Discussion of log-in required for download

[Chroelle]

Well, first of all I dont know how hard it will be to cancel out. But recent events have caused more than one of us to think wether we are shooting ourselves in the foot by requesting people to register before being able to download.

I was however thinking about something different I might want to implement later on. I was thinking of doing some more charity work,(I already do my share and then some) and consider making it so that we ask people to join and for every member in here we donate something like 50 cents to something. This could be a specific charity, or it could very well start off with being a pot of money that will go to a developer of choice for making a great game.
But more on this later.

The real issue is that though we might get quite a few visitors that are searching for a specific download (look at the rate of people coming in from TAGAP, and then look at the downloadscount for that particular game...
Also we recently asked the developer of Fate by Numbers (huge download of more than one gig) to link to us, so we could get soem traffic and publicity for having that game in here. They refused on account of us asking people to register...
We are actually shooting ourselves in the foot by dfoing this it seems, and I can't help but wonder if we are blocking our own attempt at becoming great and even more visited by regulars by doing this. I am thinking that maybe some regulars will join up if they feel they got a good treatment from us in the past.
I think we could say that the forums is still register-only, but the downloads should be for all. But maybe we could write a notice saying something like:
"If you like this game, please register to support us". That might get us a little more members, but still it will not annoy people more than highly necessary.

Let me hear your thoughts on this. I dont want an "executive decision" on this, I want a joint one.
I would however like to hear form Maz if it is easy to change. Because then we can maybe wait until later when things have cooled down in the Finland.

[Pater Alf]

Good idea to discuss it as I had the same thoughts recently...

I think it would be a good idea to make downloads possible without the need to register. I think many people look at our sites and want to download a game or two and go away again when they notice that they have to register to do so. They just leave, download the game somewhere else and never return (not to mention that they won't tell friends about us). We have about 170 quality free games to download by now and most of them are not even downloaded 5 times. That's a shame!

But I'm not sure what the reason was for the decision to make games only downloadable for members. If it was the idea to lure people in, so they participate in the forums and the work for the site, then I think we have to admit that we failed. If you look at the memberlist, you can clearly see that most of the last 150 members that registered didn't care about the forums as they didn't write a single post. They just registered to download a game (in most cases "Buffy") and didn't ever return.
We might have a bigger success if there is no need to register to download. More people would look at the games we have to offer and would download them and maybe there will be some who say: "Wow, that's cool! And they offer all this games for free. I want to help them to offer more games and to get even better.".

On the other hand I'm not sure if more downloads wouldn't mean higher costs for the site (I suppose so). In that case the decision would be up to you, Chroelle. You are the one who spents all the money. But if that's no problem for you, I think we should make the games downloadable without registration.

[Pager]

I agree with PA, eliminating the registering to download games would increase the popularity of the site and would ultimately increase the amount of downloaded games per month.

Most of the time registering with a site is a pain in the butt. I know from experience searching for PL/SQL help on the web usually means I have to register with a bunch of websites that I really have no idea about in order to get an answer. And that's the thing, people generally have no idea what to expect when registering with a site, they're basically going into it blind, but the majority of them just can't be bothered.

I suggest doing a trial period of it first, for about a month, unless of course the code is too much of a hassle. Then you could see what the numbers will be like.

But if you decide to go ahead and open the downloading to everyone, you could always put up a banner or something to say, "Got an issue with CWF, or want to help make it better, Sign-up. No Experience required!" Or something hokey like that.

I really like the charity suggestion from Curly. It could be interesting. I agree that we should pool it and then send it to a developer. Or we could even try to help out projects like Until I'm Gone.

[Maz]

I just want to warn that thiss will propably explode our bandwidth usage. I wonder what will we gain, but it can be attempted. I admitt that our current policy has not really increased activity on forums either.. I may write some more thoughts later.

[Scythe]

As long as we can prevent hotlinking to the downloads, I say it's a great idea, as long as it doesn't blow up in our face with overexpenditure. It's certainly worth a test period.

Maybe we could have circulating downloads that don't require membership, rather than everything all at once?

[eMTe]

Place yourself where CWF visitors are now and think if you want to register only to download 2Mb game. I browse tens of sites and usually download a game only if I see big, red, glowing "download" button. The more time download takes the more I hate the site.

Bandwidth is however a serious problem.

Semi-good solution: make certain games freely downloadable. Certain = these whose developers dont agree with our policy. I expect this number will be small. I'm not sure that will work in case of Fate by Numbers though.

