bill
  
 
 
| | #1 posted September 2, 2009 at 11:05am (EST) |
GameTZ.com Newsletter
#34
It has been far too long since I've done a newsletter, so here's a big one.
Contents
- Growth
- Subscribing
- New Subscriber Features
- Recent GameTZ Enhancements
- Mentors
- Over 1,000 Reviews!
- The Future
- Growth
GameTZ has been growing steadily over the last year or two. The average number of trades per day a year ago was under 50. But, we've been doing more than 75 trades per day on average recently. We've also gone from having 303,000 listings to 339,000 listings (a 12% increase) in the last year. The number of active accounts has jumped from 4,671 to 5,419 (16% increase) as well.
Maybe it's the economy. Times are tough right now for a lot of people. Many people have lost their jobs; most of us know a few people who are out of work. So, people have been tightening their belts a little. Game trading remains a great option for making the most of our entertainment dollars. When times are tough, trading is a great option.
- Subscribing
First, I'd like to thank all the current GameTZ subscribers. Your support is essential to GameTZ. Due to the weak economy, GameTZ's advertising revenue has dropped off sharply. The financial support I get from subscribers is more important than ever.
If you're not currently subscribed to GameTZ, I'd like you to give it serious consideration. Not only will you be supporting this great resource that allows thousands of people to exchange games for free (saving tons of money!); but you also get many useful features. Features include: disabling ads, filters (user, country, platform, etc.), personal forum, color schemes and font control, forum avatars and signatures, disabling the swear filter, personal notes, and many other things. New subscriber-only features are also being added (see below).
I know times are tough and many of you just can't afford to subscribe right now. You are contributing to GameTZ's community just by being active traders here. I thank you for that. But, please keep subscribing in mind for the future, maybe when you might be more able to afford it. Even if it's just for part of the year, every little bit helps.
Running GameTZ takes a lot of time and effort for me. Much of it is behind the scenes. I spend hours every day reading and responding to problems and concerns people have (trade/rating disputes, suspicious behavior, etc.). To make sure the site runs smoothly, I monitor daily backups and performance tuning is an almost constant effort. On top of that, I make time to fix bugs and make enhancements to the site.
When you subscribe, you directly support all my efforts. Here's a link to the subscribe page:
http://gametz.com/Subscribe.html
- New Subscriber Features
- When a trader changes their username, subscribers will now see a smiley wearing shades icon next to their username. If you hover your mouse over the icon a list of past usernames will be shown. This icon appears for 90 days after their username has changed. Also, on the trader's user page, a line will always be shown which lists all their past usernames.
- When using the forums, the "all my new replies" (AMNR) feature behaves slightly different for personal forums. If you are reading a personal forum, all new topics will be included in the AMNR results (even if you haven't posted in the topic). The idea is to give user forums a little extra exposure since they tend to get less attention than the main forums. Well, subscribers can disable this and have AMNR in user forums behave just like main forums.
- There is a subscriber option that can change links to YouTube videos into embedded videos you can watch right on the site.
- Subscribers can also control the maximum dimension that in-line images are scaled down to. The default is 800x800, but subscribers have many more options including no limit. This is useful for people who have large monitors and don't want to have to click to see the full image.
- Recent GameTZ Enhancements
There have been many changes since the last newsletter. Some of them you might have missed. So, here's a quick list.
- You can now hide your name and email address from everyone on the site. The option is located on the "My Account" page, just above the second submit button. It looks like this:
Show Email on user page: yes/no
Show Name in forum and user page: yes/no
New accounts have both name and email hidden by default.
- "Not Currently Trading" mode is a way to hide your listings from searches and matching plus prevent anyone from sending you an offer. You will still have access to GameTZ to use forums and such. The option is located near the top of the "My Account" page. We found that we had some people who still wanted to remain active on the site without actively trading.
- The Canceled Trade count is now shown in the user page header section only if that trader has canceled a trade within the last year. Also, the canceled trade count is shown on the initial offer page now. After some discussion in the Site_Feedback forum, the consensus was that a trader should not be punished indefinitely for an old canceled trade. Though, we also decided to make recent canceled trades more visible on the offer page so that traders can be made aware.
- Good Trader stars have had their "last sign on" requirements relaxed. The breakdown used to be 24 hours to maintain a multi-gold star, 2 days for a gold, 4 days for a silver, and 7 days for a
bronze. Now, the breakdown is 3 days for a multi-gold star, 7 days for a gold, 14 for a silver, and 30 days for a bronze. This change was also the result of some discussion in Site_Feedback where the consensus was that the original requirements were not reflective of what the community thought of a good trader.
- There is now a built-in "States Traded With" map on the user statistics page. Go to any user page, then find the "Statistics: view stats" line on the right side. Click "view stats" and the default is to show the states traded with map for that trader. Thanks to koster for providing the software to generate this map.
- Post Scores: It's hard to imagine GameTZ without these since they have become very popular in the forum. They are just a simple way for people to express their reaction to a forum post by clicking a "+" or "-" icon in the post's header. A score is shown of the total score for that post. Be careful what you say, or you might get "negged".
- Mentors
Around the beginning of 2008, GameTZ started a new Mentor program. Essentially, when a new trader creates an account, they get an option to have a Mentor. If they choose to have a Mentor, someone in the GameTZ Mentor group will claim them and send them a private message, offering to help them get started and answering any questions they might have.
It has been 18 months since then and I'm pleased with the results. It's clear this is a great way for regular members of the community to foster new traders. We've now seem many of our "mentees" go on to earn good trader stars, subscribe and just become great traders who enrich the GameTZ community.
Thank you to all the GameTZ Mentors for helping out in this way.
- Over 1,000 Reviews!
GameTZ's review system passed a major milestone. Over 1,000 reviews have been contributed to our system. Actually, this announcement is long overdue. We're already up over 1,250 as I write this. GameTZ's review system was added back in 2004. So, it has been around for over 5 years now.
We've had a number of different people on the site writing reviews and also acting as editors. Thanks to all of you who have been involved with the project. It's just one of the many ways that GameTZ's community rocks.
- The Future
GameTZ has been around a long time and the software behind it has gotten rather old too. I've also learned a lot over the years and web technologies have changed and improved in that time as well. Things have reached a point where I need to bite the bullet and take on a massive amount of work to modernize and improve GameTZ's code.
The work will be all under the surface and my goal will be to not change the way GameTZ looks or works very much. Once the rework is complete, I should be in a much better position to adopt more current advancements that are common on websites today.
It's too early to tell how it will all go. I estimate it could be a year to complete this work. Also, despite my best efforts, it is bound to generate some bugs along the way. So, I ask you in advance
to bear with me and let me know if you notice a bug. I will fix it as soon as possible. Together, we can get through this and help ensure GameTZ's long term growth and viability.
This newsletter and past newsletters are posted in the Announcements forum: http://gametz.com/forum/Announcements
There is an option on your "My Account" page that controls whether you get newsletters by email or not.
If you have any comments, feel free to reply to this.
Thank you.
Bill Marrs
Owner Game Trading Zone
A Kenyon Hill LLC Website |
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