Free Ezboards Closing....

[Lizzbitt]

Hi Gig, Jox!

Did you get your letter about ezboard closing all their free boards soon? I just want to let you know if you have a free board, maybe you should drag everything you need and want, over here before they close it.

My Xena Board is paid but my other board is free. It doesn't matter if they close it or not. Maybe I'll pay six months on it next week or maybe not.

Here's the letter incase you didn't get it....


Please read this important message from ezboard

Subject: Important News About the Free Gold Progam


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Effective Monday, September 13, we will be terminating our Free Gold program for Gold Communities.

We introduced the Free Gold program over a year ago as a result of the popularity and performance of text-based contextual advertising from Google and others. Over the course of the year the market and economics for this advertising has diminished, to the point where it is no longer feasible for us to offer the program. That being said, we are gratified by the participation of our communities, and believe that both they and ezboard have benefited.

If you are a participant in the Free Gold program, effective Monday you will revert to the days left on your subscription at the point you entered the program – for example, if you entered with thirty days left on your subscription, you will again have thirty days left. All ezboard-sponsored advertising will be removed, and you will return to the standard subscription service you purchased. We’d be glad to address any questions or concerns through Email Support for Gold Community Administrators at .

Thanks again for you support.

Steve DeMello

[Joxcenia]

I don't think they're getting rid of free boards... the ads bring in money. They're getting rid of the Free Gold. I bet it didn't bring in as much money as members paying for the gold.

[Lesa]

Yep, they're only getting rid of the free gold, not free boards.  This means that all free boards will have popup ads instead of the small text ads, and they won't have any features like custom emoticons or stickies.

If you have an invisible forum that you don't want others to know about, you'll want to do something about that before any free gold you have runs out, because invisible forums are another "gold" feature.  Jox has already gotten rid of the celebrity chat forums at ezWhoosh for this reason.  You can, however, still have password-protected forums, where people will know about them but can't enter without the password or being added to the list.

[Joxcenia]

I wish the boards here allowed the Admin to add members to a board instead of giving out the password. You'll have to change the password everytime you kick someone out.

[Lesa]

Yep, unfortunately.  You know, I haven't even tested to see if an account always has access after going in with the password once.  And if that's the case, would they still have access after changing the password?  And can guests get in with the password?

I just put a password on test7, for anyone who wants to do extensive testing.  The password is test.

[Joxcenia]

From reading at the Support Board, it's my understanding that members have to use the password everytime they log in. They have access to the board until they log out and then when they log in later, they have to use the password again to get into the board.

[Lesa]

That sounds like a big pain in the arse!

[Joxcenia]

Maybe their new upgrade will have improvements on this.

[Lesa]

I sure hope so.

[Lizzbitt]

Maybe their new upgrade will have improvements on this.

Their new upgrade will be a pain in the butt like all the rest of the new upgrades they make.

So only the Gold free boards will be dropped. I have a gold free board on the other board. I didn't know you could have a non gold board.

I'll think about keeping the other board. See what they offer.

[Joxcenia]

They offered a free trial of gold for boards that already had gold, and members didn't have to contribute to keep the board gold. The free gold will be discontinued, but the boards will not be deleted. They'll go back to members having to pay for the gold. The boards will be okay. The price to keeping them gold will go back into force.

[Lesa]

Their new upgrade will be a pain in the butt like all the rest of the new upgrades they make.

We meant ProBoard's upgrade, which they announced in May of last year and haven't come out with yet.

I agree, ezboard's "upgrades" always seem to cause more trouble than good. I just hope Proboards does more extensive testing before upgrading all their boards when the upgrade is finally completed, and it sounds like they plan on doing just that.

My question is, why can't they just fix the [/font] bug now instead of making us wait for the long-awaited upgrade? It seems to me that they just have to add an "OR" clause in their code, so instead of saying (in half English, half coding language):

IF() {
THEN print "</font>";
}[/font]

They could say:

IF( OR [/font]) {
THEN print "</font>";
}[/font]

I don't know, it seems simple enough.