Manuel Lemos wrote: > Hello, > > on 02/16/2010 08:02 PM Nathan Rixham said the following: >>>> I need to find a skilled PHP dev, UK based, with long term availability, >>>> in the short term to join me on a project and ultimately be prepared to >>>> take over the project and "own" it. Remote contract work w/ occasional >>>> meetings on site. >>> You may want to try searching PHP professionals with the specific skills >>> you need here: >>> >>> http://www.phpclasses.org/professionals/country/uk/ >>> >>> Or you may want to try to post a job here: >>> >>> http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/ >>> >> Manuel, >> >> I'm sure there are some very talented people on your site (and in the >> community) - one slight problem though, I won't use you're website under >> any circumstance (been there, done that). >> >> You make every interaction with your site a horrible, painful >> interaction that is purely there to get as many adverts as you can in >> front of people, so that you can bleed every cent possible from the hard >> work and effort of PHP developers and innocent users. In short, you take >> advantage of your users, members and the PHP community - I've never seen >> such a bold and ongoing attempt to profit on the hard work and good will >> of PHP developers, ever, period. > > There seems to be a misunderstanding here. > > The PHPClasses.org site was created by me in 1999 with the purpose of > making it easy to distribute my PHP classes so others could test them > and send bug reports and suggestions. > > Then I thought it would be nice to let others also share their code > there to do the same, if they want of course. Back then, there was no > advertising or any sort of monetization of the site. > > Meanwhile the site has grown a lot. Now it has over 850.000 registered > users. Initially it could run on a shared hosting, but since many years > ago it needs dedicated servers. Hiring dedicated servers costs good > money as you know. > > In 2002 I had to choose, either to dedicate to the site full time to > moderate the new site content and develop the features that it needed to > better serve the PHP developers, or shut the site down for good because > I would not have the time to take a day job and maintain the site at the > same time. > > > I took the chance and decided to work on the site full time. But I had > to find some way to make it generate revenue, basically turn it into a > full time business. > > My first option was to provide a package of premium services for a small > subscription fee. I placed a survey asking the users about services they > could be willing to pay. > > http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/10-Paid-site-services-survey.html > > That was a good idea but it would take me a lot of time to develop the > planned services. So the alternative option that was available was to > put advertising. > > I do not like advertising because it slows down page loading and > distracts users from the real content. But over the time, if it was not > for advertising the site would have been shut down a long time ago. > > After a lot of time and development effort, in 2007 I finally was able > to launch the planned premium services. > > http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/68-Launched-premium-services-for-PHP-developers.html > > Premium services help in generating nice revenue, but honestly it is not > a big deal. Not only I have to keep the advertising, I also need to seek > other sources of revenue. > > To continue to make the site useful for PHP developers, I decided to > develop a dedicated job board for PHP professionals that was launched in > 2008. > > http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/79-New-PHP-dedicated-job-site.html > > As you may figure by now, the site requires continuous development to > address the user needs. For instance, some site users complained about > the site design. > > In 2008 I started developing a system that would let designers propose > new designs and users try the designs in different pages. When the > system was finished in late 2009, a contest was launched. > > The winning design won a USD $3.000 money prize (and a big elePHPant). > The new design will replace the current in a few days, once we make a > few adjustments. The money prize comes mostly from the revenue of > premium subscriptions. > > I am sorry if you feel that what I have done and will continue doing is > a bad thing and I am just taking advantage of the site users. > > I suppose you do not work for free. So you cannot expect me to work for > free as well, as we all have families and have to put food on the table. > There are no miracles. > > If what I did with PHPClasses.org is bad, my alternative is to close the > site because I cannot work on the site and have a day job at the same time. > > >> And then, you have the good thought to come on here and SPAM the hell >> out of your site at every opportunity. > > What you call spam, I call word of mouth. You have expressed a need. I > know of a resource that can help you solve you problem, so I told you > about it. If telling about something that could solve your problem is > spam, I am apologise for trying to help you. > > >> ps: clicked the two links >> >> http://www.phpclasses.org/professionals/country/uk/ >> All I can see at this one is a list of "O.... ....." which isn't much >> good to me or the developer that's supposed to represent - and surprise >> surprise to view any of there information I have to register, sign up >> and buy a premium subscription - so no, no information there that was >> off use at all in any way. > > That is not accurate. There are premium subscribers and non-premium > subscribers. If you are a premium subscriber you can have full access to > the contact details of all listed professionals. If you are not a > premium subscriber, you can only be contacted by employers that are also > premium subscribers. > > You do not necessarily have to pay to become a premium subscriber. For > instance all nominees of the innovation award get a free life time > premium subscription. That is one of the ways the site compensates users > that submit innovative classes that you probably not find elsewhere. > > http://www.phpclasses.org/award/innovation/ > > http://www.phpclasses.org/winners/ > > Anyway, premium subscriptions are inexpensive. They just cost USD > $5/month (minimum 3 months) or less ($4/month if paid annually). > > You also get other benefits besides having full access to whole PHP > professionals listed in the site. You can check it out here if you want > to know about other benefits. > > http://www.phpclasses.org/premium/ > > >> http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/ >> And here I can pay $75, $60 or "Very delayed - Job announcements that >> are notified first only to featured professionals, and then much later >> to all other users after 23 days for only 7 days." - think I'll give >> that one a miss. > > I am not sure what you are complaining. Posting jobs in many well known > sites that are not even focused in PHP, costs many hundreds of dollars. > > Even if you consider the PHPClasses.org too expensive, it still lets you > can post your job for free. In that case, all the premium subscribers > get access to the jobs much earlier, and everybody else gets access to > the job for free during the last 7 days of the 30 during which the job > is exposed. > > Anyway, I find $75 very inexpensive, especially when compared to what > most companies are willing to pay as salaries. $75 is just a few hours > of paid PHP consulting work in most PHP companies. Unless you are > looking for a very short term employee, you will have to pay a lot more > than $75 to hire a good PHP professional. > > >> Thank you very much for all you're help and sorry you couldn't bleed >> some money out of me on this occasion - perhaps you'll manage with >> you're next spam to the list. > > Personally I regret that you need to be hostile and rude when I was > legitimately trying to help you. I do not recall ever seeing you here. > You seem to act as if I hurt you in someway in the past. If I ever did > that, I sincerely apologise. > > Anyway, I just think you probably are misunderstanding my work. I hope > it does not upset you that I carry on working on projects that I believe > to benefit the PHP developers in general. > > I'm unsure now TBH 1/2 of me is reading your response and thinking; sure sounds fair; the other half me is thinking "if I took all your opensource work (and other peoples) then wrapped it up in a site filled with adverts, then piggy backed on paid services like job postings and premium members etc to it - so that I could make a living; would that be a good thing to do / would it be "cool"? then counter thought of if those people contributed the code. in all honesty the following are the sticking point that make it hard for me to decide if I was right in my earlier response: 1: that the "sign up to get the class" is even part of the equation 2: that developer listings are visible to premium only peopl 3: that users can't delete an account 4: the amount of adverts Certain things like having paid Job postings on there are fair enough and I'll remove from the equation; just the 4 things above that I can't decided over. Maybe I am misunderstanding, perhaps I was a bit harsh - I would be interested to know if it is a "full time job"; obviously we can't have you working for nothing whilst you're family suffers. It bothered me that I may have flamed you for no reason, so I took council from a few people - one said I was definitely right to do so; one wasn't sure after your response; and the other said "opensource people shouldn't play that game" (ie monetize / pull a salary from contributed work). I'm wondering why it is that people are unsure about your website, yet see sourceforge and github etc with there adverts as okay. Regards, Nathan -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
