Member Visibility on EPIC

Themes and Priorities : Increase Member Visibility

Working Group Members : Donald Smith, Mark Johnson, Eric von der Heyden, Howard Lewis, David Rose.

Development Plan Suggestions from Working Group

• Implement Google Adsense on all pages [DONE]
  • Initial implementation is on ads on the banner section for all pages (including member and forum pages). When we try inlined ads they will not be shown on the plugin-specific and forum pages.
• Prioritize plug-in listings to show "Featured Member Plugins" first on the page, with a link that explains what a "Featured Member Plugin" is. [DONE]
  • This feature will only be implemented if it is possible to "remember" if users change the search option to alphabetical or other (to be implemented) search orders.
  • Regardless, Member plugins will be displayed prominent.
• "Featured Plugin of the Day" on landing page should be members only. [DONE]
• Highlight Forums that are from "Featured Member" organizations on the forums page, either via logo or other style/highlights. [Priority 3. Time: Low].
• When member pages become more flexibile on Eclipse.org, support cross linking from member bios and their plugins [Priority: not this Q Time: Med]

October 31 Meeting

Meeting October 31: David Rose, Nathan, Donald, Mark Johnson

• Google Adsense
  • David says ads are very effective, no real concerns of using Google Ads
  • Concerns over Analytics and sharing too much data with Google
  • Mark is supportive of the idea of using Google adwords with some caveats
    • More established Google advertisers may appear more dominant in the relevancy.
    • Need to be prepared to defend why some ads appear more, even though it's google that manages the ads.
  • David suggest to put ads on home page, as an advertiser a great page
  • Mark suggests ads on plugin category pages
  • Nathan suggests all pages except specific plugin page
    • Don't want to be in position where people are paying for ads on their own plugin or having competitors camp on plugins
    • Also consider plugin specific forums
  • Need to have a clear policy for blocking sites from Adsense

• Forums
  • We want to continue to support forums for all interested plugins
  • There was something else here that we need to get back to Eric V on

• "Featured" terminilogy
  • Don explained details from earlier EPIC meeting about concerns on dropping the word "member" on search results and calling it "featured".
  • Strong agreement that dropping word "member" altogether is a bad idea, but agreeement that promoting member plugins first is a good idea.
  • "Featured Member Plugins" and "Featured Member Forums" is suggested

October 18 Meeting

Meeting October 18: All present (David on behalf of Howard).

Considerations:

• Google Ads can be used
• How can we make member plugins more prominent?
• Why would a user actually care if a plugin is a member plugin?
  • Members have a vested interest in Eclipse, "Put your money where your mouth is"
  • Let's not overestimate the value of being a member to end users of plugins, let's not overestimate what it actually means to end users.

Suggestions:

• Any designation of membership needs to have an explanation associated with it (i.e., if you click on the logo, there is an explanation page). Mention "eclipse.org" in addition to foundation.
• A Membership landing page may have an option to search for member plugins - perhaps integrated with eclipse.org member pages.
• Rather than use terminology like "Member", we use terminology like "Featured", with an explanation area that notes that "Featured" means memebr.

Let's assume we are able to establish value to end users for member plugins, then the following recommendations are:

Homepage

• "Featured plugin" on homepage are members only

Search Page :

• TBD

Plugin Category Page:

• Default to organizing plugins by "Featured" and then "Other Plugins", but make it easy to search by other criteria. Explain what it means to be featured.

Plugin Page:

• Allow members more content/abilities on their plugin page. For example, could EPIC host tutorial content, white papers.

Next Call

TBD Topics to include: