UK Project Opportunity

Hi All,

I need to find a skilled PHP dev, UK based, with long term availability,
in the short term to join me on a project and ultimately be prepared to
take over the project and "own" it. Remote contract work w/ occasional
meetings on site.

In all honesty, the client and the project is the best I've ever had,
rates are fantastic, tech stack is great and you get the chance to work
with every new technology you want + implement for a gracious client.

You will need to be an experienced developer with numerous apps under
your belt, be willing to learn (a lot) and, well here's the skills list:

Must already have:
PHP 5 OO & knowledge of design patterns + software architecture
Linux server management (apache/ubuntu/ldap)
SVN, a good IDE, Unit Testing w/ PHPUnit, Coding Standards, PHPDoc
(X)HTML / CSS / HTML5
Javascript + JQuery

Will need but can teach:
RDF / Linked Data
SPARQL (+Extensions)
Virtuoso 5/6
ARC2
OWL (/2)

Nice to have:
Familiarity with:
Kohana and Zend Frameworks
REST and WebDav, HTTP/1.1 Protocol
Spatial / GEO data
Continuous Integration and phpUnderControl
Google Earth Plugin
n-tier applications & EAV/CR
OpenID / OpenAuth etc


As a bonus you also get to know that the work you do has positive
impacts on real people in many of the worlds poorest nations :)

Do email me; off-list; on the above address or nathan@webr3.org if
you're interested.

Many Regards,

Nathan

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Re: UK Project Opportunity

Hello,

on 02/15/2010 11:37 AM Nathan Rixham said the following:
> I need to find a skilled PHP dev, UK based, with long term availability,
> in the short term to join me on a project and ultimately be prepared to
> take over the project and "own" it. Remote contract work w/ occasional
> meetings on site.

You may want to try searching PHP professionals with the specific skills
you need here:

http://www.phpclasses.org/professionals/country/uk/

Or you may want to try to post a job here:

http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/

--

Regards,
Manuel Lemos

Find and post PHP jobs
http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/

PHP Classes - Free ready to use OOP components written in PHP
http://www.phpclasses.org/

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Re: UK Project Opportunity

Manuel Lemos wrote:
> Hello,
>
> on 02/15/2010 11:37 AM Nathan Rixham said the following:
>> I need to find a skilled PHP dev, UK based, with long term availability,
>> in the short term to join me on a project and ultimately be prepared to
>> take over the project and "own" it. Remote contract work w/ occasional
>> meetings on site.
>
> You may want to try searching PHP professionals with the specific skills
> you need here:
>
> http://www.phpclasses.org/professionals/country/uk/
>
> Or you may want to try to post a job here:
>
> http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/
>

Manuel,

I'm sure there are some very talented people on your site (and in the
community) - one slight problem though, I won't use you're website under
any circumstance (been there, done that).

You make every interaction with your site a horrible, painful
interaction that is purely there to get as many adverts as you can in
front of people, so that you can bleed every cent possible from the hard
work and effort of PHP developers and innocent users. In short, you take
advantage of your users, members and the PHP community - I've never seen
such a bold and ongoing attempt to profit on the hard work and good will
of PHP developers, ever, period.

And then, you have the good thought to come on here and SPAM the hell
out of your site at every opportunity.

ps: clicked the two links

http://www.phpclasses.org/professionals/country/uk/
All I can see at this one is a list of "O.... ....." which isn't much
good to me or the developer that's supposed to represent - and surprise
surprise to view any of there information I have to register, sign up
and buy a premium subscription - so no, no information there that was
off use at all in any way.

http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/
And here I can pay $75, $60 or "Very delayed - Job announcements that
are notified first only to featured professionals, and then much later
to all other users after 23 days for only 7 days." - think I'll give
that one a miss.

Thank you very much for all you're help and sorry you couldn't bleed
some money out of me on this occasion - perhaps you'll manage with
you're next spam to the list.

Regards,

Nathan

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Re: UK Project Opportunity

Nathan Rixham wrote:
> Manuel Lemos wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> on 02/15/2010 11:37 AM Nathan Rixham said the following:
>>> I need to find a skilled PHP dev, UK based, with long term availability,
>>> in the short term to join me on a project and ultimately be prepared to
>>> take over the project and "own" it. Remote contract work w/ occasional
>>> meetings on site.
>> You may want to try searching PHP professionals with the specific skills
>> you need here:
>>
>> http://www.phpclasses.org/professionals/country/uk/
>>
>> Or you may want to try to post a job here:
>>
>> http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/
>>
>
> Manuel,
>
> I'm sure there are some very talented people on your site (and in the
> community) - one slight problem though, I won't use you're website under
> any circumstance (been there, done that).
>
> You make every interaction with your site a horrible, painful
> interaction that is purely there to get as many adverts as you can in
> front of people, so that you can bleed every cent possible from the hard
> work and effort of PHP developers and innocent users. In short, you take
> advantage of your users, members and the PHP community - I've never seen
> such a bold and ongoing attempt to profit on the hard work and good will
> of PHP developers, ever, period.
>
> And then, you have the good thought to come on here and SPAM the hell
> out of your site at every opportunity.
>
> ps: clicked the two links
>
> http://www.phpclasses.org/professionals/country/uk/
> All I can see at this one is a list of "O.... ....." which isn't much
> good to me or the developer that's supposed to represent - and surprise
> surprise to view any of there information I have to register, sign up
> and buy a premium subscription - so no, no information there that was
> off use at all in any way.
>
> http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/
> And here I can pay $75, $60 or "Very delayed - Job announcements that
> are notified first only to featured professionals, and then much later
> to all other users after 23 days for only 7 days." - think I'll give
> that one a miss.
>
> Thank you very much for all you're help and sorry you couldn't bleed
> some money out of me on this occasion - perhaps you'll manage with
> you're next spam to the list.
>
> Regards,
>
> Nathan

pps: quote: "Do email me; *off-list*; on the above address or
nathan@webr3.org if you're interested." - which would avoid situations
like this, and noise + spam getting through to the list ;)

regards

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

Nathan Rixham wrote:

>
> You make every interaction with your site a horrible, painful
> interaction that is purely there to get as many adverts as you can in
> front of people, so that you can bleed every cent possible from the hard
> work and effort of PHP developers and innocent users. In short, you take
> advantage of your users, members and the PHP community.

While you are entitled to your opinion, as someone with a few classes on
that site I do not feel taken advantage of in the slightest.

I find it to be a great resource for finding existing classes that often
do exactly what I need but is not available in pear, and I also have
found it to be an excellent resource for seeing how other coders solved
certain problems.

Yes, there are advertisements on the site. Some of the advertisers
donate useful products to be given as innovation awards and I assume
some of them do not. Resources like that are not free to operate.

I use to run a yum repository for RHEL/CentOS that provided packages
from Fedora/Livna that were not available in EPEL.

I had to close it down because after a couple months, my bandwidth costs
were way too high. I do not know what phpclasses uses in terms of
bandwidth, but I do not blame him for trying to cover his costs or even
profiting from the service he provides, I find it to be a service that
is of a great benefit to me.

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Re: UK Project Opportunity

Hello,

on 02/16/2010 08:02 PM Nathan Rixham said the following:
>>> I need to find a skilled PHP dev, UK based, with long term availability,
>>> in the short term to join me on a project and ultimately be prepared to
>>> take over the project and "own" it. Remote contract work w/ occasional
>>> meetings on site.
>> You may want to try searching PHP professionals with the specific skills
>> you need here:
>>
>> http://www.phpclasses.org/professionals/country/uk/
>>
>> Or you may want to try to post a job here:
>>
>> http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/
>>
>
> Manuel,
>
> I'm sure there are some very talented people on your site (and in the
> community) - one slight problem though, I won't use you're website under
> any circumstance (been there, done that).
>
> You make every interaction with your site a horrible, painful
> interaction that is purely there to get as many adverts as you can in
> front of people, so that you can bleed every cent possible from the hard
> work and effort of PHP developers and innocent users. In short, you take
> advantage of your users, members and the PHP community - I've never seen
> such a bold and ongoing attempt to profit on the hard work and good will
> of PHP developers, ever, period.

There seems to be a misunderstanding here.

The PHPClasses.org site was created by me in 1999 with the purpose of
making it easy to distribute my PHP classes so others could test them
and send bug reports and suggestions.

Then I thought it would be nice to let others also share their code
there to do the same, if they want of course. Back then, there was no
advertising or any sort of monetization of the site.

Meanwhile the site has grown a lot. Now it has over 850.000 registered
users. Initially it could run on a shared hosting, but since many years
ago it needs dedicated servers. Hiring dedicated servers costs good
money as you know.

In 2002 I had to choose, either to dedicate to the site full time to
moderate the new site content and develop the features that it needed to
better serve the PHP developers, or shut the site down for good because
I would not have the time to take a day job and maintain the site at the
same time.


I took the chance and decided to work on the site full time. But I had
to find some way to make it generate revenue, basically turn it into a
full time business.

My first option was to provide a package of premium services for a small
subscription fee. I placed a survey asking the users about services they
could be willing to pay.

http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/10-Paid-site-services-su rvey.html

That was a good idea but it would take me a lot of time to develop the
planned services. So the alternative option that was available was to
put advertising.

I do not like advertising because it slows down page loading and
distracts users from the real content. But over the time, if it was not
for advertising the site would have been shut down a long time ago.

After a lot of time and development effort, in 2007 I finally was able
to launch the planned premium services.

http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/68-Launched-premium-serv ices-for-PHP-developers.html

Premium services help in generating nice revenue, but honestly it is not
a big deal. Not only I have to keep the advertising, I also need to seek
other sources of revenue.

To continue to make the site useful for PHP developers, I decided to
develop a dedicated job board for PHP professionals that was launched in
2008.

http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/79-New-PHP-dedicated-job -site.html

As you may figure by now, the site requires continuous development to
address the user needs. For instance, some site users complained about
the site design.

In 2008 I started developing a system that would let designers propose
new designs and users try the designs in different pages. When the
system was finished in late 2009, a contest was launched.

The winning design won a USD $3.000 money prize (and a big elePHPant).
The new design will replace the current in a few days, once we make a
few adjustments. The money prize comes mostly from the revenue of
premium subscriptions.

I am sorry if you feel that what I have done and will continue doing is
a bad thing and I am just taking advantage of the site users.

I suppose you do not work for free. So you cannot expect me to work for
free as well, as we all have families and have to put food on the table.
There are no miracles.

If what I did with PHPClasses.org is bad, my alternative is to close the
site because I cannot work on the site and have a day job at the same time.


> And then, you have the good thought to come on here and SPAM the hell
> out of your site at every opportunity.

What you call spam, I call word of mouth. You have expressed a need. I
know of a resource that can help you solve you problem, so I told you
about it. If telling about something that could solve your problem is
spam, I am apologise for trying to help you.


> ps: clicked the two links
>
> http://www.phpclasses.org/professionals/country/uk/
> All I can see at this one is a list of "O.... ....." which isn't much
> good to me or the developer that's supposed to represent - and surprise
> surprise to view any of there information I have to register, sign up
> and buy a premium subscription - so no, no information there that was
> off use at all in any way.

That is not accurate. There are premium subscribers and non-premium
subscribers. If you are a premium subscriber you can have full access to
the contact details of all listed professionals. If you are not a
premium subscriber, you can only be contacted by employers that are also
premium subscribers.

You do not necessarily have to pay to become a premium subscriber. For
instance all nominees of the innovation award get a free life time
premium subscription. That is one of the ways the site compensates users
that submit innovative classes that you probably not find elsewhere.

http://www.phpclasses.org/award/innovation/

http://www.phpclasses.org/winners/

Anyway, premium subscriptions are inexpensive. They just cost USD
$5/month (minimum 3 months) or less ($4/month if paid annually).

You also get other benefits besides having full access to whole PHP
professionals listed in the site. You can check it out here if you want
to know about other benefits.

http://www.phpclasses.org/premium/


> http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/
> And here I can pay $75, $60 or "Very delayed - Job announcements that
> are notified first only to featured professionals, and then much later
> to all other users after 23 days for only 7 days." - think I'll give
> that one a miss.

I am not sure what you are complaining. Posting jobs in many well known
sites that are not even focused in PHP, costs many hundreds of dollars.

Even if you consider the PHPClasses.org too expensive, it still lets you
can post your job for free. In that case, all the premium subscribers
get access to the jobs much earlier, and everybody else gets access to
the job for free during the last 7 days of the 30 during which the job
is exposed.

Anyway, I find $75 very inexpensive, especially when compared to what
most companies are willing to pay as salaries. $75 is just a few hours
of paid PHP consulting work in most PHP companies. Unless you are
looking for a very short term employee, you will have to pay a lot more
than $75 to hire a good PHP professional.


> Thank you very much for all you're help and sorry you couldn't bleed
> some money out of me on this occasion - perhaps you'll manage with
> you're next spam to the list.

Personally I regret that you need to be hostile and rude when I was
legitimately trying to help you. I do not recall ever seeing you here.
You seem to act as if I hurt you in someway in the past. If I ever did
that, I sincerely apologise.

Anyway, I just think you probably are misunderstanding my work. I hope
it does not upset you that I carry on working on projects that I believe
to benefit the PHP developers in general.


