What is DaniWeb?

[Aia]

New join-us-start-entering-a-name-pop-up is annoying, and patronizes visitors and current members alike.
Assumes that visitors will not join or will not know how to join if a pop up is not shown in their faces.

My opinion, for whoever gives a darn.

[Dani]

> Assumes that visitors will not join or will not know how to join if a pop up is not shown in their faces.
That assumption is true. We used to have the exact same message on every page that a guest sees. We got rid of that and instead switched to the popup. Adding the popup made us instantly climb from averaging 200 new members a day to 2,000 new member registrations a day.

Additionally, it is super easy to close out of (click ANYWHERE on the page, inside or out of the box) or hit the Esc key. And it only appears once per session to DaniWeb. Once you see it, guests can browse around DaniWeb without any further obstacles.

So either have the exact same message on every single page a guest sees and have 200 registrations per day. Or have the message ONCE in a floating window and have 2,000 registrations per day :)

[Dani]

Actually ... my stats were a bit off:

Message once per visit on the page = 200 new registrations / day
Message on every page a guest sees = 500 new registrations / day
Message once per visit in a floating window = 2,000 new registrations / day

[Ancient Dragon]

Are you sure about that 2,000/day? I have been here almost 4 years, and at that rate there should have been nearly 3,000,000 new members! On the otherhand it probably hasn't been 4 years since you started doing that.

[Dani]

It's only been two days :)

[Narue]

>It's only been two days
I wouldn't call that a statistically significant sample then. It could just have been a heavy two days for new registrations. :icon_rolleyes:

[Dani]

Well traffic levels have been consistent, and we do a lot of analytics as far as conversion rates coming in from different ad campaigns we do and different sources ... I wouldn't put the number 2,000 in stone, but quite often I will make a change on the site and track it, and I pretty much know what effect was a result of what change.

[Ancient Dragon]

I just visited DaniWeb without being logged in and saw that popup window. Looks pretty darned good to me :) There are lots of other advertisements that bother me more than that popup.

[martin5211]

I noticed that after three months 'far' from DaniWeb. A little obtrusive or maybe different, I ignored it without giving much attention in less than one second. Pop-up blockers are very common nowadays.

I was thinking, would be great to implement with jQuery an accordion or another stuff to perform login on the same modal window, like a very 2.0 website :)

But, I know, I do bad suggestions... Member Login wouldn't be vital on the same approach Donation-Logout links.

[Dani]

It *is* jQuery.

[martin5211]

I know, but the modal window is only to catch up new members.

Anyway, login stuff is well remembered by cookies, really doesn't matter.

[Aia]

> Assumes that visitors will not join or will not know how to join if a pop up is not shown in their faces.
That assumption is true.

While I am only having a point of view from an egocentric user experience, and not the one trying to make a living out of the site, I still could think of a different scenario where the assumption is not true.
How about this? Visitors that would not join the forum in normal circumstances, confronted with a pop-up as such, and believing they are forced to join to view the answer to their query, they create a throw away account.

Nonetheless, what do I know, perhaps that's still alright with the business model of the site.

[Dani]

Yes, we ran into that issue yesterday. At the time, we didn't have the little 'Cancel' link in the window. I had thought it was self explanatory to be able to exit out of it by clicking ANYWHERE on the page (either inside or outside the window).

However, we were getting an inflated number of registrations, but a large percentage of them weren't activating their accounts. I went ahead and added a dummy Cancel link at the top right of the window, which actually is a link to nowhere considering no matter where you click you cancel out of it.

The number of registrations today sank dramatically but the number of activations today remained consistant with yesterday. (Still 10X the number of activations as before the window started being used.)

Edit: Suppose a user finds a page from a Google search, they are presented with the popup, and they register. They are subsequently immediately redirected back to the page with the information they were looking to find. Therefore, if they were only registering to get at the info, they wouldn't subsequently activate their accounts.

Additionally, the number of members who create accounts AND post within a day of creating those accounts has dramatically increased to the point of, alone, making the box worthwhile and deemed "successful".

[Nick Evan]

I had thought it was self explanatory to be able to exit out of it by clicking ANYWHERE on the page (either inside or outside the window).

You have too much faith in the intelligence of an average user. "Make it stupid simple"

Suppose a user finds a page from a Google search, they are presented with the popup, and they register. [..snip..]
Additionally, the number of members who create accounts AND post within a day of creating those accounts has dramatically increased to the point of, alone, making the box worthwhile and deemed "successful".

It's a good thing that you didn't make the pop-up before I registered. I would never sign up with a site that throws a popup in my face (like experts-exchange for example) to practically force me to register. I think there are more people who think like me.
But if you say that it's successful and a lot of the new members started posting ; I'll take your word for it and back of to see how it works out . ;)

[edit]
And will these members, who can't even find a 'join us' button if it's not thrown in their faces, really make a valuable addition to Daniweb? :S

[martin5211]

I saw a lot of new members... that's great if they are not joining from the same IP address, I mean, the same person :-O

[~s.o.s~]

An observation regarding pop-ups -- don't you think it would be nice to show the pop-up to a non-registered user only *once* rather than showing it to him/her everytime he visits the Daniweb home page. A cookie based tracking might just do the job...

[blud]

It does, it only happens once per session, and when your logged in, it doesn't display.

[Dani]

> don't you think it would be nice to show the pop-up to a non-registered user only *once* rather than showing it to him/her everytime he visits the Daniweb home page

The vast majority of our traffic (over 99.9%) doesn't even see our homepage, ever. They come into individual forum threads as a result of a Google search, read what's on the current page, and leave, and most of the time don't even realize who/what we are.

