This went totally off topic but anyway...
but you asked me for example how you could add monetize options before social features or making the site more engaging right? I am going to list (in detail) how you can:
I asked you that long before and I have mentioned several times that I won't consider any extra money making feature in Chevereto V3. That's Chevereto V4, a complete version focused only in "money making features" so I'm not considering any of those and my focus is to end V3.X cycle which means improve what we have and add those most wanted and must-have features (like comments).
Gender, Age and Country fields during sign-up
These additional fields would take < 1 hour to implement and they do not need any other function as of now other than for our database to know such additional details. That said, please add them immediately.
Problem is that I don't see a considerable amount of users requesting that. It doesn't matter if the request take me 1 hour, 1 week or 1 month. I do stuff that will benefit more people, not just a bunch or in this case just one person. Also, I don't see any modern service asking you for gender, age and country.
It would allow your Chevereto clients to build (actual) niche websites and to show advertisements to specific people or ages or groups or ethnicity and/or region. Can anyone argue the power of catering to niches? Not a single person on the internet will argue with that.
I believe that niche is made by content and fortunately I'm very close to guys that make a living out of ads and none of them was able to confirm this assumption you just made. Usually the ad network will flag you in a certain niche based in your content and then the ad network display the ads based in other cookies/info that they have about the user. This is how AdSense and just everybody else works. So I don't quite see the argument here.
...and since such social features and not quite "there yet" shouldn't they be on the bottom of the list? Look; Chevereto does not have a robust API that would allow us to compete with the 10,000+ mobile apps that already have such social features. Did we forget that people use mobile apps these days? Lets be realistic; they are great features but allow me to repeat myself --- time is money.
Nope. Because that API you mention needs to hook the methods added by the missing social features you mention and basically, API 2.0 will be the last thing I will do in Chevereto V3.X. Chevereto is responsive, that's enough for now.
Originally your script was strictly hosting and it's an incredible script for that. However, with 3.X (2 years ago); you catered to a lot of new backend things that left our users un-engaged for 2 years.
Chevereto V3.0 was introduced two years ago but that doesn't means that the system hasn't improved. I really suggest you to open this page
https://chevereto.com/changelog scroll down, and then scroll up and check everything that has been added to the system.
But how did adding several storage services more engaging for them?
You want a larger website isn't? Then you need the machine and the resources to afford larger wesbites. External storage servers are a must and that's why I added them in V3.5.0 (Oct 2014).
How did that allow Chevereto clients (the admins) to move forward with monetization?
Try to monetize a website that doesn't work 100% all the time. You need those external storage servers, period.
Maybe I see things that people don't. That i am not sure of --- but what I am sure of is that 80% of the sites in your "showcase" thread are no longer registered, no longer using Chevereto or parked.
Showcase is optional, those are not the 100% Chevereto websites out there. Based on V3.X, there are something near 5,000 installs out there and based on 2.X there are like 2,000 websites out there.
Finally, I understand that some features are a must for you, but that doesn't means that exactly what you need is a must for the larger audience of Chevereto users. This is a script developed for several clients/users, try to understand that.