--

Regards,
Manuel Lemos

Find and post PHP jobs
http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/

PHP Classes - Free ready to use OOP components written in PHP
http://www.phpclasses.org/

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To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php

Re: UK Project Opportunity

Manuel Lemos wrote:
> Hello,
>
> on 02/16/2010 08:02 PM Nathan Rixham said the following:
>>>> I need to find a skilled PHP dev, UK based, with long term availability,
>>>> in the short term to join me on a project and ultimately be prepared to
>>>> take over the project and "own" it. Remote contract work w/ occasional
>>>> meetings on site.
>>> You may want to try searching PHP professionals with the specific skills
>>> you need here:
>>>
>>> http://www.phpclasses.org/professionals/country/uk/
>>>
>>> Or you may want to try to post a job here:
>>>
>>> http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/
>>>
>> Manuel,
>>
>> I'm sure there are some very talented people on your site (and in the
>> community) - one slight problem though, I won't use you're website under
>> any circumstance (been there, done that).
>>
>> You make every interaction with your site a horrible, painful
>> interaction that is purely there to get as many adverts as you can in
>> front of people, so that you can bleed every cent possible from the hard
>> work and effort of PHP developers and innocent users. In short, you take
>> advantage of your users, members and the PHP community - I've never seen
>> such a bold and ongoing attempt to profit on the hard work and good will
>> of PHP developers, ever, period.
>
> There seems to be a misunderstanding here.
>
> The PHPClasses.org site was created by me in 1999 with the purpose of
> making it easy to distribute my PHP classes so others could test them
> and send bug reports and suggestions.
>
> Then I thought it would be nice to let others also share their code
> there to do the same, if they want of course. Back then, there was no
> advertising or any sort of monetization of the site.
>
> Meanwhile the site has grown a lot. Now it has over 850.000 registered
> users. Initially it could run on a shared hosting, but since many years
> ago it needs dedicated servers. Hiring dedicated servers costs good
> money as you know.
>
> In 2002 I had to choose, either to dedicate to the site full time to
> moderate the new site content and develop the features that it needed to
> better serve the PHP developers, or shut the site down for good because
> I would not have the time to take a day job and maintain the site at the
> same time.
>
>
> I took the chance and decided to work on the site full time. But I had
> to find some way to make it generate revenue, basically turn it into a
> full time business.
>
> My first option was to provide a package of premium services for a small
> subscription fee. I placed a survey asking the users about services they
> could be willing to pay.
>
> http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/10-Paid-site-services-su rvey.html
>
> That was a good idea but it would take me a lot of time to develop the
> planned services. So the alternative option that was available was to
> put advertising.
>
> I do not like advertising because it slows down page loading and
> distracts users from the real content. But over the time, if it was not
> for advertising the site would have been shut down a long time ago.
>
> After a lot of time and development effort, in 2007 I finally was able
> to launch the planned premium services.
>
> http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/68-Launched-premium-serv ices-for-PHP-developers.html
>
> Premium services help in generating nice revenue, but honestly it is not
> a big deal. Not only I have to keep the advertising, I also need to seek
> other sources of revenue.
>
> To continue to make the site useful for PHP developers, I decided to
> develop a dedicated job board for PHP professionals that was launched in
> 2008.
>
> http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/79-New-PHP-dedicated-job -site.html
>
> As you may figure by now, the site requires continuous development to
> address the user needs. For instance, some site users complained about
> the site design.
>
> In 2008 I started developing a system that would let designers propose
> new designs and users try the designs in different pages. When the
> system was finished in late 2009, a contest was launched.
>
> The winning design won a USD $3.000 money prize (and a big elePHPant).
> The new design will replace the current in a few days, once we make a
> few adjustments. The money prize comes mostly from the revenue of
> premium subscriptions.
>
> I am sorry if you feel that what I have done and will continue doing is
> a bad thing and I am just taking advantage of the site users.
>
> I suppose you do not work for free. So you cannot expect me to work for
> free as well, as we all have families and have to put food on the table.
> There are no miracles.
>
> If what I did with PHPClasses.org is bad, my alternative is to close the
> site because I cannot work on the site and have a day job at the same time.
>
>
>> And then, you have the good thought to come on here and SPAM the hell
>> out of your site at every opportunity.
>
> What you call spam, I call word of mouth. You have expressed a need. I
> know of a resource that can help you solve you problem, so I told you
> about it. If telling about something that could solve your problem is
> spam, I am apologise for trying to help you.
>
>
>> ps: clicked the two links
>>
>> http://www.phpclasses.org/professionals/country/uk/
>> All I can see at this one is a list of "O.... ....." which isn't much
>> good to me or the developer that's supposed to represent - and surprise
>> surprise to view any of there information I have to register, sign up
>> and buy a premium subscription - so no, no information there that was
>> off use at all in any way.
>
> That is not accurate. There are premium subscribers and non-premium
> subscribers. If you are a premium subscriber you can have full access to
> the contact details of all listed professionals. If you are not a
> premium subscriber, you can only be contacted by employers that are also
> premium subscribers.
>
> You do not necessarily have to pay to become a premium subscriber. For
> instance all nominees of the innovation award get a free life time
> premium subscription. That is one of the ways the site compensates users
> that submit innovative classes that you probably not find elsewhere.
>
> http://www.phpclasses.org/award/innovation/
>
> http://www.phpclasses.org/winners/
>
> Anyway, premium subscriptions are inexpensive. They just cost USD
> $5/month (minimum 3 months) or less ($4/month if paid annually).
>
> You also get other benefits besides having full access to whole PHP
> professionals listed in the site. You can check it out here if you want
> to know about other benefits.
>
> http://www.phpclasses.org/premium/
>
>
>> http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/
>> And here I can pay $75, $60 or "Very delayed - Job announcements that
>> are notified first only to featured professionals, and then much later
>> to all other users after 23 days for only 7 days." - think I'll give
>> that one a miss.
>
> I am not sure what you are complaining. Posting jobs in many well known
> sites that are not even focused in PHP, costs many hundreds of dollars.
>
> Even if you consider the PHPClasses.org too expensive, it still lets you
> can post your job for free. In that case, all the premium subscribers
> get access to the jobs much earlier, and everybody else gets access to
> the job for free during the last 7 days of the 30 during which the job
> is exposed.
>
> Anyway, I find $75 very inexpensive, especially when compared to what
> most companies are willing to pay as salaries. $75 is just a few hours
> of paid PHP consulting work in most PHP companies. Unless you are
> looking for a very short term employee, you will have to pay a lot more
> than $75 to hire a good PHP professional.
>
>
>> Thank you very much for all you're help and sorry you couldn't bleed
>> some money out of me on this occasion - perhaps you'll manage with
>> you're next spam to the list.
>
> Personally I regret that you need to be hostile and rude when I was
> legitimately trying to help you. I do not recall ever seeing you here.
> You seem to act as if I hurt you in someway in the past. If I ever did
> that, I sincerely apologise.
>
> Anyway, I just think you probably are misunderstanding my work. I hope
> it does not upset you that I carry on working on projects that I believe
> to benefit the PHP developers in general.
>
>

I'm unsure now TBH

1/2 of me is reading your response and thinking; sure sounds fair;

the other half me is thinking "if I took all your opensource work (and
other peoples) then wrapped it up in a site filled with adverts, then
piggy backed on paid services like job postings and premium members etc
to it - so that I could make a living; would that be a good thing to do
/ would it be "cool"? then counter thought of if those people
contributed the code.

in all honesty the following are the sticking point that make it hard
for me to decide if I was right in my earlier response:

1: that the "sign up to get the class" is even part of the equation
2: that developer listings are visible to premium only peopl
3: that users can't delete an account
4: the amount of adverts

Certain things like having paid Job postings on there
are fair enough and I'll remove from the equation; just the 4 things
above that I can't decided over.

Maybe I am misunderstanding, perhaps I was a bit harsh - I would be
interested to know if it is a "full time job"; obviously we can't have
you working for nothing whilst you're family suffers.

It bothered me that I may have flamed you for no reason, so I took
council from a few people - one said I was definitely right to do so;
one wasn't sure after your response; and the other said "opensource
people shouldn't play that game" (ie monetize / pull a salary from
contributed work). I'm wondering why it is that people are unsure about
your website, yet see sourceforge and github etc with there adverts as okay.

Regards,

Nathan

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

--=-wmKqjjMEuctpoqeiILPd
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

On Wed, 2010-02-17 at 00:29 +0000, Nathan Rixham wrote:

> Manuel Lemos wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > on 02/16/2010 08:02 PM Nathan Rixham said the following:
> >>>> I need to find a skilled PHP dev, UK based, with long term availability,
> >>>> in the short term to join me on a project and ultimately be prepared to
> >>>> take over the project and "own" it. Remote contract work w/ occasional
> >>>> meetings on site.
> >>> You may want to try searching PHP professionals with the specific skills
> >>> you need here:
> >>>
> >>> http://www.phpclasses.org/professionals/country/uk/
> >>>
> >>> Or you may want to try to post a job here:
> >>>
> >>> http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/
> >>>
> >> Manuel,
> >>
> >> I'm sure there are some very talented people on your site (and in the
> >> community) - one slight problem though, I won't use you're website under
> >> any circumstance (been there, done that).
> >>
> >> You make every interaction with your site a horrible, painful
> >> interaction that is purely there to get as many adverts as you can in
> >> front of people, so that you can bleed every cent possible from the hard
> >> work and effort of PHP developers and innocent users. In short, you take
> >> advantage of your users, members and the PHP community - I've never seen
> >> such a bold and ongoing attempt to profit on the hard work and good will
> >> of PHP developers, ever, period.
> >
> > There seems to be a misunderstanding here.
> >
> > The PHPClasses.org site was created by me in 1999 with the purpose of
> > making it easy to distribute my PHP classes so others could test them
> > and send bug reports and suggestions.
> >
> > Then I thought it would be nice to let others also share their code
> > there to do the same, if they want of course. Back then, there was no
> > advertising or any sort of monetization of the site.
> >
> > Meanwhile the site has grown a lot. Now it has over 850.000 registered
> > users. Initially it could run on a shared hosting, but since many years
> > ago it needs dedicated servers. Hiring dedicated servers costs good
> > money as you know.
> >
> > In 2002 I had to choose, either to dedicate to the site full time to
> > moderate the new site content and develop the features that it needed to
> > better serve the PHP developers, or shut the site down for good because
> > I would not have the time to take a day job and maintain the site at the
> > same time.
> >
> >
> > I took the chance and decided to work on the site full time. But I had
> > to find some way to make it generate revenue, basically turn it into a
> > full time business.
> >
> > My first option was to provide a package of premium services for a small
> > subscription fee. I placed a survey asking the users about services they
> > could be willing to pay.
> >
> > http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/10-Paid-site-services-su rvey.html
> >
> > That was a good idea but it would take me a lot of time to develop the
> > planned services. So the alternative option that was available was to
> > put advertising.
> >
> > I do not like advertising because it slows down page loading and
> > distracts users from the real content. But over the time, if it was not
> > for advertising the site would have been shut down a long time ago.
> >
> > After a lot of time and development effort, in 2007 I finally was able
> > to launch the planned premium services.
> >
> > http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/68-Launched-premium-serv ices-for-PHP-developers.html
> >
> > Premium services help in generating nice revenue, but honestly it is not
> > a big deal. Not only I have to keep the advertising, I also need to seek
> > other sources of revenue.
> >
> > To continue to make the site useful for PHP developers, I decided to
> > develop a dedicated job board for PHP professionals that was launched in
> > 2008.
> >
> > http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/79-New-PHP-dedicated-job -site.html
> >
> > As you may figure by now, the site requires continuous development to
> > address the user needs. For instance, some site users complained about
> > the site design.
> >
> > In 2008 I started developing a system that would let designers propose
> > new designs and users try the designs in different pages. When the
> > system was finished in late 2009, a contest was launched.
> >
> > The winning design won a USD $3.000 money prize (and a big elePHPant).
> > The new design will replace the current in a few days, once we make a
> > few adjustments. The money prize comes mostly from the revenue of
> > premium subscriptions.
> >
> > I am sorry if you feel that what I have done and will continue doing is
> > a bad thing and I am just taking advantage of the site users.
> >
> > I suppose you do not work for free. So you cannot expect me to work for
> > free as well, as we all have families and have to put food on the table.
> > There are no miracles.
> >
> > If what I did with PHPClasses.org is bad, my alternative is to close the
> > site because I cannot work on the site and have a day job at the same time.
> >
> >
> >> And then, you have the good thought to come on here and SPAM the hell
> >> out of your site at every opportunity.
> >
> > What you call spam, I call word of mouth. You have expressed a need. I
> > know of a resource that can help you solve you problem, so I told you
> > about it. If telling about something that could solve your problem is
> > spam, I am apologise for trying to help you.
> >
> >
> >> ps: clicked the two links
> >>
> >> http://www.phpclasses.org/professionals/country/uk/
> >> All I can see at this one is a list of "O.... ....." which isn't much
> >> good to me or the developer that's supposed to represent - and surprise
> >> surprise to view any of there information I have to register, sign up
> >> and buy a premium subscription - so no, no information there that was
> >> off use at all in any way.
> >
> > That is not accurate. There are premium subscribers and non-premium
> > subscribers. If you are a premium subscriber you can have full access to
> > the contact details of all listed professionals. If you are not a
> > premium subscriber, you can only be contacted by employers that are also
> > premium subscribers.
> >
> > You do not necessarily have to pay to become a premium subscriber. For
> > instance all nominees of the innovation award get a free life time
> > premium subscription. That is one of the ways the site compensates users
> > that submit innovative classes that you probably not find elsewhere.
> >
> > http://www.phpclasses.org/award/innovation/
> >
> > http://www.phpclasses.org/winners/
> >
> > Anyway, premium subscriptions are inexpensive. They just cost USD
> > $5/month (minimum 3 months) or less ($4/month if paid annually).
> >
> > You also get other benefits besides having full access to whole PHP
> > professionals listed in the site. You can check it out here if you want
> > to know about other benefits.
> >
> > http://www.phpclasses.org/premium/
> >
> >
> >> http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/
> >> And here I can pay $75, $60 or "Very delayed - Job announcements that
> >> are notified first only to featured professionals, and then much later
> >> to all other users after 23 days for only 7 days." - think I'll give
> >> that one a miss.
> >
> > I am not sure what you are complaining. Posting jobs in many well known
> > sites that are not even focused in PHP, costs many hundreds of dollars.
> >
> > Even if you consider the PHPClasses.org too expensive, it still lets you
> > can post your job for free. In that case, all the premium subscribers
> > get access to the jobs much earlier, and everybody else gets access to
> > the job for free during the last 7 days of the 30 during which the job
> > is exposed.
> >
> > Anyway, I find $75 very inexpensive, especially when compared to what
> > most companies are willing to pay as salaries. $75 is just a few hours
> > of paid PHP consulting work in most PHP companies. Unless you are
> > looking for a very short term employee, you will have to pay a lot more
> > than $75 to hire a good PHP professional.
> >
> >
> >> Thank you very much for all you're help and sorry you couldn't bleed
> >> some money out of me on this occasion - perhaps you'll manage with
> >> you're next spam to the list.
> >
> > Personally I regret that you need to be hostile and rude when I was
> > legitimately trying to help you. I do not recall ever seeing you here.
> > You seem to act as if I hurt you in someway in the past. If I ever did
> > that, I sincerely apologise.
> >
> > Anyway, I just think you probably are misunderstanding my work. I hope
> > it does not upset you that I carry on working on projects that I believe
> > to benefit the PHP developers in general.
> >
> >
>
> I'm unsure now TBH
>
> 1/2 of me is reading your response and thinking; sure sounds fair;
>
> the other half me is thinking "if I took all your opensource work (and
> other peoples) then wrapped it up in a site filled with adverts, then
> piggy backed on paid services like job postings and premium members etc
> to it - so that I could make a living; would that be a good thing to do
> / would it be "cool"? then counter thought of if those people
> contributed the code.
>
> in all honesty the following are the sticking point that make it hard
> for me to decide if I was right in my earlier response:
>
> 1: that the "sign up to get the class" is even part of the equation
> 2: that developer listings are visible to premium only peopl
> 3: that users can't delete an account
> 4: the amount of adverts
>
> Certain things like having paid Job postings on there
> are fair enough and I'll remove from the equation; just the 4 things
> above that I can't decided over.
>
> Maybe I am misunderstanding, perhaps I was a bit harsh - I would be
> interested to know if it is a "full time job"; obviously we can't have
> you working for nothing whilst you're family suffers.
>
> It bothered me that I may have flamed you for no reason, so I took
> council from a few people - one said I was definitely right to do so;
> one wasn't sure after your response; and the other said "opensource
> people shouldn't play that game" (ie monetize / pull a salary from
> contributed work). I'm wondering why it is that people are unsure about
> your website, yet see sourceforge and github etc with there adverts as okay.
>
> Regards,
>
> Nathan
>


