Do we want advertising on this forum?
Providing something to the sponsors who help make this club run is a good thing, but how much advertising to we want? Does the WCC primary sponsor deserve more?
Should adds be prominent or unobtrusive? One location or through out the site?
Would you like to see an add if one of our sponsors had a sale on and wanted to promote it to members?
Would you be OK of the club sold adds about specific things or to other companies? Any add? Just bike adds?
I think adding Sponsors (unobtrusive) is a way to give them some value.
Members don’t see Sponsors as annoying. Many of the sponsors are club members.
As long as it does not turn into a 90s website it could be an option. I think forums are for members to chat and we don’t want to make it feel like they faced with constant advertising.
I vote we stick with what we have for now. Sponsor bar across the bottom. Otherwise it could get cluttered. Having a pile of sponsors also dilutes the value our core long term sponsors would receive from views and click through.
I think you guys might be misinterpreting Steven’s question a bit. He doesn’t mean we’d join an ad network and have random ads on the site. We’re not looking for random ad money to pay for this forum.
I think the question is more towards if one of our sponsors is having a sale or a special, is it okay to have an ad across the top to announce that to members? Think of one of our local bike shop sponsors that want to promote a spring bike tune up special. I think accommodating that ads value for our long term sponsors. Maybe only top tier sponsors get that privilege, we keep the ads simple, short term, and in one place only rather than all over the site.
Many websites use the white space on either side or background of the forum as big single pictures / ads which might even add some visual interest as well as revenue. Pinkbike is an example ( I think they currently have a SRAM ad in the background). I know a lot of people run adblockers if they are sensitive to ads so maybe less of an issue regardless?
In the past on other sites I’ve created a sponsor category where sponsors can post sale threads or other things of interest. Keeps it clean and the sponsors are directly engaged on the forum which is great.
Chris, I like this idea a lot. We could pin sponsor announcements.
Yeah, this sounds like a good idea and less work to maintain since we don’t have to do the ads.
I like Chris’s idea of their own category & Tom’s idea of pinning, I would add that we only do this for short periods to announce a special events.
I see these as more announcements to inform members rather than to advertise for the sponsors.
Well pinning works a bit differently in Discourse than other forums. You cannot permenantly pin something for everyone. After a user sees the pin, it gets unpinned automatically for that specific user. There is also the ability to set the length of time a topic is pinned for. So given the way pinning works, it seems ideal for this use case.
I think what we have here now is perfect: sponsor links across the bottom. Unobtrusive, aesthetically well done, and our own privacy-respecting, club-focused website. It’s better than anything we’ve had before for sponsor value. No ads on the top or sides. Please. I think the logos on the bottom perfectly balance tasteful exposure without annoying anyone. As a sponsor, it’s the only place I’d want my logo.
A sponsor category seems like a great idea too!
What many sponsors do for group buys or specific sales is let member interest/replies drive it to the top or put “ttt” as a reply in the thread to move it up (ttt =to the top). That will work itself out I naturally. 
my opinion is have unobtrusive sponsor presence and open a category to sponsors for them to post what they want - I think that provides value to them as sponsors