For that reason, the window shows once per visit to DaniWeb. No matter what page they come in on, they see it that one time, and then can browse any number of pages on the site popup-free.

[John A]

>For that reason, the window shows once per visit to DaniWeb.
Determining a 'visit' upon the referring URL is incredibly annoying. Not everyone enables referring URLs, and people often go directly to certain pages without clicking a link (bookmarks, for example), or edit URLs before they go to them (eg. to jump to specific pages in a large thread). I realize that not everyone has cookies enabled either, but if you decide to keep this incredibly annoying popup, at least use a cookie-checking fallback mechanism if there's no referring URL.

[MidiMagic]

Very annoying to regular users!

When I saw it, I thought you had gone through one of those website rebuilds where everyone has to re-register and all of the posts are gone. This happened to me on several other bbs.

My browsers are configured to clear cookies and histories on exit for security reasons imposed by my employer. To be allowed to use my employer's website from home, I have to do that.

If you decide to keep the annoying popup, give registered users a url that bypasses it and activates the login screen.

Better yet, let the entry popup also have the login screen in it, so we can use it to log in.

[Aia]

>If you decide to keep the annoying popup
I cannot see it staying there for good. I hope not.

[martin5211]

I haven't found a bit tiny thing of democracy yet... For all it is worth, issues like double-posting shouldn't be existing for good visibility/functionality. But, one good reason isn't enough.

Also, comments in reputation should allow a feedback to be fair. That's very rustic.

I think user feedback should be taken into account.

[Ancient Dragon]

I haven't found a bit tiny thing of democracy yet...

Why would you? DaniWeb is not a democracy. If you want to think of it in political terms then it would be a dictatorship, as all web sites are.

For all it is worth, issues like double-posting shouldn't be existing for good visibility/functionality. But, one good reason isn't enough.

We delete double posts whenever found.

Also, comments in reputation should allow a feedback to be fair. That's very rustic.

So, just make another rep post.

I think user feedback should be taken into account.

[Dani]

Let me put this bluntly.

DaniWeb never claims to be a democracy. I created the website. People are welcome to use it. If you don't like it, you're welcome to go elsewhere to a different website.

DaniWeb is also what pays my rent. It's my business and I want my business to be successful. Therefore, it's most definitely in my best interests to make sure that the majority of visitors are happy and keep coming back.

All that being said, we have a feedback forum. I read every single post that is made in this forum, and every single post is taken into consideration. However, it also needs to be appreciated that a majority of site visitors don't post at all, or don't post in the feedback forum. I still try to do what's best for the greater majority by carefully analyzing analytics and tracking statistics and coupling all of that hard numerical data with what people say and think in this feedback forum.

So you *are* being heard. Just because not every single thing that every single person says isn't done doesn't mean it wasn't considered or at least heard by the right people. Remember, 4,000 people have made at least 20 posts on DaniWeb and 400 people have posted within the past day and a half. Fewer than 10 people have given their opinions about the welcome popup. I'm not going to take a poll of five people to decide what's best for thousands.

But, like I said, you are being heard. I didn't get a chance to post about it until now, but early this morning I made a change so that the welcome popup only appears when it's the first page on DaniWeb you see when you arrive from another site. If you didn't come from another site (you typed in the URL manually or it's bookmarked) you will no longer see the popup at all. Hopefully that's an acceptable compromise. And if it's not, well ... we're not a democracy :)

[martin5211]

A sort of balance must exist because we're talking about an online community. If a member feels uncomfortable, obviously would leave. That may not concern however remote it may be, new users will come like a cascade does :) But, even great sites like Facebook are changing that line of thinking of merely "I do what I want". Sites that doesn't meet with standard values or doesn't grow in terms of flexibility, will decline to make room more comfortable communities... or even similar sites.

This popup can be the most annoying for someone, my case, I don't reset cookies and fortunately cookies doesn't expire so fast, everything is fine. Despite of that, I remember such advertisement wasn't well received the first time I logged in days ago. I had to register mandatory (long time ago) to several websites only to see a worthless posts (or dead links).

So, time will say if a site policy really works for you, hope for the best sake in the world. However, these suggestions are not crazy ideas. A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it. (George W. Bush).

P.S. I want to add, that little change in the popup logic is really great!

P.P.S. We must become the change we want to see. (Gandhi)

[Aia]

cscgal> If you didn't come from another site (you typed in the URL manually or it's bookmarked) you will no longer see the popup at all. Hopefully that's an acceptable compromise.

More than acceptable. Thank you.

[jbennet]

Good job Dani.

[MidiMagic]

I can tell you why double posting in the same thread occurs. It happens to me all the time. But I usually edit the duplicate to say something else.

When you go to post, sometimes you never get the reply back from DaniWeb. The browser either times out or sits there indefinitely waiting for a failed advertisement to load. If you then use Refresh to get the new version of the page, it posts the same post again.

[martin5211]

I can tell you why double posting in the same thread occurs. It happens to me all the time. But I usually edit the duplicate to say something else.

When you go to post, sometimes you never get the reply back from DaniWeb. The browser either times out or sits there indefinitely waiting for a failed advertisement to load. If you then use Refresh to get the new version of the page, it posts the same post again.

It happens me usually with Youtube, javascript doesn't refresh sometimes. What I called 'double posting' is when you want to add more information and edit option expired, using Quick Reply will create another post instead of concatenate the last one.

I like the new login system on this website, as well another changes made, saves one or more pages loaded.