I think the design probably doesn't lend itself to the best of
perceptions, but as Manuel explained, that is soon to change.

I myself do find the site confusing to navigate, which doesn't always
help when looking for a PHP class to fit in a project that's already
going to a tight deadline. I wasn't aware of the other parts of the
site, but I can understand a paid model for the job section, which
essentially makes it behave a little like an agency.

With charging for the open source items, that does seem a little
old-fashioned. What about allowing the contributors to offer up paid
support for their code, with the site taking a cut. Charging for the
support and documentation of an open-source system is a model that seems
quite popular in the open source world (look at a lot of Linux distros,
for example). You'll still have people being a bit tight and not wanting
to pay, but there will be more people (I think) that would want to pay
for the documentation if it was reasonably priced.

In fact, a system like that could possibly improve the state of
documentation for some systems.

Thanks,
Ash
http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk



--=-wmKqjjMEuctpoqeiILPd--

Re: UK Project Opportunity

Hello,

on 02/16/2010 10:29 PM Nathan Rixham said the following:
>>> Thank you very much for all you're help and sorry you couldn't bleed
>>> some money out of me on this occasion - perhaps you'll manage with
>>> you're next spam to the list.
>> Personally I regret that you need to be hostile and rude when I was
>> legitimately trying to help you. I do not recall ever seeing you here.
>> You seem to act as if I hurt you in someway in the past. If I ever did
>> that, I sincerely apologise.
>>
>> Anyway, I just think you probably are misunderstanding my work. I hope
>> it does not upset you that I carry on working on projects that I believe
>> to benefit the PHP developers in general.
>>
>>
>
> I'm unsure now TBH
>
> 1/2 of me is reading your response and thinking; sure sounds fair;
>
> the other half me is thinking "if I took all your opensource work (and
> other peoples) then wrapped it up in a site filled with adverts, then
> piggy backed on paid services like job postings and premium members etc
> to it - so that I could make a living; would that be a good thing to do
> / would it be "cool"? then counter thought of if those people
> contributed the code.

There seems to be a small detail that may have escaped you. I do not
take anybody opensource. The authors voluntarily submit their work to
the site.

I am not abusing from anybody's work without permission because the
authors submitted it to the PHPClasses.org because they wanted to.


> in all honesty the following are the sticking point that make it hard
> for me to decide if I was right in my earlier response:
>
> 1: that the "sign up to get the class" is even part of the equation

This is another misunderstanding. The site does not make anybody
register to download any package. That is an option determined by each
author.

That is explained in the site FAQ and other places, but some people
still misunderstand it and assume that it is an evil imposition of the site.

http://www.phpclasses.org/faq/#register-to-download

It may not be obvious, but the truth is that this detail is one of the
reasons for the success of the site.


> 2: that developer listings are visible to premium only peopl

Also, if you are a premium subscriber, everybody can contact you if you
want to provide paid services.

Of course, as aI mentioned, if you are a great contributor that sent
innovative packages, you get your premium subscription for free.


> 3: that users can't delete an account

That is explained in the FAQ. The site does not allow users to recreate
accounts with the same address or access name. If you really delete an
account, you have no way to prevent that an user recreates an account
with the same access name and e-mail address. That would be a hole for
malicious users to cheat on several types of rankings and contests that
the site organizes.

http://www.phpclasses.org/faq/#delete-account

Other than that, most sites out there never really delete accounts. Some
claim they do, but then you try to create an account with the same
credentials and the site says the account still exists. I would rather
tell users the truth.


> 4: the amount of adverts

I wish it was viable to remove all the ads. That would mean that the
site could succeed on revenue from other services. Advertising was plan
B. I still hope someday I can take all ads down. Meanwhile, premium
subscribers have all ads removed from the site. In some cases, they see
other valuable information in the place of the ads.


> Certain things like having paid Job postings on there
> are fair enough and I'll remove from the equation; just the 4 things
> above that I can't decided over.
>
> Maybe I am misunderstanding, perhaps I was a bit harsh - I would be
> interested to know if it is a "full time job"; obviously we can't have
> you working for nothing whilst you're family suffers.

> It bothered me that I may have flamed you for no reason, so I took
> council from a few people - one said I was definitely right to do so;
> one wasn't sure after your response; and the other said "opensource
> people shouldn't play that game" (ie monetize / pull a salary from
> contributed work). I'm wondering why it is that people are unsure about
> your website, yet see sourceforge and github etc with there adverts as okay.

Nowadays it is not that dramatic. That was more a problem after the
dotcom bubble in 2001 when there were no alternatives to monetize a
content site. The site was at a greater risk of closing.

Nowadays I am just happy that I work for myself on a project that I have
chosen to dedicate full time. It is just not a matter of money, although
more money helps investing on things like the design contest that
allowed paying the best user chosen design for the site.

There are much more things upcoming. Most of the things are based on
suggestions from users because that is the way to make this a more
satisfactory project for everybody.

But I have to manage this as any real business to keep it viable.

Most people that use the site do it to some how make money for
themselves, being that using code or solutions found on the site to
develop paid projects for clients, find developers to work on their
projects, etc..

The site charges for some services, but I believe it charges reasonable
amounts for the benefits it provides and the paying users will make much
more using such benefits.

--

Regards,
Manuel Lemos

Find and post PHP jobs
http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/

PHP Classes - Free ready to use OOP components written in PHP
http://www.phpclasses.org/

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

Hello,

on 02/16/2010 10:54 PM Ashley Sheridan said the following:
> I myself do find the site confusing to navigate, which doesn't always
> help when looking for a PHP class to fit in a project that's already

That is a bit vague as you do not mention explicitly what is confusing.
Sometimes I read comments like yours and do not have a clear idea of
what people find so confusing. Maybe it helps if you can be more explicit.

Anyway, I don't know if you have accessed the site lately, but a few
months ago the site made available the internal site search engine to
every user, which before that was only available to premium users.

Until them regular users would see a co-branded version of the Google
site search. That was not good for searching a site with many sections,
as results of different site sections would appear totally mixed.

The internal site search provides a better solution because it splits
results into tabs: packages, reviews, blogs, forums, videos, etc..

http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/105-Improved-site-search -for-every-user.html


> With charging for the open source items, that does seem a little
> old-fashioned. What about allowing the contributors to offer up paid
> support for their code, with the site taking a cut. Charging for the
> support and documentation of an open-source system is a model that seems
> quite popular in the open source world (look at a lot of Linux distros,
> for example). You'll still have people being a bit tight and not wanting
> to pay, but there will be more people (I think) that would want to pay
> for the documentation if it was reasonably priced.
>
> In fact, a system like that could possibly improve the state of
> documentation for some systems.

The question is whether that would provide enough revenue to justify an
investment in developing something like that?

Anyway, there is already a PHP specialists forum. It is forum that you
may go and ask tough questions about PHP development and related subjects.

http://www.phpclasses.org/discuss/topic/specialists/forum/ge neral/

All questions are answered by either me or any premium subscriber. The
advantage for premium subscribers is that they can expose their contacts
in case you want to hire them to provide paid consultancy.

Many premium subscribers are actually winners or nominees of the
innovation award, so often they are developers above the average. So,
they often provide very good answers and also get private requests to
provide paid work.

Despite, PHP specialists forum is restricted and you can only see the
responses if you are a premium subscriber, if you are a regular user of
the site you can post a question there for free. If you have a though
problem to solve, you may try it now for free in the address above.


--

Regards,
Manuel Lemos

Find and post PHP jobs
http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/

PHP Classes - Free ready to use OOP components written in PHP
http://www.phpclasses.org/

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Re: UK Project Opportunity

Manuel Lemos wrote:
> Hello,
>
> on 02/16/2010 10:29 PM Nathan Rixham said the following:
>>>> Thank you very much for all you're help and sorry you couldn't bleed
>>>> some money out of me on this occasion - perhaps you'll manage with
>>>> you're next spam to the list.
>>> Personally I regret that you need to be hostile and rude when I was
>>> legitimately trying to help you. I do not recall ever seeing you here.
>>> You seem to act as if I hurt you in someway in the past. If I ever did
>>> that, I sincerely apologise.
>>>
>>> Anyway, I just think you probably are misunderstanding my work. I hope
>>> it does not upset you that I carry on working on projects that I believe
>>> to benefit the PHP developers in general.
>>>
>>>
>> I'm unsure now TBH
>>
>> 1/2 of me is reading your response and thinking; sure sounds fair;
>>
>> the other half me is thinking "if I took all your opensource work (and
>> other peoples) then wrapped it up in a site filled with adverts, then
>> piggy backed on paid services like job postings and premium members etc
>> to it - so that I could make a living; would that be a good thing to do
>> / would it be "cool"? then counter thought of if those people
>> contributed the code.
>
> There seems to be a small detail that may have escaped you. I do not
> take anybody opensource. The authors voluntarily submit their work to
> the site.

hence why I said: "if those people contributed the code." - I'm thinking
about it from both angles - just to clarify, all your content is
contributed willingly by authors, and I'm in no way suggesting it isn't
- rather I was contemplating the business model in both scenarios.

> I am not abusing from anybody's work without permission because the
> authors submitted it to the PHPClasses.org because they wanted to.

fully concurred and glad that's cleared up!

