What's going on in the entertainment section?

SoniT said:
TSR and MTO have taken over LHCF. It's very spammy. I don't want to spend money on this. I can go directly to the TSR or MTO social media pages for that.
Click to expand...
On my personal IG, I have both TSR and MTO blocked, not that I don't approve, I just don't even know who they're talking about half the time, and if something I care about pops up, someone will send me a screenshot.

As it stands, they have maybe 10 new threads featuring people I have no idea who they are, and I'd venture to say most of LHCF's demographic is like me.
 
I personally prefer how it was before. Just the members of the forum posting, no rss feed from outside sources.

Black Ambrosia said:
Looks like the RSS Import user can be put on ignore. The site almost looks normal again for me. There is still at least one thread under a guest name that I see on the first screen but it's not spammy anymore.
Click to expand...
Thank you! This really helped!
 
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Zaz said:
On my personal IG, I have both TSR and MTO blocked, not that I don't approve, I just don't even know who they're talking about half the time, and if something I care about pops up, someone will send me a screenshot.

As it stands, they have maybe 10 new threads featuring people I have no idea who they are, and I'd venture to say most of LHCF's demographic is like me.
Click to expand...

I also have both of those blocked on my IG, so I was not happy to see the same ig’nant mess posted here. I do not care if some new rapper named Puss Z Killa is cheating on his wife Sqigglez with an ATL stripper named Phat Kitty. I don’t care. I’m not entertained by it. It’s not the kinda tea I sip. Disturbs my sensibilities.

I also don’t understand why they are messing around with the Entertainment section. This is a Hair Care Forum. It would have made more sense to feed in articles from some hair blogs. That would have been better than flooding us with gossip blog foolishness.
 
I am so
grateful to learn
we can put
RSS import user
on ignore. Not
only do the
threads make it
feel like unwelcome
intruders just came
into our home
and took over,
they are posting
new threads on
topics already being
discussed elsewhere
and the redundancy
is beyond annoying.
 
lilikoi said:
Has this whole forum been hijacked? The web address is different; has an "s" at the end: https://longhaircareforums.com/

I had to re-log in and got a warning from Chrome. Then I noticed all the madness...

Has anybody heard from the admins? @beverly can you shed light on this? What's going on?

Edit: What about @dimopoulos? Is he still the admin?
Also: Is the search function broken/have we lost old content?!

I love this community and would feel so lost without it...This is really alarming.
Click to expand...
Hey Everybody -

Thank you for the feedback - the forum has not been hijacked. You are in the right place:)

I do understand that you guys pay a subscription fee, but I do need a little more activity on the forums to make it work. We had the recent idea to import the RSS feeds with the latest news and you all could reply and interact to get the forums more active.

Several years ago we took away the video ads (per your suggestion), but the subscription fees do not cover the monthly service charges at the moment. I have worked diligently not to increase the subscription fee over the past 10 years, and I don't ever want to do that because I created the site out of love and wanting to help other women who look like me. But this website cost $$$ to maintain and I currently do not make any money from this site, it is still a labor of love despite the challenges to keep it goin.

I try to be as authentic and transparent person, but many years I used my own personal money from my full time employment to run this site. Then after I implemented the ads I didn't have to do that anymore.

Below I will ry to explain the reasons for the new changes in as simple of terms as possible:

(1) I still have ownership of the longhaircareforum.com, but someone hijacked the ad account that I had associated with the ads account a while back and despite all of my efforts for many years I could not get it back. So I have been trying to figure out another way to 'start over' since I can no longer monetize that domain. We had to update the URL to longhaircareforums.com. for that reason.

(2) I was hoping the RSS feed would generate more discussion/activity, and bring in more active members. As it stands now many of the topics that are active are from you guys replying to old threads that are several years old ( as @Theresamonet so graciouly mentioned). Maybe you guys start new threads and topics on a regular basis like you used to?

(3) If anyone has any expertise on how to monetize the site in other ways besides subscriptions please reach out to me, I would be happy to compensate you for your time if you know what you are doing. I don't have expertise in that area.

(4) I can see if the RSS updated with a subset of data, but I think it is an all or nothing pull.

(5) @BonBon You have valid points, hopefully I addressed "the why" for the recent changes in my previous bullets, but you are right there is no excuse on why it has taken so long to get help with issues. But we intend to get a new ticket system by the end of the summer. I had purchased an unlimited license, but the ownership of the company changed and didn't honor our license and wanted up to pay an extremely high yearly fee to access the old tickets and renew each year so we lost our ability to answer tickets, so I have a bunch of tickets that were submitted that I can not access.

Thank you for the feedback, it is welcomed and appreciated.
 
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SpiritJunkie said:
Thank you for your explanation @beverly.

Clearly, we all love this site. Most of us have been here 10 years plus.

since you haven't raised the fee in over 10 years as a collective are we willing to pay a little more at our renewal to help her with the maintenance?

If so how much? Maybe we should do a poll.
Click to expand...
I think this
is a reasonable
suggestion. Maybe
a discount could
be offered for
multiple-year renewals
instead of it just
being a multiple
of the annual fee,
that is after
we agree on
a new fee.

Hopefully one of
our brainy ladies
can come up
with a solution
that could help
keep the cost
low while also
helping Admins breathe.
 
Last edited:
Black Ambrosia said:
Looks like the RSS Import user can be put on ignore. The site almost looks normal again for me. There is still at least one thread under a guest name that I see on the first screen but it's not spammy anymore.
Click to expand...

