43 replies to this topic

[biggerfish]

This is a test - I want to see if a brand new post in a 'password protected' area appears in the twitterverse, and if I can then click it as an unregistered user and see it.

Theoretically, this could be a post about where to find this or that, or how good or bad some supplier acted. In any event, the location (Find and Discuss Products) should really NOT be visible to end users, especially on Twitter!

OK here goes...

[Chris Miller]

biggerfish said:

This is a test - I want to see if a brand new post in a 'password protected' area appears in the twitterverse, and if I can then click it as an unregistered user and see it.

Theoretically, this could be a post about where to find this or that, or how good or bad some supplier acted. In any event, the location (Find and Discuss Products) should really NOT be visible to end users, especially on Twitter!

OK here goes...

Seems to be appearing.... but all of DT is password protected for those wishing to post. All areas are not password protected for viewing....

http://twitter.com/distributortalk

[jimknecht]

Chris Miller said:

but all of DT is password protected for those wishing to post. All areas are not password protected for viewing....

http://twitter.com/distributortalk

OK, maybe I'm stupid, but what exactly does this mean? I understand DT has public areas for viewing, but are you saying the "private" areas can also be viewed on Twitter?

[MBanning]

I'm also curious in knowing how some posts are 'automatically' posted on Twitter? Do you have a crawler on DT which pulls code and posts?

[Chris Miller]

I hadn't looked at it much until last night and it seems sporadic at best. It's supposed to automatically post links to posts that are in the open forums. Obviously if it posts a link to a post that is not in an open forum, the person would just get an error when they follow the link.

I'm going to look into it more here shortly. If nothing else, it doesn't seem to be updating enough. I see many thread missing that I think should be there.

[biggerfish]

I started this thread at 1245 am on Wed 8/26 - in the FIND AND DISCUSS PRODUCTS forum, which to me should be off limits to the general public, and especially to those not in the industry.

The TWITTER post appeared at 215 am, with a link to the thread.

Before clicking that link, I went to a PC here in the office that I don't use for D Talk, making sure I was not logged in or cookied or anything.

I clicked the link at twitter.com/distributortalk and landed straight here on this thread, with all the comments from others, without being logged in.

To reply, I'd have to login or sign up. But to READ it? No credentials necessary.

I think the lesson is don't post what you don't want the world to see.

[Chris Miller]

biggerfish said:

I think the lesson is don't post what you don't want the world to see.

It's kinda like real life I guess. I try to exercise that caution on forums, and with the spoken word. ;)

Still looking into this....

[biggerfish]

Chris Miller said:

All areas are not password protected for viewing....

No kidding - the only password protected areas I can find RIGHT NOW at 1000 AM on 8/26/2009 are:

LOCATE! » Find & Discuss Suppliers
MARKET PLACE » Supplier Specials - EXCLUSIVE to DT Members ONLY!
MARKET PLACE » Supplier Specials

The rest of the entire board is wide open for the world to see.

Almost 2000 pages indexed by google today - Lots of neat proprietary info there, I'm sure that when it was posted it was NOT meant for public consumption:

http://www.google.co...m&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

Edited by biggerfish, 26 August 2009 - 08:38 AM.
correct typo

[biggerfish]

OK I get it. It's Chris's site, and he needs to make money from it to keep it going. Sure, there are ads from industry suppliers, but obviously that's not cutting it: there's also ads from amazon, google adsense, and a few affiliate type ads. All of these are in rotation.

To get more eyeballs, and more clicks on these ads, he has to open up the floodgates to the world.

So from a strictly monetary standpoint, I really do get it.

When this first started, it was only distributors, and a few suppliers. Over time, more and more came - there were advisory boards set up, the thing was even leased out. There were even a few dissenters, but in spite of all of this, there continued to be lots and lots of pertinent "industry-only" content meant for just us - not for the general public, not even for those "thinking about" getting into this... truly industry only.

But here's the deal: my business is net-only - 80% of my orders come from new business, all driven by Search Engine Marketing - 70% of that comes from Google. End users want X and they want it now.

The way DistributorTalk.com is set up now, when an end user searches for X, they may find me, my supplier, and now even my discussion here with my supplier about X.

I don't really want my customer find my discussions anywhere that I don't want them seen. I was under the impression that this was industry only. If it's not, then I have to change the way I act here.

I also understand that if my customer wants to find a supplier's contact info they can easily do that with tools that are available to anybody. I just don't wanna provide my end user customer with even more info to get into my pocket.

[3Koi Maui]

Oh gosh, this changes what I'll post too.

I thought that most of the forums were industry only. But knowing they are open to the public changes the conversation.

Too bad, I liked it the way I thought it was.

[biggerfish]

Actually I feel like we've all be hoodwinked a little bit.

[Chris Miller]

There was never any ill intention here, Rich. I find it insulting that people who utilize a free site, bought and paid for by a distributor, designed FOR distributors, constantly sticking up for, and defending distributors, think that we somehow have things in place that would cause harm to the distributor. Makes no sense whatsoever. :confused:

A good way to measure (I would think) would be to look at me. I post anything and everything on here. All tied to me, and all tied to my company. Hasn't hurt me yet... in fact it helps a ton with search engine placement. And yes, I run an internet based distributorship. Affected by online search 100x more than the conventional distributor. I just didn't realize I should be so paranoid.... I can't think of anything I have said on here that would affect my business in a negative way if a customer were to see it.

Some permissions were changed to adjust the site to the changes in the industry. Distributors and suppliers are utilizing facebook, twitter and google more and more and we wanted to be able to stay connected with those people through those mediums - just like ASI, PPAI, DistributorCentral, many suppliers, and every other industry company does.