>> in all honesty the following are the sticking point that make it hard
>> for me to decide if I was right in my earlier response:
>>
>> 1: that the "sign up to get the class" is even part of the equation
>
> This is another misunderstanding. The site does not make anybody
> register to download any package. That is an option determined by each
> author.
>
> That is explained in the site FAQ and other places, but some people
> still misunderstand it and assume that it is an evil imposition of the site.
>
> http://www.phpclasses.org/faq/#register-to-download
>
> It may not be obvious, but the truth is that this detail is one of the
> reasons for the success of the site.

again, hence why I said "part of the equation"; it is can be switched on
and off by the author on a per file basis, but to me it would make more
sense to leave the decision of signing up to the user, and not try and
influence it in anyway - personally I would remove the optional part of
it and simply do what other sites do; present the user with two choices
"register and download" or "download without registering".

A similar topic of opt-in vs opt-out on emails is often discussed;
however I believe it has to be "opt-in" now, within the UK certainly.

>> 2: that developer listings are visible to premium only peopl
>
> Also, if you are a premium subscriber, everybody can contact you if you
> want to provide paid services.
>
> Of course, as aI mentioned, if you are a great contributor that sent
> innovative packages, you get your premium subscription for free.

.... I see no discussion here; personally (as a user, and an author) I
find that a little off-putting; but as you mentioned it is a business,
and thus a business decision (as is all of this I guess!).

>> 3: that users can't delete an account
>
> That is explained in the FAQ. The site does not allow users to recreate
> accounts with the same address or access name. If you really delete an
> account, you have no way to prevent that an user recreates an account
> with the same access name and e-mail address. That would be a hole for
> malicious users to cheat on several types of rankings and contests that
> the site organizes.
>
> http://www.phpclasses.org/faq/#delete-account
>
> Other than that, most sites out there never really delete accounts. Some
> claim they do, but then you try to create an account with the same
> credentials and the site says the account still exists. I would rather
> tell users the truth.

I've read it quite a few times, and as a developer I know very well that
you could delete the account and prevent the address from being re-used
very easily with little code; the ethics of making somebody remove each
tiny bot of info and file from your site in order to manually remove
themselves is a bit.. debatable to me - again, personally I'd do it the
same way as everybody else, giving the user the option of whether to
make the username and email address available to be re-registered. I
strongly feel all these kind of choices should be in the hands of the
user, and not the company.

>
>> 4: the amount of adverts
>
> I wish it was viable to remove all the ads. That would mean that the
> site could succeed on revenue from other services. Advertising was plan
> B. I still hope someday I can take all ads down. Meanwhile, premium
> subscribers have all ads removed from the site. In some cases, they see
> other valuable information in the place of the ads.

the amount; not suggesting you remove adverts all together, it's the
currency of the web!

>> Certain things like having paid Job postings on there
>> are fair enough and I'll remove from the equation; just the 4 things
>> above that I can't decided over.
>>
>> Maybe I am misunderstanding, perhaps I was a bit harsh - I would be
>> interested to know if it is a "full time job"; obviously we can't have
>> you working for nothing whilst you're family suffers.
>
>> It bothered me that I may have flamed you for no reason, so I took
>> council from a few people - one said I was definitely right to do so;
>> one wasn't sure after your response; and the other said "opensource
>> people shouldn't play that game" (ie monetize / pull a salary from
>> contributed work). I'm wondering why it is that people are unsure about
>> your website, yet see sourceforge and github etc with there adverts as okay.
>
> Nowadays it is not that dramatic. That was more a problem after the
> dotcom bubble in 2001 when there were no alternatives to monetize a
> content site. The site was at a greater risk of closing.
>
> Nowadays I am just happy that I work for myself on a project that I have
> chosen to dedicate full time. It is just not a matter of money, although
> more money helps investing on things like the design contest that
> allowed paying the best user chosen design for the site.
>
> There are much more things upcoming. Most of the things are based on
> suggestions from users because that is the way to make this a more
> satisfactory project for everybody.
>
> But I have to manage this as any real business to keep it viable.
>
> Most people that use the site do it to some how make money for
> themselves, being that using code or solutions found on the site to
> develop paid projects for clients, find developers to work on their
> projects, etc..
>
> The site charges for some services, but I believe it charges reasonable
> amounts for the benefits it provides and the paying users will make much
> more using such benefits.
>

I do hope it all goes well for you and the community, and that the right
choices are made - when in doublt just look at the big guys like
sourceforge, github etc and see how they do it - the better your service
and easier it is for users, the more chance you get of full donated
hosting and investments - I guess a good measure will be when you have
several of the big PHP projects / libraries on there.

regards,

nathan

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 10:02:09PM +0000, Nathan Rixham wrote:

> Manuel Lemos wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > on 02/15/2010 11:37 AM Nathan Rixham said the following:
> >> I need to find a skilled PHP dev, UK based, with long term availability,
> >> in the short term to join me on a project and ultimately be prepared to
> >> take over the project and "own" it. Remote contract work w/ occasional
> >> meetings on site.
> >
> > You may want to try searching PHP professionals with the specific skills
> > you need here:
> >
> > http://www.phpclasses.org/professionals/country/uk/
> >
> > Or you may want to try to post a job here:
> >
> > http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/
> >
>
> Manuel,
>
> I'm sure there are some very talented people on your site (and in the
> community) - one slight problem though, I won't use you're website under
> any circumstance (been there, done that).
>
> You make every interaction with your site a horrible, painful
> interaction that is purely there to get as many adverts as you can in
> front of people, so that you can bleed every cent possible from the hard
> work and effort of PHP developers and innocent users. In short, you take
> advantage of your users, members and the PHP community - I've never seen
> such a bold and ongoing attempt to profit on the hard work and good will
> of PHP developers, ever, period.

I've given Manuel a hard time in the past about his site design. But
we'll see what his new design is, when it shows up.

As for Manuel profiting from the whole thing, I don't see another
busines model working. Source Forge has a similar business model. And
nearly every other Linux publication "profits" from the work of FOSS
developers. The only other popular business model on the FOSS world is a
support-based model, which works for companies with a single product or
a small stable of products. It wouldn't work for phpclasses.org.

Having to register to download classes from phpclasses.org is a
nuisance. Manuel says this is up to the individual developer. This may
be technically true, but Manuel *offers* this as an option. Contrast
Source Forge, which performs a similar function but does not require any
registration to download anything. I imagine that the registration
allows Manuel to tightly monitor site usage in a variety of ways.

But I don't know of another, better, resource for PHP code written by
random developers anywhere. I'm willing to give his site a plug when
someone can't find a class they need. If I had worthy classes, I'd
upload them there myself. I can't really blame Manuel for promoting the
site. It's his job.

As for the jobs and other aspects of the site, I can't say. I don't use
them.

Paul

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

Yeez eh, some of you people here are truely ungrateful for serious
effort spent to save you time.

While i've never found a use for any of the code on phpclasses.org,
and i also would've chosen a slightly different pay-server-rent-model
for the jobs subsection, i can't help but notice the author of
phpclasses must've put in quite a bit of time to organize a specialist
meetingplace.

You really really shouldn't flame a person for trying to make a small
living while at the same time still giving away quite a bit of
timesaving products for free.

Instead you people bitch about "too many ads", and "you practically
force me to pay for something".
If you don't like the ads, ignore 'm! And still click on a few and
let'm sit in tabs for a few seconds. It's the very-fucking-least you
can do for the time you're saved.

And if you have a complaint-and-tip-for-change about somebody's
business model, you'll find that framing such a change in neutral /
positive lanugage is far likelier to be considered at all.

I have also put out 3 opensource products, paid hosting cost for it
even for a while, and have never used ads to support 'm.
But you know what? Out of thousands of downloads, i never got even a
single short "thanks" message back.
I must've saved at least some people quite a bit of time and mental
energy, and possibly decreased their schedule pressure at the same
time.
But a "thank you" over email is too much effort for them apparently.

Open-source users are often very haughty and insist on
everything-must-be-free, but those are often also the vast majority
who don't put out free work of their own.
They want to get paid good money for the conglomerate products they
create, yet pay preferably NOTHING for the components they base that
on.
If these people weren't so dispicable, it'd be funny.

I would not be surprised to see open-source releasers (like myself)
quit putting out free wares all together. Afterall, being paid with
public flames instead of even-short-thank-yous and the occasional
click on-my-ads, will cause any human to think "why would i want to
offer that thing for free at all?"



- putting ads on his site, even lots of them

> I'm sure there are some very talented people on your site (and in the
> community) - one slight problem though, I won't use you're website under
> any circumstance (been there, done that).
>
> You make every interaction with your site a horrible, painful
> interaction that is purely there to get as many adverts as you can in
> front of people, so that you can bleed every cent possible from the hard
> work and effort of PHP developers and innocent users. In short, you take
> advantage of your users, members and the PHP community - I've never seen
> such a bold and ongoing attempt to profit on the hard work and good will
> of PHP developers, ever, period.
>
> And then, you have the good thought to come on here and SPAM the hell
> out of your site at every opportunity.
>

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

Hello,

on 02/17/2010 01:06 AM Paul M Foster said the following:
> I've given Manuel a hard time in the past about his site design. But
> we'll see what his new design is, when it shows up.

Actually, there was a contest and the users have chosen the winning
design, not me. That was the way to assure the majority of the users
that care would be satisfied.

The winning designing is viewable here but since the author is still
making some changes to fix some issues on pages that were not tested
during the contest, it may not be viewable all the times.

http://www.phpclasses.org/design/turn/2/theme/igd01.html

If you cannot see it yet, the author left a preview on their site:

http://www.intergraphicdesigns.com/clients/phpclasses/


> As for Manuel profiting from the whole thing, I don't see another
> busines model working. Source Forge has a similar business model. And
> nearly every other Linux publication "profits" from the work of FOSS
> developers. The only other popular business model on the FOSS world is a
> support-based model, which works for companies with a single product or
> a small stable of products. It wouldn't work for phpclasses.org.

Right, because the site just distributes other people's code, not
support it directly.


> Having to register to download classes from phpclasses.org is a
> nuisance. Manuel says this is up to the individual developer. This may
> be technically true, but Manuel *offers* this as an option. Contrast
> Source Forge, which performs a similar function but does not require any
> registration to download anything. I imagine that the registration
> allows Manuel to tightly monitor site usage in a variety of ways.

Actually it is much more than that. If you download a package, the site
keeps track of that and next time the package is updated, it send you an
e-mail alert so you can get the latest version, unless you do not want
to be notified of course.

Also the site counts how many distinct users downloaded each package and
builds top download rankings . If you download a package more than once,
it only counts once, so the top download charts are accurate, making it
fair for everybody.

For users this may not be very important, but for authors it is very
motivating. Authors are happy that the site lets their users know about
updates of their classes. Authors also like to see the progress of their
packages in terms of users that have downloaded it.

The site also provide a blog for each package, so when the author wants
to post something new about the class or ask for feedback, a message is
sent to the users that downloaded the package.

There are other compelling reasons but this is basically why more than
2600 authors submitted over 5000 packages. The site gets them attention.

Other sites like Sourceforge cannot provide this level of attention
precisely because they do not require users to download even if the
authors wanted that.

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Manuel Lemos

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Re: UK Project Opportunity

Hello,

on 02/17/2010 12:34 AM Nathan Rixham said the following:
>>> in all honesty the following are the sticking point that make it hard
>>> for me to decide if I was right in my earlier response:
>>>
>>> 1: that the "sign up to get the class" is even part of the equation
>> This is another misunderstanding. The site does not make anybody
>> register to download any package. That is an option determined by each
>> author.
>>
>> That is explained in the site FAQ and other places, but some people
>> still misunderstand it and assume that it is an evil imposition of the site.
>>
>> http://www.phpclasses.org/faq/#register-to-download
>>
>> It may not be obvious, but the truth is that this detail is one of the
>> reasons for the success of the site.
>
> again, hence why I said "part of the equation"; it is can be switched on
> and off by the author on a per file basis, but to me it would make more
> sense to leave the decision of signing up to the user, and not try and
> influence it in anyway - personally I would remove the optional part of
> it and simply do what other sites do; present the user with two choices
> "register and download" or "download without registering".
>
> A similar topic of opt-in vs opt-out on emails is often discussed;
> however I believe it has to be "opt-in" now, within the UK certainly.

That is because you are only seeing it from the view point of the user.

People need to have motivation to do what they do. Authors only submit
their packages to PHPClasses site if they gain something from it. What
the site provides them is attention.

As I explained in another reply, if an author leaves the login
requirement enabled, the site can keep track of the users that
downloaded the packages. That can be used for sending alerts when a new
version of the package is released, or a new blog about the package is
posted.

The site can also build download charts that lets authors see their
progress in user interest and motivate them to continue to submit more
packages or update existing ones.

In the end everybody wins.


>>> 3: that users can't delete an account
>> That is explained in the FAQ. The site does not allow users to recreate
>> accounts with the same address or access name. If you really delete an
>> account, you have no way to prevent that an user recreates an account
>> with the same access name and e-mail address. That would be a hole for
>> malicious users to cheat on several types of rankings and contests that
>> the site organizes.
>>
>> http://www.phpclasses.org/faq/#delete-account
>>
>> Other than that, most sites out there never really delete accounts. Some
>> claim they do, but then you try to create an account with the same
>> credentials and the site says the account still exists. I would rather
>> tell users the truth.
>
> I've read it quite a few times, and as a developer I know very well that
> you could delete the account and prevent the address from being re-used
> very easily with little code; the ethics of making somebody remove each
> tiny bot of info and file from your site in order to manually remove
> themselves is a bit.. debatable to me - again, personally I'd do it the
> same way as everybody else, giving the user the option of whether to
> make the username and email address available to be re-registered. I
> strongly feel all these kind of choices should be in the hands of the
> user, and not the company.

