I've Had Enough and Today Everyone Has the Phoronix Premium Experience

spangry 10 years ago |

Phoronix is great for quickly getting up to speed with what's happening in core / desktop linux development. I tried using it with an adblocker exception, but the pages loaded so slowly or not at all (because the adserver was overloaded or something). Adblocker went back on after that.

I really want to subscribe for a year, but the only option is a recurring subscription through paypal. Yes, yes, I know I can just go in to paypal and cancel the recurring subscription (once I figure out where it is). But I have this weird paranoia that canceling in paypal will also cancel my premium access.

Michael, if you're reading this, I have a few suggestions on how you might increase conversion rates to premium:

- Offer non-recurring annual subscription

- Make it easier to sign up for premium. Instead of having to create a forum account first, why not have it run the other way (or both ways)? Someone hits the premium button on the front page, enters their email, password and payment and that's it. Afterwards, they can optionally choose a forum nickname.

- Consider offering forms of payment other than paypal. I always feel a little dirty after using paypal, and avoid them if I can. Bitcoin would be nice (maybe through one of those intermediaries that shields you from BTC volatility risk).

gurraman 10 years ago |

Having someone close suffering from being burnt out: please be careful. It will hit you like a hammer from nowhere and can cause irreparable damage if you do not take it seriously.

Lets hope people donate a little today to relieve Phoronix of some of the preassure.

devin_lane 10 years ago |

Did not realize Michael works on that 100+ hours a week. Totally insane. Thanks for all the benchmarks and Linux info -- $35/year for you :)

minaguib 10 years ago |

I work in ad tech, and indeed some areas and experiences are less-than-optimal, especially in RTB.

Unless the site owner is selling highly-custom take-overs, skins or other non-standard formats, ad interference with site content and layout is almost entirely eliminated via the use of iframes.

cmdrfred 10 years ago | |

Even better throw the sandbox[0] tag on it and then, allow scripts only if there is no other option.

[0]http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/security/sandboxed-if...

sleepychu 10 years ago | |

I consider iframes to be basically the most egregious ad insert.

cmdrfred 10 years ago | | |

You are being downvoted because you can make iframes seamless[0]. Unless you are looking at the source you won't even know it's an iframe.

https://jsfiddle.net/yms8ftyw/1/

true_religion 10 years ago | | |

seamless="seamless" doesn't do anything in any browser.

cmdrfred 10 years ago | | |

Thanks, I saw it in a Stackoverflow answer and while it did nothing in Chrome or Firefox I thought It might of been there for IE or something.

rat87 10 years ago | | |

According to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4804604/html5-iframe-seam... the attribute is still in draft and isn't implemented in any browsers yet.

ricardobeat 10 years ago | | |

Why? It is safer, doesn't block loading of main page assets and causes way less breakage when things go wrong.

sleepychu 10 years ago | | |

You're forcing me to make a request to the ad suppliers server. I understand this isn't unique to iframes but I'd much prefer that any ad content is proxied by the server I'm actually looking at. I go on a lot in comments about the invasion of privacy that ads represent and I think iframes go a long way to perpetuating that poor privacy 'deal' so reject them with aggression. I often find I'm forced to use the mouse to grant them any focus (which is frustrating for me because I don't like using mouse pointers but I imagine it causes all sorts of havoc with accessibility).

cbowal 10 years ago |

google cache link: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:w1Pctj...

gavinh 10 years ago |

Unfortunately, the Premium Experience was an HTTP 504 in my case.

eugeneionesco 10 years ago | |

Yeah, but the site loaded very very fast, didn't it?

pzone 10 years ago |

Is Phoronix Premium required to post in the forums?

cbsmith 10 years ago |

Anyone know what ad network failed?

CamperBob2 10 years ago |

I've been surfing around on the (slow) site for about two minutes now, and I still can't tell exactly what "Phoronix" is. Having the short attention span typical of my folk, at three minutes I'll close the tab and move on.

news_to_me 10 years ago | |

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoronix

It's been around for a while, and is pretty well known articles related to Linux, hardware, and benchmarking. While I'm not especially interested in a lot of the topics they cover, I still think it's a valuable resource.

simcop2387 10 years ago | | |

One of the biggest reasons I read it is that it's the best place I've found for news about Mesa, Wayland, and other Linux graphics support topics.

scrollaway 10 years ago | | |

The guy scours a lot of mailing lists and posts about small releases and such. There isn't much content, but I've had phoronix in my rss reader for the titles alone; it's nice to be informed about that stuff.

sandGorgon 10 years ago | | |

This is extremely incorrect. He built a test suite PTS to uncover kernel regression and is credited for atleast one major power regression discovery. A lot of his articles are interpretive, but it's the best way to digest progress in the Linux world on everything ranging from kernel to hardware..which he often surfaces using git commits.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTUxMw

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA0MTM

PTS evolved into openbenchmarking.org which has had 17 MILLION downloads for people using it to benchmark and test their desktops and hardware. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=17-Milli...

scrollaway 10 years ago | | |

On ~95% of his articles there is extremely little content. It's usually copypastes of release notes and emails.

Yes, I'm aware there's excellent articles on performance tests and such. They are rare.

I have a lot of respect for Phoronix for the sheer amount of time the guy invests in it, but it is pageview driven because of its ads. I sent in a tip on his paypal because of this as I'm hopeful this move will encourage less fluff and more high quality content.

PeCaN 10 years ago | | |

Sometimes he does quite good in-depth articles (such as his Talos Workstation preliminary benchmarks[1]) but mostly it's a nice site to avoid having to scour mailing lists to hear about cool new stuff.

1. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=talos-wor...

mikekchar 10 years ago | | |

Yeah, I've actually used it as my main source for keeping track of Mesa progress. It's really useful. It may sounds stupid, but I didn't know he had a "premium" version. I should send him some of the bitcoins I mined when you could still mine with CPUs...

yarou 10 years ago | |

Interesting.

You couldn't spend more than 3 minutes on the site, yet I'm sure you spent plenty of time coming up with your (in your mind) witty comment adding no substance whatsoever to the conversation.

rubbingalcohol 10 years ago | | |

I agree with your sentiment.

CamperBob2 10 years ago | | |

More of an indirect way of suggesting that basic presentation and marketing skills are more important than whoever runs the site evidently thinks.

gojomo 10 years ago | | |

Only if the site wants short-attention-span users. If they want such users to move on, their presentation is win-win!

rdtsc 10 years ago | |

Phoronix is my go to site for Linux-specific hardware, graphics, benchmarking site. Other sites have those as well but they are also Windows / Mac focused, which I am not as interested in.

imron 10 years ago | |

If only you'd kept reading the linked article:

this site that publishes thousands of original articles per year and is the only place to find extensive Linux benchmarks, graphics driver news, and more