New Front page layout is lame

So I popped onto Core77 the other day to find they had taken away the message board ticker/preview window and I was kind of ticked and then a few days later they replaced the job listings at the bottom with a huge ad for battlebots, then I was really ticked.

Is the site really so hard up for money that we have to resort to removing content for more ad space? Or replacing active content with photo galleries that are over a year old?

Rant complete. I do like the featured member’s gallery, it has encouraged me to use my “likeys” more.

Design conterie,

Thanks for the feedback. Just to let you know we are in the process of updating the boards. The ticker has been taken down, but will be back up shortly. This has nothing to do with money, it is just a work in progress for the next couple of day. Sit tight and it will back to the site you soon that you think.

Yeah, the ticker is really essential!
I am pretty sure that the overall number of posts has declined since the ticker has been taken down.

Can you guys from the forum mgmt confirm this?

Posts typically slow up during the summer, I’ve always been dubious of how much that little side bar drives traffic, but we will get it bask as soon as we can!

The latest threads sidebar will be back online as soon as we can get to it.

Regarding the replacement of the footer content, this is a one-month promotional campaign by Autodesk to collect some feedback on their products, using a free trip to their conference as a prize.

In the past we’ve relied on the job posting revenue stream to finance operations, perhaps a bit too heavily. These days we need to be earning our living from every available source we can, and advertising has actually been a bright spot for us. We try to keep it in line with our audience. So at least it is an ad for Autodesk rather than a run-of-network thing (a.k.a. punch the monkey!).