The site sorts of give that option to the users by letting them know
that it does not remove accounts. Users that disagree, should just not
register.

It is like you go to some country and if for some reason you leave,
probably upset with something, you will not be able to erase the records
of your presence in that country.

This site is not really interested in your personal information. The
reason this site does not remove accounts is because it is used to
prevent several types of fraud. I am just not going to enter in much
detail here in public on what happens to not give ideas to cheaters that
may be reading this. I hope you understand.


>>> 4: the amount of adverts
>> I wish it was viable to remove all the ads. That would mean that the
>> site could succeed on revenue from other services. Advertising was plan
>> B. I still hope someday I can take all ads down. Meanwhile, premium
>> subscribers have all ads removed from the site. In some cases, they see
>> other valuable information in the place of the ads.
>
> the amount; not suggesting you remove adverts all together, it's the
> currency of the web!

Unfortunately I cannot reduce the current amount of ads. The site
already eliminated most types of pop-under ads because they are too
annoying for the users. That caused a significant ad revenue reduction.

Maybe if the number of premium subscriptions raises to a significant
level I can reduce or even eliminated all ads. While that does not
happen, I am afraid the current number of ads has to kept.


>> There are much more things upcoming. Most of the things are based on
>> suggestions from users because that is the way to make this a more
>> satisfactory project for everybody.
>>
>> But I have to manage this as any real business to keep it viable.
>>
>> Most people that use the site do it to some how make money for
>> themselves, being that using code or solutions found on the site to
>> develop paid projects for clients, find developers to work on their
>> projects, etc..
>>
>> The site charges for some services, but I believe it charges reasonable
>> amounts for the benefits it provides and the paying users will make much
>> more using such benefits.
>>
>
> I do hope it all goes well for you and the community, and that the right
> choices are made - when in doublt just look at the big guys like
> sourceforge, github etc and see how they do it - the better your service
> and easier it is for users, the more chance you get of full donated
> hosting and investments - I guess a good measure will be when you have
> several of the big PHP projects / libraries on there.

Well, those sites are not exactly for the same purpose. They are for
hosting the actual project development. The PHPClasses site is more for
distribution. Each type of site needs to find a business model that
adequates to the type of activity that goes one in the site.

--

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Manuel Lemos

Find and post PHP jobs
http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/

PHP Classes - Free ready to use OOP components written in PHP
http://www.phpclasses.org/

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

Paul M Foster wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 10:02:09PM +0000, Nathan Rixham wrote:
>
>> Manuel Lemos wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> on 02/15/2010 11:37 AM Nathan Rixham said the following:
>>>> I need to find a skilled PHP dev, UK based, with long term availability,
>>>> in the short term to join me on a project and ultimately be prepared to
>>>> take over the project and "own" it. Remote contract work w/ occasional
>>>> meetings on site.
>>> You may want to try searching PHP professionals with the specific skills
>>> you need here:
>>>
>>> http://www.phpclasses.org/professionals/country/uk/
>>>
>>> Or you may want to try to post a job here:
>>>
>>> http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/
>>>
>> Manuel,
>>
>> I'm sure there are some very talented people on your site (and in the
>> community) - one slight problem though, I won't use you're website under
>> any circumstance (been there, done that).
>>
>> You make every interaction with your site a horrible, painful
>> interaction that is purely there to get as many adverts as you can in
>> front of people, so that you can bleed every cent possible from the hard
>> work and effort of PHP developers and innocent users. In short, you take
>> advantage of your users, members and the PHP community - I've never seen
>> such a bold and ongoing attempt to profit on the hard work and good will
>> of PHP developers, ever, period.
>
> I've given Manuel a hard time in the past about his site design. But
> we'll see what his new design is, when it shows up.
>
> As for Manuel profiting from the whole thing, I don't see another
> busines model working. Source Forge has a similar business model. And
> nearly every other Linux publication "profits" from the work of FOSS
> developers. The only other popular business model on the FOSS world is a
> support-based model, which works for companies with a single product or
> a small stable of products. It wouldn't work for phpclasses.org.
>
> Having to register to download classes from phpclasses.org is a
> nuisance. Manuel says this is up to the individual developer. This may
> be technically true, but Manuel *offers* this as an option. Contrast
> Source Forge, which performs a similar function but does not require any
> registration to download anything. I imagine that the registration
> allows Manuel to tightly monitor site usage in a variety of ways.
>
> But I don't know of another, better, resource for PHP code written by
> random developers anywhere. I'm willing to give his site a plug when
> someone can't find a class they need. If I had worthy classes, I'd
> upload them there myself. I can't really blame Manuel for promoting the
> site. It's his job.
>
> As for the jobs and other aspects of the site, I can't say. I don't use
> them.
>
> Paul
>

I won't write a lengthy post, but I'll second some of what Paul has
said. phpclasses has been around for a while and has provided a
collection of quite a few very nice classes before there was really any
PHP framework to speak of. Manuel has authored most of them and many
other people have their own nice collection there. I haven't ever used
one of the classes, but I have downloaded several in the past that
performed functions that I wasn't very familiar with and used them as a
learning guide and inspiration for my own code.

I don't have a problem with the profits. People submit their code
because they want to, and well, ads are part of most sites now days, sf
included.

The only slightly negative thing that I can say is that I have never
seen a post by Manuel on this list actually contributing a solution,
recommendation or any type of help other than a link to phpclasses.

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 04:28:07AM +0100, Rene Veerman wrote:



>
> I have also put out 3 opensource products, paid hosting cost for it
> even for a while, and have never used ads to support 'm.
> But you know what? Out of thousands of downloads, i never got even a
> single short "thanks" message back.
> I must've saved at least some people quite a bit of time and mental
> energy, and possibly decreased their schedule pressure at the same
> time.
> But a "thank you" over email is too much effort for them apparently.

You know, I've noticed this too. I have a project on SourceForge, which
gets downloaded with some regularity. It's the kind of thing you
wouldn't download unless it specifically fit what you needed. I've had
three people submit patches, but beyond that, no one has ever emailed me
to say, "Gee thanks for the code. It really helped!"



> I would not be surprised to see open-source releasers (like myself)
> quit putting out free wares all together. Afterall, being paid with
> public flames instead of even-short-thank-yous and the occasional
> click on-my-ads, will cause any human to think "why would i want to
> offer that thing for free at all?"

I don't think this will ever happen. I don't submit public code in order
to receive accolades. If no one ever uses it or thanks me, that's okay.
It would be *nice* to receive some acknowledgement, but I'm too busy
writing code to worry about that much.

I will say this though: if you're on a list like this and someone
materially assists you with their advice, it would be a nice courtesy to
just write back and thank them. It also helps let others know that this
particular piece of advice actually was the key to solving the problem.

Paul

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

> I don't think this will ever happen. I don't submit public code in order
> to receive accolades. If no one ever uses it or thanks me, that's okay.
> It would be *nice* to receive some acknowledgement, but I'm too busy
> writing code to worry about that much.
>

yea, i don't particularly mind not-being-thanked, i take the
opensource from others that i use myself as thanks, but if it would
turn into public flaming because of some ads, i would be offended.

on the other hand, i have received off-list mail about other business
practices of phpclasses.org that i also would not have chosen myself,
because i disapprove of them.

but, it can be argued that for a person with a certain skillset and
skill levels, maintaining and marketing phpclasses.org is the work
related to opensourcing.
Not contributing a lot of work-code can then be forgiven, imo.

but if it turns out he's truely leeching on the work of others (by for
instance requiring authors to give him (near-)free exclusive rights or
something), then i'd have to switch sides, and say that authors need
to be warned of such practices. They should at least retain the full
rights to their work and be able to quickly and permanently remove
their work from a site like phpclasses.org, including the removal of
individual files.

it's been made clear to me that when it comes to his business
practices, the owner of phpclasses.org likes to stick to his own ideas
and descisions.

but hey, one can always start a competitor.
it shouldn't be that hard for the cluefull to create something
better-looking and easier-to-work-with, while still making a
finders-fee profit.

and if you're an author and don't like phpclasses.org, just use
something like sf.net or googlecode.

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 01:52:08AM -0200, Manuel Lemos wrote:

>
> The winning designing is viewable here but since the author is still
> making some changes to fix some issues on pages that were not tested
> during the contest, it may not be viewable all the times.
>
> http://www.phpclasses.org/design/turn/2/theme/igd01.html
>
> If you cannot see it yet, the author left a preview on their site:
>
> http://www.intergraphicdesigns.com/clients/phpclasses/

Muuuuch better.

Paul

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Re: UK Project Opportunity

Manuel Lemos wrote:
> Hello,
>
> on 02/17/2010 12:34 AM Nathan Rixham said the following:
>>>> in all honesty the following are the sticking point that make it hard
>>>> for me to decide if I was right in my earlier response:
>>>>
>>>> 1: that the "sign up to get the class" is even part of the equation
>>> This is another misunderstanding. The site does not make anybody
>>> register to download any package. That is an option determined by each
>>> author.
>>>
>>> That is explained in the site FAQ and other places, but some people
>>> still misunderstand it and assume that it is an evil imposition of the site.
>>>
>>> http://www.phpclasses.org/faq/#register-to-download
>>>
>>> It may not be obvious, but the truth is that this detail is one of the
>>> reasons for the success of the site.
>> again, hence why I said "part of the equation"; it is can be switched on
>> and off by the author on a per file basis, but to me it would make more
>> sense to leave the decision of signing up to the user, and not try and
>> influence it in anyway - personally I would remove the optional part of
>> it and simply do what other sites do; present the user with two choices
>> "register and download" or "download without registering".
>>
>> A similar topic of opt-in vs opt-out on emails is often discussed;
>> however I believe it has to be "opt-in" now, within the UK certainly.
>
> That is because you are only seeing it from the view point of the user.
>
> People need to have motivation to do what they do. Authors only submit
> their packages to PHPClasses site if they gain something from it. What
> the site provides them is attention.

I know - I'm an author ;) [or was, well still am, can't delete profile
so left some files up their for anybody who may find them useful] - and
as for attention, the last class I put on phpclasses was getting 5
downloads a week, and 1k+ a week on sourceforge.

> As I explained in another reply, if an author leaves the login
> requirement enabled, the site can keep track of the users that
> downloaded the packages. That can be used for sending alerts when a new
> version of the package is released, or a new blog about the package is
> posted.
>
> The site can also build download charts that lets authors see their
> progress in user interest and motivate them to continue to submit more
> packages or update existing ones.
>
> In the end everybody wins.

and it can do all this with the user being in control and choosing to
give that info.. as implemented on millions of other sites..

>>>> 3: that users can't delete an account
>>> That is explained in the FAQ. The site does not allow users to recreate
>>> accounts with the same address or access name. If you really delete an
>>> account, you have no way to prevent that an user recreates an account
>>> with the same access name and e-mail address. That would be a hole for
>>> malicious users to cheat on several types of rankings and contests that
>>> the site organizes.
>>>
>>> http://www.phpclasses.org/faq/#delete-account
>>>
>>> Other than that, most sites out there never really delete accounts. Some
>>> claim they do, but then you try to create an account with the same
>>> credentials and the site says the account still exists. I would rather
>>> tell users the truth.
>> I've read it quite a few times, and as a developer I know very well that
>> you could delete the account and prevent the address from being re-used
>> very easily with little code; the ethics of making somebody remove each
>> tiny bot of info and file from your site in order to manually remove
>> themselves is a bit.. debatable to me - again, personally I'd do it the
>> same way as everybody else, giving the user the option of whether to
>> make the username and email address available to be re-registered. I
>> strongly feel all these kind of choices should be in the hands of the
>> user, and not the company.
>
> The site sorts of give that option to the users by letting them know
> that it does not remove accounts. Users that disagree, should just not
> register.
>
> It is like you go to some country and if for some reason you leave,
> probably upset with something, you will not be able to erase the records
> of your presence in that country.
>
> This site is not really interested in your personal information. The
> reason this site does not remove accounts is because it is used to
> prevent several types of fraud. I am just not going to enter in much
> detail here in public on what happens to not give ideas to cheaters that
> may be reading this. I hope you understand.

as stated, you could just remove the public pages of said user and keep
the username + email taken; quite easily

>>>> 4: the amount of adverts
>>> I wish it was viable to remove all the ads. That would mean that the
>>> site could succeed on revenue from other services. Advertising was plan
>>> B. I still hope someday I can take all ads down. Meanwhile, premium
>>> subscribers have all ads removed from the site. In some cases, they see
>>> other valuable information in the place of the ads.
>> the amount; not suggesting you remove adverts all together, it's the
>> currency of the web!
>
> Unfortunately I cannot reduce the current amount of ads. The site
> already eliminated most types of pop-under ads because they are too
> annoying for the users. That caused a significant ad revenue reduction.
>
> Maybe if the number of premium subscriptions raises to a significant
> level I can reduce or even eliminated all ads. While that does not
> happen, I am afraid the current number of ads has to kept.

that's a business decision then I guess.

