnetkicks as well. I am excited to hear that you are going to open source it. Why not do it now? I know you said it uses llblgen (which...rocks to say the least). I have a licence for llblgen and I would be glad to start working on moving the code over to whatever format you choose. Subsonic, plain ADO.NET, your call.

Put some ads on here too. We wont mind as long as they are not excessive.

posted by salim(780) 2 years, 10 months ago

Yes. We all agree that we can tolerate some ads if the site doesnt loose its aim.

posted by Haacked(5090) 2 years, 10 months ago

Some ideas for minor improvements:

1. Search
2. A javascript kick-it box like digg and reddit have. The kind where a user doesn't t have to leave your site to kick your site (assuming it's already been submitted).
3. Gravatars for submitters and comments

Umm.. that's it.

Gavin, I think Open Sourcing the code is a great idea! When I visit the site, I sometimes want to make small tweaks to make the site look a little cleaner or more polished.

Heck, I could see myself adding code from Subtext into here and vice versa, where it made sense.

In any case, adding ads is also a good idea. Done well, it can cover your hosting costs and then some. Perhaps put some text links right above or below the comment box. Keep up the good work.

posted by gavinjoyce(25.7k) 2 years, 10 months ago

Thanks for all your feedback guys.

I am committed to opening up the source as soon as possible and am aiming to have something for you all to look at this weekend. I need to have one final pass over the code base to ensure that all the code can be published.

Phil, I am going to look more closely at how the Subtext project operates. I do want to follow a lot of what that project has including continuous integration.

I will post more info on my blog in the coming days.

Thanks!

posted by crpietschmann(11.1k) 2 years, 10 months ago

I have to agree with the others, I wouldn't mind a couple tastefully placed ads on each page.

Here's another idea, related to making money off the site. Put a donate link on the site, and make it so when people donate it will automatically hide the ads when they are logged in for a certain period of time. This way there would be some incentive for users to give donations, and the ads would still be shown for organic traffic from search engines or for users who don't have an account.

Just a thought... This site has some great potential, and I wouldn't want to see it dissapear.

posted by gavinjoyce(25.7k) 2 years, 10 months ago

http://weblogs.asp.net/gavinjoyce/archive/2007/03/20/dotnetkicks-to-be-open-source.aspx