photo.net patrons should not see "become a patron" box

Just a simple request. If I've become a photo.net patron, I don't

think I should have to see a box on the front page asking me to become

a photo.net patron. Let the screen space be put to better use. And

no, don't change it to "Thank you for becoming a photo.net patron!" :)

let me offer a solution to your tenderness: Just bookmark the

United forums options as your starting point into photo.net.

That's the PN homepage, not your homepage. It's the first thing everybody gets to see it unless they bookmark another entry point. There is absolutely no reason to change it as you suggest. Besides, there is nothing to stop you from becoming a double or triple patron and that just makes it easier.

Its a relatively small ad, and suppressing it for people who are

already patrons would be an unavoidable database check or an additional cookie. At present any database-dependent parts of the home page are only calculated about once per hour and cached.

Ellis,

 

Thank you for your heartfelt comment. Unfortunatly, I don't use photo.net for the forums. I always use the main page as my starting point.

 

Hal,

 

I don't understand what becoming a triple patron has to do with this. Please explain.

 

Brian,

 

Is a "Patron cookie" really that bad? I manage my cookies pretty well (ala Mozilla's cookie manager) and don't see this as beeing much of an issue. You're already displaying images based on patron status (calculated once per hour as you said) so it seem to me that the next step is not that large of a leap.

Rob,

 

No a "patron cookie" isn't that big a deal. Just SMOP, as we used to say when I worked at Digital (a Small/Simple Matter of Programming). However, right now there wouldn't be any other reason to have a patron cookie besides suppressing the patron ad on the main page, which (so far) only one person (you) has requested. If we get more complaints about it from patrons, or we come up with some other reason to have a patron cookie, we'll consider it.

Brian,

 

Well, it does lead me into a suggestion that's been rolling around in my head for a while. A patron cookie could lead to all sorts of customization throughout the site, including the front page. One idea I had was that, for patrons only, photo.net offer online bookmarks for photo.net content. Without going into too much detail, I find that splitting my photo.net browsing between work and home makes me lose track of where I was, where I was going, and what I wanted to say. Having the ability to click on "remember this page" would be a great feature. In fact, the screen space saved from the "become a patron" could be used for a box with "your last 3 bookmarked pages"

 

That's a sort of rushed idea in a nutshell (i.e. there are some flaws) but I see a patron cookie as only being able to offer more to the patrons and to offer more incentive for people to become patrons.