>>> There are much more things upcoming. Most of the things are based on
>>> suggestions from users because that is the way to make this a more
>>> satisfactory project for everybody.
>>>
>>> But I have to manage this as any real business to keep it viable.
>>>
>>> Most people that use the site do it to some how make money for
>>> themselves, being that using code or solutions found on the site to
>>> develop paid projects for clients, find developers to work on their
>>> projects, etc..
>>>
>>> The site charges for some services, but I believe it charges reasonable
>>> amounts for the benefits it provides and the paying users will make much
>>> more using such benefits.
>>>
>> I do hope it all goes well for you and the community, and that the right
>> choices are made - when in doublt just look at the big guys like
>> sourceforge, github etc and see how they do it - the better your service
>> and easier it is for users, the more chance you get of full donated
>> hosting and investments - I guess a good measure will be when you have
>> several of the big PHP projects / libraries on there.
>
> Well, those sites are not exactly for the same purpose. They are for
> hosting the actual project development. The PHPClasses site is more for
> distribution. Each type of site needs to find a business model that
> adequates to the type of activity that goes one in the site.
>

if you made the site more accessible; didn't lock in users, took off the
registration, cut down the ads (not remove), improved the templates,
promoted the developers by giving their details free and showing off
their fine work; hell why not even integrate with these fine project
hosting sites (that'll cut the bandwidth..) then maybe - just maybe
traffic would rise; people would enjoy the site more; use it more and in
turn the money maker which is the job ad's would get more exposure and
boost revenue for you.

you've got everything there to make a great community which would in
turn fund you and be a fine business - there are other ways to do
things. I know it's been 8 years but you can always change / tweak.

ultimately though, it is a business the focus has to be on making sure
the money comes in & that has to be priority #1 (?)

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 5:39 AM, Paul M Foster wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 01:52:08AM -0200, Manuel Lemos wrote:
>
>>
>> The winning designing is viewable here but since the author is still
>> making some changes to fix some issues on pages that were not tested
>> during the contest, it may not be viewable all the times.
>>
>> http://www.phpclasses.org/design/turn/2/theme/igd01.html
>>
>> If you cannot see it yet, the author left a preview on their site:
>>
>> http://www.intergraphicdesigns.com/clients/phpclasses/
>
> Muuuuch better.
>
> Paul

+1 !

And Manuel, you'd get more goodwill if you'd allow dowloading without
registration..

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

Hello,

on 02/17/2010 02:13 AM Shawn McKenzie said the following:
> PHP framework to speak of. Manuel has authored most of them and many

I suppose you meant that I authored many of the classes. I only
submitted about 30 out of more than 2600 classes available submitted to
the site. 30 may be many, but 1% is far from being most.


> The only slightly negative thing that I can say is that I have never
> seen a post by Manuel on this list actually contributing a solution,
> recommendation or any type of help other than a link to phpclasses.

This doesn't sound fair. If a developer has a problem and I have a class
that solves that problem, suggesting to use the class does not
contribute to the solution of the problem?

Still it is not accurate to say that I only post messages here to
suggest links to the site.

Even if it was true, keep in mind that I do not have all the time in the
world. I think it is still helpful when I find time to suggest solutions
even if they include using any of my classes or something else in the
PHPClasses site, unless you prefer that I do not even post any messages
here at all and do not bother trying helping anybody here in any way.

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Regards,
Manuel Lemos

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http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/

PHP Classes - Free ready to use OOP components written in PHP
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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

Rene Veerman wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 5:39 AM, Paul M Foster wrote:
>> On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 01:52:08AM -0200, Manuel Lemos wrote:
>>
>>> The winning designing is viewable here but since the author is still
>>> making some changes to fix some issues on pages that were not tested
>>> during the contest, it may not be viewable all the times.
>>>
>>> http://www.phpclasses.org/design/turn/2/theme/igd01.html
>>>
>>> If you cannot see it yet, the author left a preview on their site:
>>>
>>> http://www.intergraphicdesigns.com/clients/phpclasses/
>> Muuuuch better.
>>
>> Paul
>
> +1 !

+1

> And Manuel, you'd get more goodwill if you'd allow dowloading without
> registration..

+1

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

Manuel Lemos wrote:
> Hello,
>
> on 02/17/2010 02:13 AM Shawn McKenzie said the following:
>> PHP framework to speak of. Manuel has authored most of them and many
>
> I suppose you meant that I authored many of the classes. I only
> submitted about 30 out of more than 2600 classes available submitted to
> the site. 30 may be many, but 1% is far from being most.
>
>
>> The only slightly negative thing that I can say is that I have never
>> seen a post by Manuel on this list actually contributing a solution,
>> recommendation or any type of help other than a link to phpclasses.
>
> This doesn't sound fair. If a developer has a problem and I have a class
> that solves that problem, suggesting to use the class does not
> contribute to the solution of the problem?
>
> Still it is not accurate to say that I only post messages here to
> suggest links to the site.
>
> Even if it was true, keep in mind that I do not have all the time in the
> world. I think it is still helpful when I find time to suggest solutions
> even if they include using any of my classes or something else in the
> PHPClasses site, unless you prefer that I do not even post any messages
> here at all and do not bother trying helping anybody here in any way.
>

take the (pretty much forced) registration off the site and people will
mind a whole lot less ;)

you're getting a lot of good feedback here

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 05:38:36AM +0100, Rene Veerman wrote:



> but if it turns out he's truely leeching on the work of others (by for
> instance requiring authors to give him (near-)free exclusive rights or
> something), then i'd have to switch sides, and say that authors need
> to be warned of such practices. They should at least retain the full
> rights to their work and be able to quickly and permanently remove
> their work from a site like phpclasses.org, including the removal of
> individual files.

Yeah, I have a real beef with copyright-assignment, like what the GNU
Project insists upon. If I built a program, I get to keep the copyright
and determine the license.

I feel the opposite way about patches. If you submit a patch to my
sourceforge project, it's copyrighted by me. I don't make money off the
project and I don't want to fight with you later about the code. And if
I submit a patch to your project, you're free to do as you like with the
code and its copyright.

By the way, I am *not* saying Manuel does this. I'm just commenting on
Rene's post.

Paul

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

Paul M Foster wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 05:38:36AM +0100, Rene Veerman wrote:
>
>
>
>> but if it turns out he's truely leeching on the work of others (by for
>> instance requiring authors to give him (near-)free exclusive rights or
>> something), then i'd have to switch sides, and say that authors need
>> to be warned of such practices. They should at least retain the full
>> rights to their work and be able to quickly and permanently remove
>> their work from a site like phpclasses.org, including the removal of
>> individual files.
>
> Yeah, I have a real beef with copyright-assignment, like what the GNU
> Project insists upon. If I built a program, I get to keep the copyright
> and determine the license.
>
> I feel the opposite way about patches. If you submit a patch to my
> sourceforge project, it's copyrighted by me. I don't make money off the
> project and I don't want to fight with you later about the code. And if
> I submit a patch to your project, you're free to do as you like with the
> code and its copyright.
>
> By the way, I am *not* saying Manuel does this. I'm just commenting on
> Rene's post.
>

snap - afaik he doesn't do this

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

Manuel Lemos wrote:
> Hello,
>
> on 02/17/2010 02:13 AM Shawn McKenzie said the following:
>> PHP framework to speak of. Manuel has authored most of them and many
>
> I suppose you meant that I authored many of the classes. I only
> submitted about 30 out of more than 2600 classes available submitted to
> the site. 30 may be many, but 1% is far from being most.
>
>
>> The only slightly negative thing that I can say is that I have never
>> seen a post by Manuel on this list actually contributing a solution,
>> recommendation or any type of help other than a link to phpclasses.
>
> This doesn't sound fair. If a developer has a problem and I have a class
> that solves that problem, suggesting to use the class does not
> contribute to the solution of the problem?
>
> Still it is not accurate to say that I only post messages here to
> suggest links to the site.
>
> Even if it was true, keep in mind that I do not have all the time in the
> world. I think it is still helpful when I find time to suggest solutions
> even if they include using any of my classes or something else in the
> PHPClasses site, unless you prefer that I do not even post any messages
> here at all and do not bother trying helping anybody here in any way.
>

Well fuck it then. 99% of my post was defending you with one blurb of
constructive criticism.

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

I use LGPL and i think (hope, actually) that it gives me a free full
license for any patch i receive.
That's what several people summarizing it for me have told me.

But as far as i'm concerned, it goes both ways; any patch is included
in a free update that may be re-hosted.
It's just about who-does-the-coordinating and final descision making.
That should be the original author for as long as he/she chooses.

And i don't mind contributors insisting on crediting them in the
appropriate place with at least 1 line, with an option for another
line with a url of their choosing.
If the url is / gets malicious, the browser content virus-malware
services will warn users about it these days.

On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 5:54 AM, Paul M Foster wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 05:38:36AM +0100, Rene Veerman wrote:
>
>
>
>> but if it turns out he's truely leeching on the work of others (by for
>> instance requiring authors to give him (near-)free exclusive rights or
>> something), then i'd have to switch sides, and say that authors need
>> to be warned of such practices. They should at least retain the full
>> rights to their work and be able to quickly and permanently remove
>> their work from a site like phpclasses.org, including the removal of
>> individual files.
>
> Yeah, I have a real beef with copyright-assignment, like what the GNU
> Project insists upon. If I built a program, I get to keep the copyright
> and determine the license.
>
> I feel the opposite way about patches. If you submit a patch to my
> sourceforge project, it's copyrighted by me. I don't make money off the
> project and I don't want to fight with you later about the code. And if
> I submit a patch to your project, you're free to do as you like with the
> code and its copyright.
>
> By the way, I am *not* saying Manuel does this. I'm just commenting on
> Rene's post.
>

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

Shawn McKenzie wrote:
> Manuel Lemos wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> on 02/17/2010 02:13 AM Shawn McKenzie said the following:
>>> PHP framework to speak of. Manuel has authored most of them and many
>> I suppose you meant that I authored many of the classes. I only
>> submitted about 30 out of more than 2600 classes available submitted to
>> the site. 30 may be many, but 1% is far from being most.
>>
>>
>>> The only slightly negative thing that I can say is that I have never
>>> seen a post by Manuel on this list actually contributing a solution,
>>> recommendation or any type of help other than a link to phpclasses.
>> This doesn't sound fair. If a developer has a problem and I have a class
>> that solves that problem, suggesting to use the class does not
>> contribute to the solution of the problem?
>>
>> Still it is not accurate to say that I only post messages here to
>> suggest links to the site.
>>
>> Even if it was true, keep in mind that I do not have all the time in the
>> world. I think it is still helpful when I find time to suggest solutions
>> even if they include using any of my classes or something else in the
>> PHPClasses site, unless you prefer that I do not even post any messages
>> here at all and do not bother trying helping anybody here in any way.
>>
>
> Well fuck it then. 99% of my post was defending you with one blurb of
> constructive criticism.
>

perhaps it's my fault for setting the negative tone from the off, or
perhaps its a case of showing true colors, or perhaps different all
together - time will tell I guess.

there's a lot for him to think about and take on board!

bailing out now,

regards

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 01:52:08AM -0200, Manuel Lemos wrote:




>
> > Having to register to download classes from phpclasses.org is a
> > nuisance. Manuel says this is up to the individual developer. This may
> > be technically true, but Manuel *offers* this as an option. Contrast
> > Source Forge, which performs a similar function but does not require any
> > registration to download anything. I imagine that the registration
> > allows Manuel to tightly monitor site usage in a variety of ways.
>
> Actually it is much more than that. If you download a package, the site
> keeps track of that and next time the package is updated, it send you an
> e-mail alert so you can get the latest version, unless you do not want
> to be notified of course.
>
> Also the site counts how many distinct users downloaded each package and
> builds top download rankings . If you download a package more than once,
> it only counts once, so the top download charts are accurate, making it
> fair for everybody.
>
> For users this may not be very important, but for authors it is very
> motivating. Authors are happy that the site lets their users know about
> updates of their classes. Authors also like to see the progress of their
> packages in terms of users that have downloaded it.
>
> The site also provide a blog for each package, so when the author wants
> to post something new about the class or ask for feedback, a message is
> sent to the users that downloaded the package.
>
> There are other compelling reasons but this is basically why more than
> 2600 authors submitted over 5000 packages. The site gets them attention.
>
> Other sites like Sourceforge cannot provide this level of attention
> precisely because they do not require users to download even if the
> authors wanted that.

This type of question has been asked many times on this list,
particularly for "voting" type projects: How do I ensure that a person
can only vote once (etc.)? No answer I've ever seen, besides insisting
on a registration/login, has ever been satisfactory. The above is a
real-world example of this in action. And as Manuel details, it has
some definite benefits to users and developers.

Again, having to register/login is a pain. But ads are a pain, too. It's
a trade-off.

Paul

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 06:02:18AM +0100, Rene Veerman wrote:

> I use LGPL and i think (hope, actually) that it gives me a free full
> license for any patch i receive.
> That's what several people summarizing it for me have told me.



The multitude of copyright holders on several FOSS projects has created
licensing issues, in particular with the Linux kernel. The problem
arises where the controlling person wants to (or doesn't want to) change
the license. In the case of the Linux kernel, the license issue is GPLv3
versus GPLv2. Broadly, the rights and privileges are the same between
the two licenses, but Linus has some issues with some of the provisions
of GPLv3. Other projects have wanted to change licenses for whatever
reason, but where the copyrights are owned by a variety of people,
getting them all to agree on the change has been a problem.

Paul

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

Paul M Foster wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 01:52:08AM -0200, Manuel Lemos wrote:
>
>
>
>
>>> Having to register to download classes from phpclasses.org is a
>>> nuisance. Manuel says this is up to the individual developer. This may
>>> be technically true, but Manuel *offers* this as an option. Contrast
>>> Source Forge, which performs a similar function but does not require any
>>> registration to download anything. I imagine that the registration
>>> allows Manuel to tightly monitor site usage in a variety of ways.
>> Actually it is much more than that. If you download a package, the site
>> keeps track of that and next time the package is updated, it send you an
>> e-mail alert so you can get the latest version, unless you do not want
>> to be notified of course.
>>

per project rss feeds?

>> Also the site counts how many distinct users downloaded each package and
>> builds top download rankings . If you download a package more than once,
>> it only counts once, so the top download charts are accurate, making it
>> fair for everybody.

no more accurate than storing the ip (or a hash of it); people forget
details sign up again and so forth - can never guarantee accuracy here

>> For users this may not be very important, but for authors it is very
>> motivating. Authors are happy that the site lets their users know about
>> updates of their classes. Authors also like to see the progress of their
>> packages in terms of users that have downloaded it.

can be done with the aforementioned, no need for logins

>> The site also provide a blog for each package, so when the author wants
>> to post something new about the class or ask for feedback, a message is
>> sent to the users that downloaded the package.

good; but again rss & offering an option to subscribe by email.

>> There are other compelling reasons but this is basically why more than
>> 2600 authors submitted over 5000 packages. The site gets them attention.
>>
>> Other sites like Sourceforge cannot provide this level of attention
>> precisely because they do not require users to download even if the
>> authors wanted that.

I'd debate this; but trying to stick to positives - sf do pretty well
with their stats is all I'll say

> This type of question has been asked many times on this list,
> particularly for "voting" type projects: How do I ensure that a person
> can only vote once (etc.)? No answer I've ever seen, besides insisting
> on a registration/login, has ever been satisfactory. The above is a
> real-world example of this in action. And as Manuel details, it has
> some definite benefits to users and developers.

ack; fact is if you wanted to skew results you'd just create lots of
accounts - distinct ip and cookies can cover it just as well; there is
no "perfect" solution.

> Again, having to register/login is a pain. But ads are a pain, too. It's
> a trade-off.

always need to figure out which has more benefits though; more downloads
and exposure (better conversion ratio) vs better stats and less exposure
(low conversion ratio) + account for things like people downloading
because they can see the source ala google code - i for one always check
the svn browser on google code before downloading, sure many others do too..

regards

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Re: UK Project Opportunity

Hello,

on 02/17/2010 02:42 AM Nathan Rixham said the following:
>> People need to have motivation to do what they do. Authors only submit
>> their packages to PHPClasses site if they gain something from it. What
>> the site provides them is attention.
>
> I know - I'm an author ;) [or was, well still am, can't delete profile
> so left some files up their for anybody who may find them useful] - and
> as for attention, the last class I put on phpclasses was getting 5
> downloads a week, and 1k+ a week on sourceforge.

Rest assured that the download numbers of PHPClasses are accurate.
Unlike sites that do not provide the option to the authors to require
user authentication, the PHPClasses site does not account downloads from
Web robots because robots usually do not log in sites.

How many robots downloaded your work from Sourceforge? Can you know how
many real users have downloaded your work at least once?


>> As I explained in another reply, if an author leaves the login
>> requirement enabled, the site can keep track of the users that
>> downloaded the packages. That can be used for sending alerts when a new
>> version of the package is released, or a new blog about the package is
>> posted.
>>
>> The site can also build download charts that lets authors see their
>> progress in user interest and motivate them to continue to submit more
>> packages or update existing ones.
>>
>> In the end everybody wins.
>
> and it can do all this with the user being in control and choosing to
> give that info.. as implemented on millions of other sites..

Does Sourceforge send e-mail alerts to all users that have downloaded
your package when a new version is published?

Can you have a blog in Sourceforge for each of your packages and when
you post a new article in a package blog all users that downloaded the
package before be notified to come and read the blog?


>> This site is not really interested in your personal information. The
>> reason this site does not remove accounts is because it is used to
>> prevent several types of fraud. I am just not going to enter in much
>> detail here in public on what happens to not give ideas to cheaters that
>> may be reading this. I hope you understand.
>
> as stated, you could just remove the public pages of said user and keep
> the username + email taken; quite easily

Yes, I can disable your account permanently. If you want that just let
me know privately your access name.


>>> I do hope it all goes well for you and the community, and that the right
>>> choices are made - when in doublt just look at the big guys like
>>> sourceforge, github etc and see how they do it - the better your service
>>> and easier it is for users, the more chance you get of full donated
>>> hosting and investments - I guess a good measure will be when you have
>>> several of the big PHP projects / libraries on there.
>> Well, those sites are not exactly for the same purpose. They are for
>> hosting the actual project development. The PHPClasses site is more for
>> distribution. Each type of site needs to find a business model that
>> adequates to the type of activity that goes one in the site.
>>
>
> if you made the site more accessible; didn't lock in users, took off the

I think you are missing the point. As an author, you are the one that
can remove the login requirement from your package files.


> registration, cut down the ads (not remove), improved the templates,

I suppose you have missed that there was a design contest to let users
submit new site templates and have the users vote on which they prefer.


> promoted the developers by giving their details free and showing off

Do you work for free all the time? No? So why do you want the PHPClasses
site to provide free advertising to all PHP developers, when they can
make good money from the advertising they get?


> their fine work; hell why not even integrate with these fine project
> hosting sites (that'll cut the bandwidth..) then maybe - just maybe

I am not sure what you mean, but being able to synchronize projects from
CVS/SVN/Git repositories is something that is on my to do list for a while.


> traffic would rise; people would enjoy the site more; use it more and in
> turn the money maker which is the job ad's would get more exposure and
> boost revenue for you.

That is a wild guess. I do not see any PHP specific site doing what you
are suggesting and boosting their revenue.


> you've got everything there to make a great community which would in
> turn fund you and be a fine business - there are other ways to do
> things. I know it's been 8 years but you can always change / tweak.
>
> ultimately though, it is a business the focus has to be on making sure
> the money comes in & that has to be priority #1 (?)

Of course. The reality is that it is impossible to please everybody. I
have chosen many years ago to please the authors because I am one of
them and if the authors do not have motivation to contribute, there is
no reason for rest of the users to come to the site. If the users do not
come, there is not much of a business.

So it all boils down to provide the authors things that they do not get
elsewhere because in other places things work differently. It is sort of
making the "competition" irrelevant. That is a well known business
strategy called Blue Ocean. I reviewed a book about that some time ago.
If you are interested, you may read it here:

http://www.phpclasses.org/reviews/id/1591396190.html


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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

Hello,

on 02/17/2010 03:00 AM Shawn McKenzie said the following:
> Well fuck it then. 99% of my post was defending you with one blurb of
> constructive criticism.

I am sorry but I was just clarifying things that I felt it were
inaccurate. I did not meant to upset anybody. If you found reason to be
offended, I appologise.

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

Manuel Lemos wrote:
> Hello,
>
> on 02/17/2010 03:00 AM Shawn McKenzie said the following:
>> Well fuck it then. 99% of my post was defending you with one blurb of
>> constructive criticism.
>
> I am sorry but I was just clarifying things that I felt it were
> inaccurate. I did not meant to upset anybody. If you found reason to be
> offended, I appologise.
>

No offense taken. I was probably a little harsh.

I think you do a good thing with your site. Just listen to some of the
commenter's and take advice where it is appropriate. You don't need to
defend everything.

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

Hello,

on 02/17/2010 02:38 AM Rene Veerman said the following:
> on the other hand, i have received off-list mail about other business
> practices of phpclasses.org that i also would not have chosen myself,
> because i disapprove of them.

Off the list? Curious. Is it my impression or someone is cowardly trying
to poison people here against the PHPClasses site?



> but, it can be argued that for a person with a certain skillset and
> skill levels, maintaining and marketing phpclasses.org is the work
> related to opensourcing.
> Not contributing a lot of work-code can then be forgiven, imo.
>
> but if it turns out he's truely leeching on the work of others (by for
> instance requiring authors to give him (near-)free exclusive rights or
> something), then i'd have to switch sides, and say that authors need
> to be warned of such practices. They should at least retain the full
> rights to their work and be able to quickly and permanently remove
> their work from a site like phpclasses.org, including the removal of
> individual files.

I don't know where people get those ideas. The PHPClasses site has no
interest nor means to require any author to grant "(near-)free exclusive
rights" to any of the contributed code.

The truth is that if authors submit their packages to PHPClasses and not
elsewhere, that could be because the site provide them benefits that
they do not get elsewhere.

Anyway, you may check out the site contribution requirements here. Maybe
the text is not very clear.

http://www.phpclasses.org/contribute.html


> it's been made clear to me that when it comes to his business
> practices, the owner of phpclasses.org likes to stick to his own ideas
> and descisions.

Is this a good or a bad thing? The site has to remain viable. By the end
of the day I am the ultimate responsible to keep it viable. I often
listen to user ideas and implement them. But some user ideas are not
feasible or are counterproductive. Should I have to follow all user
ideas even if I feel they are not right to execute?

I think sometimes users do not have patience. Certain ideas are good and
accepted but it take a long time to become feasible. Some people may
understand that as if I just want to stick to my own ideas.

For instance, the site design was meant to replaceable by the users
since 2002. Unfortunately that was something that did not get
development priority until 2008. It took more than one year to develop a
design contest system that allows any user to propose new designs and
any user to vote on the proposed designs.

The contest is finished, the winner was picked and in a few days the new
design will be up after a few adjustments. This was a monstrous job only
meant to please the interest of users to have a different design. Still
I had to put up with the criticism as if I wanted to stick to the
original design.

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

Hello,

on 02/17/2010 03:26 AM Nathan Rixham said the following:
>>>> Having to register to download classes from phpclasses.org is a
>>>> nuisance. Manuel says this is up to the individual developer. This may
>>>> be technically true, but Manuel *offers* this as an option. Contrast
>>>> Source Forge, which performs a similar function but does not require any
>>>> registration to download anything. I imagine that the registration
>>>> allows Manuel to tightly monitor site usage in a variety of ways.
>>> Actually it is much more than that. If you download a package, the site
>>> keeps track of that and next time the package is updated, it send you an
>>> e-mail alert so you can get the latest version, unless you do not want
>>> to be notified of course.
>>>
>
> per project rss feeds?

That is not the same thing. The PHPClasses also has RSS project feeds
but the vast majority of the users that download a package do not even
realize they are available, even less subscribe to them.

In PHPClasses, you are automatically subscribed to the package change
e-mail alerts just because you downloaded a package.

The users may realize later they are not interested and unsubscribe but
many of them love to get alerts on updated classes that they have
interest. So you keep your loyal users hooked.

It only depends on you, the author, to update your package once you have
done significant improvements.


>>> Also the site counts how many distinct users downloaded each package and
>>> builds top download rankings . If you download a package more than once,
>>> it only counts once, so the top download charts are accurate, making it
>>> fair for everybody.
>
> no more accurate than storing the ip (or a hash of it); people forget
> details sign up again and so forth - can never guarantee accuracy here

No, it is totally different. Users change IP addresses every day.
Anonymous login will never be able determine if an user is coming to
download again or is another user. PHPClasses only accounts logged user
download, so it can distinguish.

Sure, an user may create a new account if he forgets but the way the
site works he is discouraged to do so. That is part of the reason why
the site does not allow deleting accounts. It may not be 100% accurate,
but it is certainly more accurate than anonymous download counts.


>>> There are other compelling reasons but this is basically why more than
>>> 2600 authors submitted over 5000 packages. The site gets them attention.
>>>
>>> Other sites like Sourceforge cannot provide this level of attention
>>> precisely because they do not require users to download even if the
>>> authors wanted that.
>
> I'd debate this; but trying to stick to positives - sf do pretty well
> with their stats is all I'll say

It depends on what you consider pretty well. If you consider that
accounting Web robots downloads and mix them with real user downloads is
pretty well, you may be believing in a big lie.


>> This type of question has been asked many times on this list,
>> particularly for "voting" type projects: How do I ensure that a person
>> can only vote once (etc.)? No answer I've ever seen, besides insisting
>> on a registration/login, has ever been satisfactory. The above is a
>> real-world example of this in action. And as Manuel details, it has
>> some definite benefits to users and developers.
>
> ack; fact is if you wanted to skew results you'd just create lots of
> accounts - distinct ip and cookies can cover it just as well; there is
> no "perfect" solution.