[Chroelle]

CAn we make it so that people can only download games under 100 MB's for example without registrering? Or maybe below 50MB's or something... That should take the top off of our bandwidth issue. I dont know how much of an issue it willbe however...

[moshboy]

I just thought I'd chip in with a couple of thoughts.

I have to admit I've never downloaded from here before because I have always had other sources to get my games from so I didn't even realise that the policy here was to register before you downloaded anything. If I'd realised, I probably would've created a topic on this much sooner.. I know an awful lot of people who are just dead set against having to register for anything. You have to remember that the majority of internet users are lurkers.. they don't even want to participate in forums and the like and since the games are freeware, nor should they have to. They want to download and play with no committments.

In my case, I have switched to hosting as many files as I can myself (although it is a constant work in progress since I didn't used to do this). I don't know the details on the bandwidth here but I have only ever had one run in with bandwidth on my site (this wasn't long ago) and I host a few hefty files.

My suggestion is (if bandwidth is a big issue) would be to host anything 50mb or under and link to the developers' sites for the larger downloads. I think Acid-Play does this.

A long time ago I had a forum on my site and I wanted to build up a community. I made some wrong choices and my forum filled up with spammers so I got rid of it. I just think you shouldn't be so concerned with finding ways to get more members to join the forum... just keep improving the quality of the site and things like this will evolve naturally. You have a pretty decent group of folks communicating on the forum as it is.

[Chroelle]

I think you are right about that.
I love the fact that we are a dedicated few, but would of course also love to get more active members in here. The fact that we are few makes me think this is OUR site instead of MY site. I ust have legal rights for it, but I could never have dreamed of building anything like this without any one of you.
I know that sounds misty and all, but hey... whats a guy to say.

I think we are making a great site and I would love to see it succeed on a higher level and maybe get more envolved members. If we dont get more members then ... Well ... I'm good with what we've got. (But I am also afraid of loosing someone since the site would suffer immensly.)

[moshboy]

If there's one thing I've learnt throughout the few years that I've run Planet Freeplay is, its that the best thing that can bring visitors to a site is strong content. It's the best way to build your reputation.

You can promote your site to hell and back and beg people to join a forum but at the end of the day.. it's good content that will seal the deal, which is why the more your page is improved the more people are likely to sit-up and take notice.

[Chroelle]

My thoughts exactly. Which is also a strong point of why I decided to cut back on advertising. It is good tat we get publicity, but if it is just namedropping with no result, then what is the piont. I mean, if thousands of people in the webcomic community knows about CWF, then great, but if that means that not a single one of them has an interest in freeware games, then the money is pretty poorly spent.
I am working on this particular problem currently, and I think we have some pretty clear solutions.
More on that later.

Log-ins... What to do? Maz is it easy enough to alter that we can make a trial period of a month or so, and then cahnge back if we find the costs too large? Your decision here. You have to do that hard work... If it needs doing.

[Maz]

There's not much of a decision to do
I believe I would be fool if I didn't listen what people dedicated to the site have to say So let's try it out, it will take some time to do the changes though

[Chroelle]

Cool.
Let me know if I can meddle with ads somewhere in between...
Do you need to do anything with the footer?
I will see if I can do something about them before the weekend.

[Maz]

You can freely modify the footer, I should not need to touch it

[Chroelle]

Cool. I will look at it then...

[Maz]

done. I also did a frontpage announce.

[Scythe]

Please let us know about the stats after (or during) the test period. I'm very curious.

[Pater Alf]

Me too...

And I think it is a good compromise to cut down the download speed for the non-registered download. Don't think it will cause much trouble for the users, as most of the files we host are quite small (well in case they want to download "Fate by Numbers" - good luck). But maybe there should be an info screen (or pop-up window) each time you start a non-registered download that tells you that speed is much faster once you're logged in.

And another thing: Now that we made downloads free for non-registered users and cut down the speed for them, I think the download counter should be modified. Even with the normal speed it didn't counter downloads which are bigger as (about 200 MB). I think that is because kind of a time-out function, so it assumes downloads that take longer as broken downloads. So with the slow download speed it probably doesn't count everything over 35-40 MB. Maybe it should be modified in a way that it counts everything including broken downloads (don't think there are so many broken downloads?)...

[Maz]

Maybe it should be modified in a way that it counts everything including broken downloads (don't think there are so many broken downloads?)...

That is doable.

[Maz]

and done.