This
thread is for discussing the new "
thread boost" feature.
Years ago, when I would look at Dr. Dobbs or Byte, I would spend about 20% of my time reading the ads. I could skip over them, but I know I want to know about this stuff too.
When we run ads on CodeRanch, most people have learned to ignore them. So people are not getting that information. And advertisers are bummed too.
We created a forum a long time ago called "blatant advertising" - so when people post to this, it shows up in all the feeds. It is labeled as "advertising" and we allow advertisers to post there for free. I think it has worked well. We allow publishers and authors to make threads about their books in the books forum. Product manufacturers to the product forum .... Workshops, conferences, online courses ... all are free and we encourage people to post. We even made a big list of free stuff people can do to advertise their stuff.
There are only two sites in the world that use this exact forum software. Both sites are belong to me. CodeRanch and permies. We do a lot of
testing at permies, the smaller site. Over the last year, we have been boosting the permies threads that we think are the best. Often times, that
boost is for a really good thread. Other times it is for something commercial.
Most threads when they are a year old, appear to have about 800 views. But take a look at
this thread. Six weeks ago we created it and gave it a bunch of boost. It now has over 20,000 views. Not too shabby!
Possible threads that could use a boost:
- recruiter with a position
- upcoming workshop or class
- a conference
- a new coding tool
- an IDE
- a contracting shop that could use more contracts
- a blog
- a linux box
- online courses
So we have now come up with an automated way to boost a thread. Everybody should be able to see a big button at the bottom that says "Boost this thread!" This is a brand new feature, so it is still "beta". Please let us know in this thread if there are any issues. Hell, at this point, it would be good to hear that things are working well!