Blake09

I was looking around the fourm offline when I saw an ad like this:

Join Bananas.org Today!
Are you a banana plant enthusiast? Then we hope you will join the community. You will gain access to post, create threads, private message, upload images, join groups and more.

Bananas.org is owned and operated by fellow banana plant enthusiasts. We strive to offer a non-commercial community to learn and share information. For a limited time, receive all three issues from Volume 1 of Bananas Magazine with your upgraded yearly membership.







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Just to let you know in my opinion this isnt far for some old members not to get aneything and the new members to be getting a free copy of all three issues from Volume 1 of Bananas Magazine . What is a upgraded membership, what does it do? Does it cost?

By the way, I love how the ad looks, like the AeAe banana fruit. It is well described and to the point Oh the middle book has a cool picture of tog tan...... (in memory).......






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A banana plant in the autumn gale -
I listen to the dripping of rain
Into a basin at night.
~ Basho Matsuo (1644- 1694)

MediaHound

Yes, for $5 they get those issues. You can also: http://www.bananas.org/payments.php

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Randy4ut

And to think we had to pay either $20 or $25 to get them!!!! Cannot understand what is going on here...

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MediaHound

Sure, let me clarify. Memberships on Bananas.org are now $5 per year as of a few months ago.
The magazines are right now given as complimentary for a limited time to new subscribing members.
That is what Blake09 noticed.

We also plan to offer even more giveaways and promos as well in the future in varying degree to the still grandfathered members, to subscribing paid members, as well as to attract new members.
This change to membership fees facilitates the ability to provide more value to the membership base.

When we made the change to a paid membership, existing active members were grandfathered in, without the need to subscribe to a membership plan.

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Apologies in advance if I am slow to reply to your PM. I suggest posting in the forums for support if you need something urgent.

Dalmatiansoap

So in general that means that U cannot register to the site for free any more?

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MediaHound

That is correct, new members cannot post in the forums or upload pictures, private message, etc., without a paid membership.

This has been redacted. Memberships are free now.

__________________
Apologies in advance if I am slow to reply to your PM. I suggest posting in the forums for support if you need something urgent.

Randy4ut

I had heard there was now a required membership fee to join this site, but did not believe it. I always thought this was a site where folks that loved bananas and other tropical, or tropical looking plants could come, share and disseminate information with one another. With the economy the way it is I truly do not understand why someone would join and not go to another forum that they could get the same value from. I know the money is not that much, but still... I am sorry to see this happen here...

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DoctorSteve

I have gotten my membership worth of info from bananas.org.

the flying dutchman

Its not strange at all Randy, it's the future of the Internet. Information
has always been worth a certain amount of money, wether it be in a newspaper, a book, on television or as in the old days by just telling someone things they want to know.
You are totally free to buy that information or not, you can buy an expensive book on a subject but also a cheap one with less information.
Same with websites, you can go for the best or one of a lesser quality,
its all up to you.
The better the website the higher the costs are and that is not only software but also manhours.


Ron...

The Hollyberry Lady

stumpy4700

Well said Sherry, That said, I agree it has been well worth $5 for all the information and friendships I've gain over the years. Thanks Jarred.

DoctorSteve

you shold read: Free the future of a radical new price. You can download it free.

harveyc

I had proposed 2-3 years ago that we should all pay to help Jarred maintain this great forum. I know he's been generating some revenue from ads but he has still paid quite a bit to host this site and spent a great deal of time to give it all the bells and whistles. I don't know of any other forum that is as well run as this site. I appreciate the gesture of grandfathering us old guys, Jarred. If I had to pay $5, I gladly would as long as I still had an interest in bananas.

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turtile

I think a lot of people don't realize how much it costs to run a forum of this size. Right now, there are over 300 people viewing the site. In order to for this to happen, you have to pay for a powerful internet connection which can upload all of the data at a good speed. On top of that, you need a powerful system to store and process all of the data.

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Kevin

Yeah, I saw that add too, and was wondering what it was about. I always assumed that this was a free forum and didn't really know what the International Banana Society was, apart from the forum. If you are a member of the society, what benefits do you get?

When was this $5 fee implemented? I'm still fairly new here, but I guess I was grandfathered without knowing it. Thanks. I have to say, though, I wasn't really serious about bananas when I started, but just joined so I could learn more. I probably wouldn't have joined if I had to pay.

On another forum I am a free member of, they hold plant auctions an/or sales, and donations, and the money goes to the webmaster to maintain the site. This seems to be a better way to go, so that anyone can join, and if they really like the site, they will want to give, rather than are forced to. Say a person has a huge pile of banana plants that they need to divide, or maybe someone is taking pups from one of their plants they are bringing inside for the winter - how about sell them, and any money that is collected goes to Jarred?

Just my 2 cents.

Richard

No need to guess at operational costs ... check them out here:

Web Hosting Services | Network Solutions

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turtile

That would be the operational cost of a site running a small business with little traffic. The unlimited isn't really unlimited and the bandwidth and storage claims are just marketing. They don't even run server grade systems.

Bananas.org uses at least a VPS or dedicated server not run-of-the-mill shared hosting.

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hammer

I have no problem with with the cost. it takes a lot to make this ship a float i think maybe since people are paying to join maybe they will stay around longer. some times it seems like they drop like flies and then we get new ones and they leave.

Jack Daw

Do you accept banana bucks as payment? If so, what's the exchange rate. :P

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Thnx to Marcel, Ante, Dr. Chiranjit Parmar and Francesco for the plants I've received.



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Richard

That could be true for the low-end product. My site is hosted by their large Unix package, for which I have a direct (unix) log-in. The particular machine it is hosted on is a 64 CPU Sun server with a full set of IO modules. I'm very picky about computing platforms, having worked over a decade as a computational scientist at the San Diego Supercomputer Center.

I'm not suggesting the Bananas.org change their hosting service, but just pointing out the current market prices for high-end service providers.

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