Another major factor is the members not being able to keep track of their usernames and passwords. It's a lot of work to fix password issues all day for 10,000 members. We've had more complaints from people NOT wanting to login than we have from those who want the site on full lock down.

I am certainly open to suggestions on finding some middle ground here, but more and more industry folks are using google to find information and it does help if some of these topics are indexed for people to see. I don't think you all realize how valuable that is to the distributor and of course to DistributorTalk.

[3Koi Maui]

Now Chris, before you get all defensive, I think you need to acknowledge that this is a change that doesn't appear to be announced anywhere. Except perhaps the re-wording of the site info.

In the past, even earlier in this year, you were stating that posts were NOT open to the public, with the exception of some of the very general forums. I think there was even some accusations about that going back & forth when there was a management change or two, and you said that you had to correct that openess left behind. Also you said that there were some glitches that you were either working on or had fixed.

Now it sounds like all the forums and posts, with the exception of those 3 that Rich listed, are open to the public, and that this was a change you made, not a glitch.

In the least I would have hoped you would have announced the changes so that we could have made our participation decisions as informed as you are. Especially when you used to vigorously point to the industry-only aspect of the site.

[Chris Miller]

Hey Isa,

Not feeling defensive at all... just wondering what fears you all might have, and what I can do to alleviate those fears. How many forums need to be locked up?

When a forum is locked up - it's all but worthless for most things. Cant post its links on twitter, can't include them in email marketing, google wont serve ads in them correctly, members with password issues cant see them, etc etc. It is severely limiting for most everything.

Just wondering what the issue is and how best to approach it. Should I be alarmed as well? I have a lot of posts out here....

[royster13]

Chris what purpose is served by having DT wide open?....It might help you but I can not see how it does anything to help me.....

[biggerfish]

Chris Miller said:

.... just wondering what fears you all might have

Here's one:

biggerfish said:

.... when an end user searches for X, they may find me, my supplier, and now even my discussion here with my supplier about X.

I don't really want my customer find my discussions anywhere that I don't want them seen.

[3Koi Maui]

Chris Miller said:

Hey Isa,

Not feeling defensive at all... just wondering what fears you all might have, and what I can do to alleviate those fears. How many forums need to be locked up?

When a forum is locked up - it's all but worthless for most things. Cant post its links on twitter, can't include them in email marketing, google wont serve ads in them correctly, members with password issues cant see them, etc etc. It is severely limiting for most everything.

Just wondering what the issue is and how best to approach it. Should I be alarmed as well? I have a lot of posts out here....

OK, thank you Chris.

The first thing I can think of is that many of the posts on the site are asking where to find something. So if someone outside the industry Googles and finds the post where I tell them the supplier along with the phone number, isn't that just the same as ASI letting "anyone" in to get the lists of suppliers? I mean, of course suppliers should turn someone away, but I thought you didn't want to have that kind of information out there.

Also, people do come to this site to vent, share stories, and get feedback on how to handle a situation. I would suppose if a client Googled a distributor company name, then read their posts, it could be more information than the distributor meant to relay.

I do agree that in general anything we write in places such as this should be well considered. It's just that I think you really set the expectation for how the site would be accessed, and then that appears to have changed.

I understand your technical challenges, and perhaps financial too. I was a financially contributing member a long time ago, when that was what we hoped would keep the site running. Your use of Google ads (or whatever) is an idea you had to help bring in income, and I would guess that the forums with more traffic are the ones that benefit you the most.

But I think that if you are using opening up the forums to public view, you have to let people know that so that they can decide how to participate. Right now you've got a lot more supplier participation than ever before, and people are pretty helpful in giving out information about supplier contact, pricing, everything. I'm not sure that would stay the same given the change. That leaves you stuck on how to bring in revenue to pay for your costs on running the site, while balancing having the participation you need to make the site a draw.

[Chris Miller]

royster13 said:

Chris what purpose is served by having DT wide open?....It might help you but I can not see how it does anything to help me.....

Hey Royce,

Just to clarify, DT is not wide open. I would have to check the settings, but not all forums are visible. I want you all to understand how VB permissions settings work as well so no one thinks I am yanking their chain. There are 3 variables. Usergroup, Forum & Setting. So for EACH forum, you have to set what permission each usergroup has for every setting (read, write, view, what can they view, etc). We have 9 active usergroups, 15 forums, and 23 selectable permissions for each forum. That's a LOT of variables to keep straight.

As for benefits, I believe there are several benefits to having more of DT indexed in the search engines:

1) Bigger membership = better community
2) Indexing of your posts along with your URL's provide back links and instant credibility with the search engines. PR+
3) Writing of a forum post here, could prove to be more valuable for SEM than a blog post on your own site because DT already has the credibility.
4) Bigger membership = better community
5) Members don't have to login to read every single portion of the site. They can browse the general topics, and then login if / when they want to view the locked portions.
6) Bigger membership = better community


Of course there are benefits for DT as well that relate directly to marketing, and lowering maintenance time / costs. Keeping the site free has always been the goal.

[Chris Miller]

Hey Isa,

Just double checked the settings for Find / Discuss Supplier's forum, with usergroup "Unregistered / Not Logged In" and those posts are NOT visible to that group. Meaning google can't get to them either. Attached is the screenshot.

I am reviewing the others and trying to come up with a sound plan that benefits everyone. My first thought is using groups of forums to distinguish open, and industry only. It is also possible to have a visible green / red bar on the page that says:

---------------------------------------------------------------------
This content is public If you feel it needs to be private, please report it
----------------------------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------------------------
This content is private
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Or something like this.....

Thanks for taking the time to respond....

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