Update: Seed Account Re-sale, Free Users + Custom Styles

[mark]

Two things for you today!


Thing the first:

We have not been able to finish and fully test the new site functionality that enables people to purchase accounts without a PayPal account. Instead of finishing it up an hour before the first sale is scheduled and crossing our fingers that it works, we've decided to push the sale off another week.

The new time of the Seed Account re-sale is Thursday, May 14th, 9PM EDT and again at Friday, May 15th, 9AM EDT. In total 200 accounts will be available.


Thing the second:

People with free accounts have probably noticed that a few days ago we took away the Advanced Customization area of the site. (The pages that let you make a custom style.) We had never intended for it to be available unless you paid, and having it on was an oversight on our part. After we turned it off, we got to hear a lot of really good comments from people and we reevaluated the original decision.

We've turned it back on, but gave free users a pretty low limit on the number of styles you can create (1 custom style, up to 5 layers). Short story: you can once again go back to customizing and importing styles from other sites. Sorry for the trouble!

Comments

[nlfrederick]

Awesome, thanks for the limited style creation! Any chance of maybe limited mood theme creation, as well? You could probably limit us to being able to create one custom mood theme and that work pretty well...I know I've got more than that on my LJ, with my paid account there (although I'm definitely considering paid Dreamwidth when I have the money to do so), but one would be pretty appropriate, even if only during a trial run to see if you guys liked the idea.

And another question I've had is whether or not you'd be implementing the "Schools" feature. That's probably one of my favorite features on LJ, because it helps me find people I go or have gone to school with, and especially now, in the early stages of Dreamwidth, I think that would be a great feature to have because it might help us in finding people we know already.

[triadruid]

I think since most people only use one mood theme at a time, making them free wouldn't be a good incentive for paid accounts.

[nlfrederick]

I can see where you could use that reasoning for not having it, even though the same reasoning could be applied to the custom style sheets that they're allowing free users limited access to. It's true for both that most people only use one at a time.

However, speaking from the point of view of a LJ user who has had a paid account virtually without interruption since Christmas of 2003, which puts me at about 5 and a half years of paid time at LJ. In that time, I have set up five different custom mood themes both through the use of the admin console and the Custom Mood Theme editor.

My reasoning here is that just because we use one at a time doesn't mean that allowing limited use (i.e., one custom mood theme) to a free account would detract from the paid accounts incentives, simply because over time, the paid accounts are likely to have more than that because of various reasons, such as changing interests, or changing the mood theme to fit the look and feel of their journal.

At the very least, though, I would like to see a more varied set of options of mood themes for free users, perhaps with a chance for the free users to create mood themes and submit them for consideration to then be voted upon by all, maybe with some sort of incentive like 1 or 2 months of regular paid time or a Dreamwidth t-shirt or something like that.

[elfgirl]

At the very least, though, I would like to see a more varied set of options of mood themes for free users, perhaps with a chance for the free users to create mood themes and submit them for consideration to then be voted upon by all

I imagine there will be more mood themes available for free users at some point. The site's still in beta so there's only a minimum amount of customization available at the moment. However, they're actively working on rolling out more layout options and I'd be surprised if the same wasn't true for mood themes.

I quite like the idea of design opportunities for users, as well.

[triadruid]

I absolutely agree that more mood themes should be (and likely will be) available in the future.

I think the difference here is that the free single style is a direct response to the error of giving it away for free initially. As mark said, it's a strong incentive for paid accounts, but not so strong as to be worth the sense of screwing over your users.

[denise]

Other people have mentioned why mood theme creation for free users wouldn't be a good idea -- much, much fewer people use multiple custom mood themes than multiple custom styles, so it would essentially be completely removing a paid account incentive, as opposed to giving free accounts limited access to advanced customization but reserving the bulk of what people are doing for paid accounts. I will point out, though, that if you've got a mood theme that meets our basic guidelines -- the copyright to all images owned by you and not a derivative work, no bigger than about 30px by 30px, separate images for as many individual moods as possible, and keeping to our Diversity Statement (such as by not assuming that the 'default' color for human skin is white) -- that you're willing to license to us, we'd love to have it :)

We definitely want to bring back the Schools directory -- we had it for a while, but had to turn it off, actually; the code support is still there -- but the problem is that the administrative backend is so labor-intensive, and the dataset that came with the LJ install we forked from was so dirty, that to clean it up and make it usable would've taken hundreds of person-hours. We've got a bug open to re-spec it so that it won't have so much administrative overhead, but it's going to be tough enough that it definitely won't be in the next few months.

[nlfrederick]

I understand, ultimately, and it's definitely one of the things that helps me make the decision that when I have the money for a paid account, I'll definitely get one (actually, the dilemma I'm having in my mind at the moment is with whether or not I'll go just Paid or Premium Paid...), and I'll definitely keep those guidelines in mind if I ever get the inkling to truly get creative with a mood theme of my own, or if I see one that fits those that someone else made I'll surely let them know.

And I can see how the schools feature would be labor intensive...if you guys need any volunteers for that, I'd be more than willing to offer any help that I'm capable of giving. I wouldn't be surprised if there are others that would do the same, because it truly is a handy feature - though I reckon while we don't have it, the location thing might serve in a similar capacity. :)

[denise]

You say that now, before you know what the administrative backend looks like. ;) Does it communicate anything if I tell you that the nickname the schools directory administrative team gave themselves on LJ was "Team Leaky Canoe"? (As in: no matter how fast you bail it out, it keeps sinking anyway...)

The problem was never a lack of person-hours, really -- there are always people willing to pick up the task if you crowdsource it -- but the amount of research it entails, to verify that schools exist/figure out the real name of the school/etc. (Things like having twenty entries for the same school, with something like, "St Mark's", "Saint Mark's", "Saint Mark's Academy", "St. Marks", etc, etc, ad nauseam.) Not to mention having to become an expert in the geography and regional subdivisions (states/territories/regions/etc) of pretty much every country the site has users from, in order to standardize names and locations. It's pretty gnarly. The idea we have to fix it up involves removing a lot of the need for oversight.

[nlfrederick]

So pretty much a sheer logistical nightmare, then.

Well, I'll be happy to have the feature whenever you guys get it to us, no matter how long it takes for that to happen. (And if you ever run into a problem with any schools in Alabama, I might be able to help you verify their existence if need be.)

Thanks for all you guys do!