Hello everyone,
I have a few things I'd like to update all of our users on. If you're reading this then you probably noticed the new ads that are on every page of the forum, and embedded into the threads as a post. I understand that not everyone is going to be happy about ads flooding their screens, but we've been left with little choice.
We have many great members that help by paying for a membership to the forum, and you've all kept this forum going since the Diamond Dave days. But currently were at the point where we've lost a lot of those subscriptions. We've had members leave for so many reasons over the years. Lots of great people, and paying people on top of that. But as the years have gone by the price of everything has risen. In Sept 2018 for instance we had to update to an independent server. The price of that versus the shared one we had prior was very large. But it was needed because if more than 25 members logged on at once you would receive an error. So we upgraded.
So now we've taken on a new investment in advertising. We hired an ad placement, and development company to give us a hand in something that neither Mike or I know a lot about. So it's an investment that cost us thousands of dollars that hopefully is going to give us a return of more than our initial investment and then go on to lead us to a steady revenue stream. With that influx of money we will be able to upgrade this forum for all of you. I know personally I'd love to have a custom app for everyone. We have Tapatalk which is basic, and I pay $10 per month to provide that for yinz. But I'd love to have something awesome that's made just for all of you. Which by the way, I did fix and update the SteelerNation app last night. So it should be good again for all of you.
With vBulletin what you see now is basically what youre always going to see. In 2013 we purchased the version 5 of the software to upgrade from the 4 that were currently running. Dave switched over and everyone hated it. It wasn't just us though, it was a consensus among all of the VB community. Everyone hated it. So we switched back and they stopped making any updates for our format. I know there are several features that don't seem to work. Some of it didn't do well in the transfer over when we switched servers in 2018. We've also had a lot of hands in the back end working and none of the above are exactly experts in coding.
So again with more money we could look at switching to a different forum, but if we transfer this entire thing to another forum we have to pay someone to transfer all your posts etc. If we just buy the forum software we would all start from scratch. So something like that is on the table, but nothing in the works yet.
We signed a contract with Blue Wire Podcast Network last week. This will hopefully give us some opportunities to attract more people to download our podcasts. If you haven't listened to them I encourage you to do so. Cope (Stryker) has done such an amazing job with them and we've had some really interesting guests. From Hall of Famers, to Super Bowl MVPs, to practice squad guys. But all of it has been greatly produced and fantastic listens.
We're up to 15 staff members over on the news website part of things. I think everyone should be very happy with the stories coming out from our staff. I'm hopeful in the future we will be able to come out with some more exclusive content and analysis for all of you that will only be found on here.
We hopefully have a few sponsorships lined up for this upcoming season if things go as planned. One includes a new beer sponsorship for the tailgate. I encourage all of you to stop by my Tailgates if you come to Heinz Field. All are welcomed.
I'm sure you've seen some of the other posts whether it's on social media, or in the football discussion area but we dropped a new line of clothing for SteelerNation. We circled back to my hometown with a start up company and their products are amazing. So again, I'm hopeful everyone will pick up something even if it's just a koozie.
There's so much going on in my life right now. I have a crazy and wild one year old healthy baby boy. He's into everything and hates to sleep. I work a full time job on top of all of that and run this website. With things picking up behind the scenes it means my phone is always in my hand because I'm always working on something, or answering someone's DMs or emails etc. So always understand that I'm here doing something for all of our great members.
If anyone needs anything please let me know. And I hope everyone will continue to subscribe and if you don't I hope you would please consider a donation or a subscription if you love this site.
Thanks Justin and Mike.
I have a few things I'd like to update all of our users on. If you're reading this then you probably noticed the new ads that are on every page of the forum, and embedded into the threads as a post. I understand that not everyone is going to be happy about ads flooding their screens, but we've been left with little choice.
We have many great members that help by paying for a membership to the forum, and you've all kept this forum going since the Diamond Dave days. But currently were at the point where we've lost a lot of those subscriptions. We've had members leave for so many reasons over the years. Lots of great people, and paying people on top of that. But as the years have gone by the price of everything has risen. In Sept 2018 for instance we had to update to an independent server. The price of that versus the shared one we had prior was very large. But it was needed because if more than 25 members logged on at once you would receive an error. So we upgraded.
So now we've taken on a new investment in advertising. We hired an ad placement, and development company to give us a hand in something that neither Mike or I know a lot about. So it's an investment that cost us thousands of dollars that hopefully is going to give us a return of more than our initial investment and then go on to lead us to a steady revenue stream. With that influx of money we will be able to upgrade this forum for all of you. I know personally I'd love to have a custom app for everyone. We have Tapatalk which is basic, and I pay $10 per month to provide that for yinz. But I'd love to have something awesome that's made just for all of you. Which by the way, I did fix and update the SteelerNation app last night. So it should be good again for all of you.
With vBulletin what you see now is basically what youre always going to see. In 2013 we purchased the version 5 of the software to upgrade from the 4 that were currently running. Dave switched over and everyone hated it. It wasn't just us though, it was a consensus among all of the VB community. Everyone hated it. So we switched back and they stopped making any updates for our format. I know there are several features that don't seem to work. Some of it didn't do well in the transfer over when we switched servers in 2018. We've also had a lot of hands in the back end working and none of the above are exactly experts in coding.
So again with more money we could look at switching to a different forum, but if we transfer this entire thing to another forum we have to pay someone to transfer all your posts etc. If we just buy the forum software we would all start from scratch. So something like that is on the table, but nothing in the works yet.
We signed a contract with Blue Wire Podcast Network last week. This will hopefully give us some opportunities to attract more people to download our podcasts. If you haven't listened to them I encourage you to do so. Cope (Stryker) has done such an amazing job with them and we've had some really interesting guests. From Hall of Famers, to Super Bowl MVPs, to practice squad guys. But all of it has been greatly produced and fantastic listens.
We're up to 15 staff members over on the news website part of things. I think everyone should be very happy with the stories coming out from our staff. I'm hopeful in the future we will be able to come out with some more exclusive content and analysis for all of you that will only be found on here.
We hopefully have a few sponsorships lined up for this upcoming season if things go as planned. One includes a new beer sponsorship for the tailgate. I encourage all of you to stop by my Tailgates if you come to Heinz Field. All are welcomed.
I'm sure you've seen some of the other posts whether it's on social media, or in the football discussion area but we dropped a new line of clothing for SteelerNation. We circled back to my hometown with a start up company and their products are amazing. So again, I'm hopeful everyone will pick up something even if it's just a koozie.
There's so much going on in my life right now. I have a crazy and wild one year old healthy baby boy. He's into everything and hates to sleep. I work a full time job on top of all of that and run this website. With things picking up behind the scenes it means my phone is always in my hand because I'm always working on something, or answering someone's DMs or emails etc. So always understand that I'm here doing something for all of our great members.
If anyone needs anything please let me know. And I hope everyone will continue to subscribe and if you don't I hope you would please consider a donation or a subscription if you love this site.
Thanks Justin and Mike.
