Lets combine funds for a Reviews CMS with business/product directory

[Christos Teriakis]

Hello all,

Even if I'm sure that my post will "moves the water", and most probably it will takes negative comments, I dare to make this post, as I'm sure that some users will understand my point of view, and will agree with me.

First of all, I want you to know that, except coder, I'm also client just like you. I've spent a lot of money buying 10+ vB addons, and over than 100 PHP scripts. I believe that I've the biggest collection.

I don't know if forumsmods gone offline for ever, and I don't wish it. Maybe the coder, just felt broken, and wanted some days of relax. Happen to me too.

But if he really adopted the project and the site at all, what's the real reason for it? I believe that most of the reasons below are enought for him to get such a decision:

1. @Alpha1 : With all the respection to you and to your rights to ask the best value for your money, don't you think that your feature list is extremely long even for a standalone script? Have you ever wonder how many of the opther members who participated this thread, are really needing all these exotic features?
2. According to that list I don't think that should be someone who will gets the decision to code it for public use, but only as a custom work. Yes, I can code a mod having 100% of the requested features. But it will takes me more than 100 days which means (according to my rates for custom work), around 25,000 Euros. Are you willing to pay such amount? Or are you able to guarantee that you'll find 1000 clients to pay 250 Euros each? I don't think so.
3. That famous "GARS" compatibility. I wrote it in a previous post here. It can be done, but only by copying the database structure and work the mod on this structure. Why? Because the analysis of this mod is totally wrong. Have you ever find any reviews site where category "A" has rating scale 1-10, but category "B" can have rating scale 1-5 and so on? Is this normal? This is the best way to confuse your members. Everybody can accept 5 stars as best, ot 10 stars as best, but to all products. I'm nearly 100% sure that forumsmods, stoped at that point. To copy something wrong just to be able to release an importer.
4. Now the critical point... Lets forget my own proposal above, and lets think realistic. Even if the original post and the first ones are showing a passion to have such a mod, how many do you believe that are ready to buy it? Reading the posts an unexperiant coder maybe thinks ..."Ochhh, there are 1,000s who will buy it". Wrong. I can guarantee that there are no more 30-40. Lets say 50. 50 Sales X $50 = $2,500. Who of use will waste 100+ days of hard work for $2,500 ???????????

As a last word, I'll use Alpha1's suggestion "Never pay for a product unless its fully functional" is a different way: "Never ask for new features, before you have the 10 most important ready".

As for me, I adopted the project just for this reason. Because every day a new feature was added in the lists. I prefer to adopt one month's work, than to add daily headcaches in my head.

PS: A last comment for BigTree and his bad experiance with Lionel. I had the same bad experiance with iCart and vBMultipages. But I have to admit that Lionel is doing the best (from business side view). He has a dozen of commercial mods, but none free. Even the simple ones (eg vBMultipages) he is selling it. But he comes here very often just for asking. Never to give. And by having ALL the files 100% encrypted is sure that for every custom change, you have to pay him for it, even if its something that you can do free on your own.


Thank you for reading
Chris