MEGA WoST Update!

[Mason]

I agree.

[jfung79]

As mentioned before, they charge for it because they have to to maintain the site -- they aren't making money off of it. Would it be better if the site didn't exist at all?

P&G and the networks have not come forward to show this stuff, so I'm grateful to the Wost people for doing it.

[Mason]

For those of us who aren't paying, that's not really an issue, since we can't see anything anyway.

[Chris B]

I would love to pay for a membership to WoST, but I'm on dial-up so I couldn't view the videos anyway. But I probably will end up paying for it so I can at least see lots of discussion about the classic soaps.

[psychofan]

I love Wost but I'm not sure that I want to pay (like others have said).

Now, if there are ever Margaret episodes then that'll be a different story, but that's not exactly classic.

[Matt]

Actually, WoST functions under the full knowledge and approval of P&G.

[GoldenDogs]

Hey All!

I wanted to address this one and have spent the past hour trying to figure out how to compose this message... LOL! I've written this long post at least three times... then I realized how ridiculous it was to try to explain blow-by-blow the "why" and "how" and all of that. I decided to keep this simple...

It IS economics. Making just the bonuses member's-only didn't do the trick. Bandwidth was being hit hard from external sources -- message boards, other sites, MySpace, etc. -- via hyperlinks. An image here, a video or sound file there... It wasn't something people were doing maliciously -- I just think people liked the look of a logo, or a theme song, etc., and linked to it. When the entire site was locked down, the amount of bandwidth was dramatically reduced and, honestly, the move saved the site from going down. I didn't really understand this until I saw the graphs and numbers (and figured out what I was looking at in Webalizer!) this past spring.

Our host also recommended we update more frequently to level out usage -- that's why we update every two weeks. We were paying for a lot of bandwidth overhead we weren't using, too, because of huge spikes on update Friday. We still get that, but not as severely as membership has leveled usage to an level we can more or less predict and expect. I know I'm okay as long as I don't get an email from WoST's host!

Matt is right, P&G has given us their blessing -- so long as we don't duplicate their efforts at AOL. And P&G has full site access -- I've told them to let me know if they have any issues with WoST's content.

Anyway, there is more I could say, but the bottom line is that we pay the price to survive, or we die. Membership at WoST has been a successful endeavor and I really believe that those who are truly interested in the genre and feel the material is important will join and pay to watch it. If not, that's cool. But at least the opportunity is there for those who can't fly to New York, Chicago, or LA to see what's at the MTR. And there are some rare goodies at WoST you can't find at the museums, too.

I don't really blame those of you who don't want to pay. I understand completely and wish I could let you all in for free. If you have any questions at all about how membership works, where the money goes, etc., that's cool... I'll do my best to answer.

But you are all welcome at the site... we'd very much enjoy your company!

Brian