Thank you!

Worked like a charm. The other random ones (from the guest posters) are still there, but definitely tolerable vs. the RSS obsessive eye sore.

Unfortunately 99% of MTO and TSR content = bottom of the barrel, trashy nonsense.
 
I don’t know that raising the fee will solve the issue unless it’s raised significantly. There aren’t that many of us here. The lack of traffic to the site seems to be the problem.

@beverly, now that you’ve explained things, I don’t think the RSS feed idea is a terrible one. But I think choosing TSR/MTO is why we’ve reacted so negatively to the change. I don’t think many of us here are interested in engaging with that content. Is it possible to feed in posts from other sources? Some haircare blogs or health & fitness articles would be better for this demographic of women, and I think we’d be more likely to interact with that content... Actually, even entertainment news from other sites like Essence.com may work better for this forum.
 
PatDM'T said:
So wait... the
members count
does not reflect
paying members?

View attachment 496313
Click to expand...

I don’t know how these stats are generated, but I highly doubt there are almost 200,000 paying members on this forum. I’m almost certain there aren’t. That would amount to nearly $1.3 million in yearly fees, which is exponentially more than what is needed to run a web forum.
 
Thanks for the explanation. I think that when I subscribe to something (Netflix, Amazon, etc.) I have come to expect a heads up when there are major changes that are going to occur. Especially when those changes seem to be centered around ads or spam or consumption. Like Facebook...it used to be a platform where you read what your friends are doing. Now it's basically just commercials and ads...which is why I am engaging so much less on Facebook. Same with Instagram.

Hopefully this helps the board. I was able to ignore the RSS Import User and it does seem to be better, so we'll see.
 
I’m grateful for the clarity. I kinda figured the why as the site from 10yrs ago to now has a lot less traffic. I recently came back after 10yrs and notice the difference. I will say the mto content isn’t the vibe the demographic here. I know another site that gets a lot of traffic but the babes here are not that.

I hope something can shake to make this site profitable.
 
@Theresamonet
@PatDM'T
This website has 3 levels:

"GUEST" : someone who can view threads in the Hair Care Tips Forum, and can not use the search feaure.

"MEMBER" : someone who registered and joined the site for FREE. A Member cannot make posts since it's a FREE account. Only. If you registered as a Member, you can use the search feature - that is the only advantage over being a GUEST. If you don't register as a member, you can't use the search feature - that is the advantage of registering as a MEMBER.

"SUBSCRIBED MEMBER" : someone who can post and see all available forums. You can see the GUEST and all MEMBER profiles. There are some Members who joined 10 years ago and never subscribed. Only Admins can see the subscribers. The Subscribed member is an option that we enable on your profile after you pay the subscription fee, but you can never see the difference between a "subscribed member" and a "member".

The RSS feed will be disbled for now.

I hope this clears things up.
Theresamonet said:
I don’t know how these stats are generated, but I highly doubt there are almost 200,000 paying members on this forum. I’m almost certain there aren’t. That would amount to nearly $1.3 million in yearly fees, which is exponentially more than what is needed to run a web forum.
Click to expand...
 
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I'm not sure that driving more traffic to the entertainment sections through RSS would work if visitors only have access to viewing the hair boards?

I've been paying for a membership for some time so I don't know if anything has changed since I started, but I believe that posting in the hair board is not possible unless you pay? In other forums that I've been on (hair and non-hair), non-paying members, provided that they had an account could post to at least one of the main forums. In this case, it would be the public facing hair board. If you pay, then you have access to view and post on the rest of the site.

I think that some of the rules around topics limited discussion and participation. Eg. I believe that this is/was supposed to be a Christian forum. Back in the day there was a really active "spirituality/occult" thread that was hundreds of pages long. No fighting. Lots of support on things like manifestation, crystals, etc. that just went poof! No warning. No lock downs. No same-sex discussions allowed, unless to say that it is wrong. But now I see that there is an Islamic thread. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm just wondering if the site is re-branding and to what extent. I think that parameters like those can isolate younger audiences.

I read on one forum, that people got sick of the hair "challenges" here. Nothing can really be done about that. I believe that younger people care about hair and still want to learn, but there isn't much going on on the hair side to entice people to come and participate in the forum. Maybe the feature of the month should be more prominent (if people are ok with that?). Back in the day BGLH was the place where I'd hang out because they had (featured) members pictures on the right panel of their launch page with their deets (length, hair type, etc.) and that was encouraging to start my hair journey.
 
I've noticed that the hair boards are no longer at the top in the forums list. Is that a permanent change?
 
snoop said:
I'm not sure that driving more traffic to the entertainment sections through RSS would work if visitors only have access to viewing the hair boards?
Click to expand...

When I sign out I can see Hair, Relationships, and Religion.

The last two are very slow. JME but if I click into a forum from Googling and it looks super slow I assume it's dead/dying and X out. I think Hair, Ent and Off Topics should be visible forums when people stumble across the site as they have more regular posts and topics people may want to weigh in on. I think you should also try to remove the "is this being talked about" feature to allow people to post random threads and not worry about repetition. It's just a counterproductive feature to what you want.

@beverly @dimopoulos

I appear to be a moderator. I just clicked on a post and was able to edit it. The family discussion section and the new Beauty section.

Ignore if this has already been addressed. Apologies to @Godsdaughter001 , I tested your post to see if it allowed me to save.
 
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