By Andy Sorrell
Content Manager

In his "Rant" Dennis refers to the imminent premium services for The DSXchange. I'd like to take a moment to tell you what we've already done as well as mention some of the changes you'll see in the near future.

First, let me cover some of the things we've already done to get ready:

1. We've spent a significant amount of time getting removed from various spam lists and getting added to many of the white-lists. We're also changed our newsletter format to reduce the likelihood of it getting caught by the various spam blockers people have in place. This should enable more of our newsletters to reach their intended audience. The one area we are still having some problems is with people that have Yahoo email addresses, which seem to be blocked sporadically. If you currently have a Yahoo email address registered you might want to consider using an alternate email if you have one. If your newsletter does end up being labeled as "junk mail" or "spam" please let us know. Also let us know which spam blocker you are using so we can determine what is happening and how to resolve it.
2. We've removed a lot of inactive accounts, bad email addresses and incorrect registration information from our database. If you are an active account and your email address "goes bad" then the next time you access the website you'll notice your account is flagged and you'll have to correct the invalid information before being allowed into the forums.
3. When you signed up originally, we asked you for email addresses of friends that you thought would like to receive the newsletter. It turns out many of you didn't inform your friends about this, so when they received our newsletter they marked it as unsolicited spam. This is what got us on a lot of spam lists in the first place! So we're no longer sending emails to friends, and the registration should soon be modified to stop asking for that information. If your friends enjoyed getting the newsletter please ask them to register so they can get their own copy!
4. We're adding commerce capabilities to the website to allow credit card purchases. This can be used to pay for premium membership as well as any of the products and utilities that will be downloadable from The DSXchange. This major upgrade is ongoing and we're trying to implement it while minimizing any impact on the current website.

Now for some of the things we are planning to do!

1. As part of premium services, we are signing up sponsors. These sponsors will be promoting their products and services on our website. As part of this, they'll host seminars that you can attend via the web. Attendees will receive credit for attending a seminar that will be applied to their account, in effect letting the vendor pay for their membership.
2. To make this work we've got to demonstrate to vendors that our membership consists of valid prospects for their goods and services. This means that you'll be required to have a minimal amount of registration information filled in correctly to participate. To this effect we'll be flagging accounts with invalid information and asking for certain fields to be corrected. If you don't want to provide any personal details, you'll need to contact one of us to determine if you qualify for a waiver, or else plan on paying for the premium membership out of your own pocket (or your company's pocket).
3. One of the first premium services will be a "Quick Response" forum. Sometimes people have posted and gotten upset when they didn't get an immediate response (See "Good Habits and Bad Habits" for more details). Unfortunately that's what can happen, posters provide free assistance when they can, and their own businesses come first. However, the new "Quick Response" forum will be actively monitored to ensure a more timely response for premium members.

Keep reading the front page, you'll see more posted as we progress! We welcome your feedback, so let me know if you have any thoughts or comments along the way!

Andy Sorrell
Content Manager,
The DSXchange

andy@dsxchange.com