That is what you think. The PHPClasses site has fraud combat system that
tackles that case of users creating many accounts to spam rankings. I
am just not going to explain how it works because nothing is 100%
guaranteed, but in my experience it works wonders and prevented a lot of
injustices like giving away prizes to authors that cheat that way.

Anyway, for other sites that unlike PHPClasses do not give any prizes,
it may not be a big deal.


>> Again, having to register/login is a pain. But ads are a pain, too. It's
>> a trade-off.
>
> always need to figure out which has more benefits though; more downloads
> and exposure (better conversion ratio) vs better stats and less exposure
> (low conversion ratio) + account for things like people downloading
> because they can see the source ala google code - i for one always check
> the svn browser on google code before downloading, sure many others do too..

Sure, people can always submit their projects to as many sites they
want. Actually, the goal of PHPClasses is not to make people register,
although that brings benefits to contributing users.

But if you ever wondered why certain packages are available on
PHPClasses and not elsewhere, you may have your answer regarding what
provides more benefits.

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

This thread's getting a bit tired but here's my $0.02 worth.

I've always found the phpclasses website a bit confusing to navigate and
I've never had much success finding what I want. But it's free and as a
non-paying customer I don't feel entitled to complain, when probably a bit
more work from me would find what I was looking for.

As for advertising, well so what. It's there and my eye is pretty well
trained to ignore it. No big deal to me, and if it's a necessary thing to
pay for a free site, then so be it.

The site could do with an easier interface and I look forward to seeing it
in action, but I think it's a bit too much to complain and swear and
criticize the owner if you're not paying for what he provides. And if you
are paying, then you can't honestly say you didn't know what you were
signing up for. The information is all there if you take the time and
trouble to find it.

Angus


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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

Normally I would just stay out of a public thread on such a
subject, but Rixham and I had a discussion about the site prior to his
posting here, and I may as well make my point known....

My problem - and indeed, it is a problem - is not with the design,
usability, or lack thereof. It's also not in the business practices
and profitability. Everyone needs to make money, and I think it's
great that Manuel has managed to do so in doing something he loves.

My problem is with Manuel's practices of advertising the site.

In all of the years I've been involved with PHP, both officially
and as a part of the community, all I've seen you (Manuel) contribute
to the community is a health dose of "go to my website." You've never
(or, perhaps so rarely it seems as though you've never) offered
advice, assistance, or free code without the guise of, "go to
phpclasses.org." To me, it's completely out of the spirit of open
source, and puts a thin veil over - however unintentional it may be -
extremely disgusting practices of advertising. I've avoided saying
anything negative about it on the list through the years, but
seriously, enough is enough, and something has to be said. And you
can trust me that I'm *not* the only one who thinks that. I know of a
lot of people who filter messages from you into the trash or SPAM
folder because the response is always the same, and usually useless,
overall.

Again, it's nothing against your site. The site can actually be
pretty useful.... but how about just adding it as a signature to your
email and actually posting FREE, USEFUL material relevant to the
topic? Stop using mailing lists and forums as a free treasure trove
of opportunity for advertising your services and pay it back in a way:
by actually contributing something to the community, completely
selfless, with no ulterior motive. You think the site is seeing some
success now? Wait until you try that and see how good quality traffic
increases in a few months. You'll be well-rewarded, I would almost
guarantee it.

Still, if the only reason you're here is to increase your
visibility and profitability, then your *credibility* is, in my
opinion, null. And while that may not matter to you, it should; even
if it's just one voice, my voice is representative of the greater part
of the community on the issue. Though it should also be noted that
it's not just about you, but as a whole. Open source communities
should *NEVER, EVER* be considered a venue for commercial
advertisements. Some will make their way in, and I'm guilty of that
offense myself (though I've pruned my signature to reduce the irony
herein). The difference is that myself (and several others who come
immediately to mind) have offered substance, fostering the community
to incredible worth that will benefit future generations of technical
professionals and hobbyists.

Maybe some commercial gains came of it for some, but I would like
to think that fame and money weren't the motive for involvement. If
that were one's only reason for being a part of the community, why in
the world would I respect that individual enough to support them? And
if that were to become an acceptable practice in any open source
project or community to allow it, even to ignore it, I would resign,
because my own efforts and passion would be wasted, hidden in a pile
of useless information and competition, all losing sight of what the
actual spirit was in the first place.

Think of it this way: if there were a commercial-only list here at
php.net, would you subscribe and read posts by other senders? Knowing
that all they are doing is advertising a service, you really couldn't
reply by saying, "this is better, so use this instead." Very, very
few - if any - would actually subscribe to the list. Those who did
would likely be there only to post, not to read. And those few
remaining would undoubtedly be trying frantically to unsubscribe after
a few messages, both ruing and lamenting the day their curiosity got
the best of them.

We all hate SPAM, and I'm sure you do as well, Manuel. I doubt
you read ads and say, "Wow! What a great price for v!4gr@. Where did
I put my credit card?" (It's used as an example, by the way. I have
no intention of or interest in getting into a discussion as to whether
or not anyone needs any assistance in that area, of course. ;-P)
However, if someone were to continuously offer assistance to their
peers, I would still get the message and be reminded of the
advertisement of their services with a simple signature link. I think
I've visited every website by every moderate or major contributor to
this list alone in the last ten years --- no joke. And I've bought
things from them, helped them land jobs, and even hired some of them
myself.... the common thing with all of them is that they never
outright asked or advertised. It was a subtle hint nestled beneath a
mountain of valuable information.

That said, I actually do wish you the best with the site. I know
it's valuable to others in its own right, and I do see great continued
potential in it for both you and the community at large. I do,
however, hope you'll take all of the things said in this thread as
constructive criticism and suggestions for improving your business and
image. Because anyone who runs a business and fails to seriously
consider the advice of his (or her) audience is doomed to fail the
business and its customer base miserably, gaining only the ire of
those it was intended to serve.

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

Hello Angus,

on 02/17/2010 09:35 AM Angus Mann said the following:
> I've always found the phpclasses website a bit confusing to navigate and
> I've never had much success finding what I want. But it's free and as a
> non-paying customer I don't feel entitled to complain, when probably a
> bit more work from me would find what I was looking for.
>
> As for advertising, well so what. It's there and my eye is pretty well
> trained to ignore it. No big deal to me, and if it's a necessary thing
> to pay for a free site, then so be it.
>
> The site could do with an easier interface and I look forward to seeing
> it in action, but I think it's a bit too much to complain and swear and
> criticize the owner if you're not paying for what he provides. And if
> you are paying, then you can't honestly say you didn't know what you
> were signing up for. The information is all there if you take the time
> and trouble to find it.

Criticism is welcome when it is constructive, regardless whether you are
paying or not to use the site.

My greatest problem with criticism is when it is vague. For instance
"confusing to navigate" and "easier interface" is vague.

It would be more helpful if you say what exactly is confusing you when
you navigate the site, as I am not capable to imagine what goes on in
your mind that you find confusing.

Actually, better than that, would be specific suggestions to make it
less confusing for you, if you would not mind going further than just
pointing what is not good for you.

When it comes to not finding what you are looking for, as I mentioned
before, a few months ago the site search pages for non-premium users was
improved to split results in tabs according to the page section they belong.

I wonder if you have seen that already and if that would help in making
it better for you. Just go on the site search pages and check it out if
you have not done it already.


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Manuel Lemos

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http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

Hello,

on 02/17/2010 02:46 PM Daniel Brown said the following:
> My problem is with Manuel's practices of advertising the site.
>
> In all of the years I've been involved with PHP, both officially
> and as a part of the community, all I've seen you (Manuel) contribute
> to the community is a health dose of "go to my website." You've never
> (or, perhaps so rarely it seems as though you've never) offered
> advice, assistance, or free code without the guise of, "go to

I completely disagree with that. Regardless how many times I refer to
pages in the PHPClasses site, I always explain how to solve the problems
of the users that I bother to reply here. Anybody can check the archives
and verify that.


> phpclasses.org." To me, it's completely out of the spirit of open
> source, and puts a thin veil over - however unintentional it may be -
> extremely disgusting practices of advertising. I've avoided saying

I don't know what you think it is the "Open Source spirit". For me is
sharing the source of code that solves user problems. That is what I
share in the PHPClasses site: I share my PHP source code.

It seems you are complaining that I do not post the source code here. I
do not think that would be viable, as most solutions that I refer have
thousands of lines of code. Sharing large pieces of code is what
repositories like PHPClasses are for.

What about you? How many times have you shared your Open Source code?


> anything negative about it on the list through the years, but
> seriously, enough is enough, and something has to be said. And you
> can trust me that I'm *not* the only one who thinks that. I know of a
> lot of people who filter messages from you into the trash or SPAM
> folder because the response is always the same, and usually useless,
> overall.

That is your opinion because you seem to be biased and you just do not
seem to want that I post any sort of help at all, otherwise you would
not ignored the countless times that I bothered to come here and post
replies that do not lead people to the PHPClasses site.

It would be much less hypocrit if you would just tell me directly that
you do not want me to help people here in any form.


> Again, it's nothing against your site. The site can actually be

I doubt that. You seem to be contradicting yourself. First you complain
that I lead people to the PHPClasses site, then you claim you have
nothing against the site. Does not sound very consistent.

How else do you want me to help people when I have a solution to their
problems that I submitted to the PHPClasses site? Do you want me to tell
that I have a solution, do not tell them where it is available, and let
them guess that it is in the PHPClasses? Sounds ridiculous.


> pretty useful.... but how about just adding it as a signature to your
> email and actually posting FREE, USEFUL material relevant to the

What are you talking about? I only post free material here. I do not
sell code. All the code I distribute is open source. If you do not find
it useful just because I make the code available in the PHPClasses site,
that is your opinion. Assuming that everybody finds it useless it is
just a biased complaint.

If you search the archives of the list you will find plenty of other
users recommending code that is in the PHPClasses site, either mine or
from others. Are you going to claim those people are also evil?


> topic? Stop using mailing lists and forums as a free treasure trove
> of opportunity for advertising your services and pay it back in a way:
> by actually contributing something to the community, completely
> selfless, with no ulterior motive. You think the site is seeing some
> success now? Wait until you try that and see how good quality traffic
> increases in a few months. You'll be well-rewarded, I would almost
> guarantee it.

I may be wrong but the impression that you are passing is that you have
a deep envy of the attention that the site gets. You seem to want to
fight that, as if letting the others know about the site is bad thing,
and I am being evil when I tell about the site resources here.

Furthermore you seem to assume that the site only gets traffic from this
list. You could not be farther from truth. This site gets more than
20.000 unique visitors every day. About 12.000 come from Google and
other search engines. The rest is users that visit the site directly or
were lead after reading any of the site newsletters.

The mentions of the site in this list hardly affect the site traffic
these days. It may have affected in the early days when the site was
unknown.

If you really want to know why the site gets so much traffic these days,
is because it has over 5000 packages for all sorts of purposes
contributed by over 2600 of authors. The 30 packages that I have
contributed hardly make a difference these days in the overall site traffic.

So, if you wonder why I still bother to come here when I have time and
tell you about my packages, is because the original reason that made me
create the site prevails.

I created the site in 1999 to share my work, so others can test it and
provide eventual bug reports and improvement suggestions. That feedback
from the users is my gaibn. That will benefit the quality of my work and
consequently the projects on which I use those packages.

The site originally had to commercial purposes. The commercial purposes
only started in 2001 when I needed to professionalize it to keep it open.

Still before then and even before the PHPClasses site was created I came
here and helped others letting them know about components I wrote that
can solve the problems they presented. The difference is that I pointed
users to other sites where I shared my work before PHPClasses. Check the
list archives to verify that is a fact.


So, instead of complaining, why don't you try to be more positive and
help other users sharing your PHP components in the PHPClasses site like
many thousands of users did?

If you do not like the way the site works, try submitting it elsewhere,
or better create your own repository, as others already suggested.

I am sure it would be more helpful than trying to act as if you are the
owner and the censor of this list and your task is to boycott my
participation.


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Regards,
Manuel Lemos

Find and post PHP jobs
http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/

PHP Classes - Free ready to use OOP components written in PHP
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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 16:23, Manuel Lemos wrote:
>
> What about you? How many times have you shared your Open Source code?

HA! That's hilarious that you would say that to *me.* I actually
laughed out loud. I'll probably do it a few more times before the day
is out.

Well, Manuel, you've just earned a rightful spot in my permanent
SPAM-direction filter, and I will now publicly state that I will NEVER
use phpclasses.org, nor will I recommend that anyone else do the same.

HINT: Next time, READ the email I sent before jumping to
conclusions and getting defensive. And secondly, know your enemy.
;-P

Goodbye!

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Re: Re: UK Project Opportunity

Daniel Brown wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 16:23, Manuel Lemos wrote:
>> What about you? How many times have you shared your Open Source code?
>
> HA! That's hilarious that you would say that to *me.* I actually
> laughed out loud. I'll probably do it a few more times before the day
> is out.
>
> Well, Manuel, you've just earned a rightful spot in my permanent
> SPAM-direction filter, and I will now publicly state that I will NEVER
> use phpclasses.org, nor will I recommend that anyone else do the same.

That's your choice to make, but I think this thread has got out of hand
and needs to stop.

Some people do not like his decisions. Fine, we get it. Those people do
not have to use his resource. There, problem solved.

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