I Can't Say Much But... LOOK!

Bibs said:
I've run forums for 15 years and it's now a full time job for me along with other businesses I own. Initially, I had a forum for a certain type of car from a manufacturer, and when a new car was released I opened another forum for that model, and after a period of time the same happened again. About 6 years ago I merged all 3 into 1, and what a difference it made. No more duplicating content, no more having to keep an eye on 3 sites and traffic has increased because of it.

I'm sure Xenforo offer a service to to help, as my software provider (IPS) did at the time. Was quick and easy, I think it took about an hour with 12k members and 300k posts at the time.

I'd recommend merging them into 1 on here too, just my opinion based on experience.

http://www.thelotusforums.com/forums in case you were interested :)

PS, I'd also recommend the move to SSL, again a quick and easy process and better for a lot of reasons :D
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Agreed, much better under 1 roof and cool Lotus forum.
 
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LuvMyTJ said:
The P1,2,3 & 4 are all Phantoms. The DJI Inspire has it's own forum too. All cars have 4 wheels & drive but I see Corvette forums, Camaro forums, Mustang forums, Yugo forums ... not just one car forum for all cars. ;)
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On reflection the separate inspirepilots.com was a mistake, but back then it would have been difficult to know how the industry would grow, but a clear decision was made with yuneecpilots.com, 3drpilots.com and gopropilots.com to name them after the manufacturer.

I do think it might be time to bite the bullet and consolidate the various DJI forums before it gets worse.

No one is saying it will be easy but I would suggest you rename phantompilots.com, and speak with the forum developer to see if you can port inspire threads over. You can redirect the domains back to a single site so no one will get lost.
 
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A couple forums I am on have "linked" forums. Just like your browser with tabs at the top for different pages. These forums have something like that above all else. When you switch between them, you still have to log in, but you don't have to register. Your u/p that you used to register to the first one works for all.
 
I can't agree that this is a Phantom-only forum. There are "Industry" and "General" discussion sections as well. I come here for all things UAV/drone/whatever.

You guys have made a nice forum here, and with the introduction of the Mavic I knew right where to come back to for all the updates and discussion. Splitting things off into other forums is a step backwards.

That said, it's your forum, I don't pay anything for this service and I certainly can't demand you not change things. I can suggest, as a user, that you shouldn't split things up unless there's an issue with the current forum hosting service and we need to start over.
 
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More 'sites' equal more $.

Remember this site was sold a few years ago.

Start 'em, build 'em, sell 'em.
 
As said on a similar thread that got locked, I understand the logic however the entire DJI product line share many similarities and many people have multiple birds; So App troubleshooting and queries, camera settings and filming techniques or simply sharing flight experiences irrelevant to the model of the bird or even browsing videos submitted by the members is becoming quite complicated.

For sure it'll quiet down and people will get used to it but if and when I get a Mavic (probably on its next iteration next year) I'll have to signup there which I probably will but not super thrilled about it. I'll stalk for now...
 
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Some here may be missing the point or underlying reason... I think N017RW hit the nail on the head above. Also, think about advertising... It gives them options when selling advertising. They can give their advertisers a much more targeted audience (i.e. Mavic accessories can be targeted specifically to Mavic owners/enthusiasts on a specific site).
They can also sell a broad advertising package that covers all owned sites for $X and have a more targeted advertising option for $Y.

One other consideration... I'm not sure how they calculate user counts across all their sites, but imagine if "phantompilots.com" has 15,000 users. Let's say 5,000 of those same users also sign up for mavicpilots.com. They could then potentially say that they have 20,000 users across their sites. Now imagine this multiplied across all the sites and the user number counts can start to look very compelling to advertisers. You could say the same thing for posts... Many posts will be duplicated across sites, so overall post count/engagement numbers would look better.

Don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge them at all. This site costs me exactly $0 to use and I've derived an immense amount of valuable information here. If they can make some extra $ by splitting up topics, I say more power to them. I'm just saying there are probably some not so obvious reasons for this move.
 
ablythe said:
Some here may be missing the point or underlying reason... I think N017RW hit the nail on the head above. Also, think about advertising... It gives them options when selling advertising. They can give their advertisers a much more targeted audience (i.e. Mavic accessories can be targeted specifically to Mavic owners/enthusiasts on a specific site).
They can also sell a broad advertising package that covers all owned sites for $X and have a more targeted advertising option for $Y.

One other consideration... I'm not sure how they calculate user counts across all their sites, but imagine if "phantompilots.com" has 15,000 users. Let's say 5,000 of those same users also sign up for mavicpilots.com. They could then potentially say that they have 20,000 users across their sites. Now imagine this multiplied across all the sites and the user number counts can start to look very compelling to advertisers. You could say the same thing for posts... Many posts will be duplicated across sites, so overall post count/engagement numbers would look better.

Don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge them at all. This site costs me exactly $0 to use and I've derived an immense amount of valuable information here. If they can make some extra $ by splitting up topics, I say more power to them. I'm just saying there are probably some not so obvious reasons for this move.
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They probably will initially get better numbers for advertising dollars, but they risk alienating their current user base and losing those numbers in the long-run if users are having to make a decision as to which website they are going to log in to engage in discussion.
 
Butterpuff 6 said:
They probably will initially get better numbers for advertising dollars, but they risk alienating their current user base and losing those numbers in the long-run if users are having to make a decision as to which website they are going to log in to engage in discussion.
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Simple, people will be involved in the forums for the birds they own. If you look at the bottom of all our forums you will see the icon/links to the others. Scroll down and click, it's that easy! :)

Screen Shot 2016-10-15 at 1.22.37 PM✨.png
 
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