Content Paradise complete site overhaul announced!

[quietrob]

@Alisa Of course you have a cornfield. It opens up everytime you shut down a thread! Please note that EC and I have made our peace and sing kumbahya around the campfire. For now. (got nothin' but love for ya, bro!) I want to stay out of that cornfield. You never know who you might find in there.

@Ken1171 I have no problem buying from CP and have done so this year. That extra fee is completely optional...on THEIR part. As it has been noted several times, CP is the only one that does this. Choose not to pay the fee., have an accident with your HD and you are in a world of hurt if the backups were on the same drive. If I buy content here at the Hive and the same thing happens I simply download again. Forever or until the site goes belly up. I made the mistake of buying from a vendor directly from his website. That website is out of business and I am forced to save up to buy some content that I bought before as the backup was on the failed drive or I'm at the mercy of the Vendor. Vendors are very busy people so I will say no word against them. My problem is not their problem. Some have even sent me a download link, within minutes of my request (which I accompanied with a electronic reciept). @Ghostman comes to mind immediately. He felt my pain. He'll also feel my gratitude once Sweetheart is feeling better again. I will remember though had I opted to get some vendors a lesser piece of the pie and bought the offering from an established website, I wouldn't be crying in my beer right now.

I just dropped by Content Paradise. The redesign has my approval. It's clean, works quickly and everything is larger for my old eyes. Much much better. I'm no web designer but I know what I like and after a minute or two of surfing around, I like the new site. They are also currently rocking a sale and a fat 25% off coupon good until Tuesday, the 19th. I like sales. I like coupons. To paraphrase my favorite silver screen moviestar, "It's like money". Not only does it carry Poser goods but I also see some DS only items for Genesis 3. I love competition and camaraderie between companies. Keeps the prices down and the innovations up.

It appears they are learning.

 

[Hornet3d]

@Alisa Of course you have a cornfield. It opens up everytime you shut down a thread! Please note that EC and I have made our peace and sing kumbahya around the campfire. For now. (got nothin' but love for ya, bro!) I want to stay out of that cornfield. You never know who you might find in there.

@Ken1171 I have no problem buying from CP and have done so this year. That extra fee is completely optional...on THEIR part. As it has been noted several times, CP is the only one that does this. Choose not to pay the fee., have an accident with your HD and you are in a world of hurt if the backups were on the same drive. If I buy content here at the Hive and the same thing happens I simply download again. Forever or until the site goes belly up. I made the mistake of buying from a vendor directly from his website. That website is out of business and I am forced to save up to buy some content that I bought before as the backup was on the failed drive or I'm at the mercy of the Vendor. Vendors are very busy people so I will say no word against them. My problem is not their problem. Some have even sent me a download link, within minutes of my request (which I accompanied with a electronic reciept). @Ghostman comes to mind immediately. He felt my pain. He'll also feel my gratitude once Sweetheart is feeling better again. I will remember though had I opted to get some vendors a lesser piece of the pie and bought the offering from an established website, I wouldn't be crying in my beer right now.

I just dropped by Content Paradise. The redesign has my approval. It's clean, works quickly and everything is larger for my old eyes. Much much better. I'm no web designer but I know what I like and after a minute or two of surfing around, I like the new site. They are also currently rocking a sale and a fat 25% off coupon good until Tuesday, the 19th. I like sales. I like coupons. To paraphrase my favorite silver screen moviestar, "It's like money". Not only does it carry Poser goods but I also see some DS only items for Genesis 3. I love competition and camaraderie between companies. Keeps the prices down and the innovations up.

It appears they are learning.

I am glad you are getting such a good response from vendors and your experience shows why it is not good to depend on web site downloads as a sole back up. The point with any backup strategy is not to have the potential for a single point failure, which appears to be what happened on your case but, whatever the reason, I hate to hear of anyone losing data. Really glad you seem to have limited the damage and a round of applause for the vendors.

Like you I like the new design and they should be applauded that they have taken the trouble to resurrect something that has been abandoned for so long. If other companies were to take the same attitude there would be a few more pieces of good software that we could make use of if we so wished.

I hope that they do drop the backup fee as it clearly upsets a number of people and what little they gain by it seems to be easily lost by putting people off shopping there. Happily it will not stop me shopping there, I will just not pay for the download and I will shop there as they give me access to vendors who I have supported in the past but I have not been able to for a while thanks to my self imposed ban from buying from another site.

On the wider point I think we should show some support for the effort they have put in. If they do not see any return for their efforts other than a lot of criticism they may well come to the conclusion their efforts were a waste of time.

 

[eclark1894]

I am glad you are getting such a good response from vendors and your experience shows why it is not good to depend on web site downloads as a sole back up. The point with any backup strategy is not to have the potential for a single point failure, which appears to be what happened on your case but, whatever the reason, I hate to hear of anyone losing data. Really glad you seem to have limited the damage and a round of applause for the vendors.

Like you I like the new design and they should be applauded that they have taken the trouble to resurrect something that has been abandoned for so long. If other companies were to take the same attitude there would be a few more pieces of good software that we could make use of if we so wished.

I hope that they do drop the backup fee as it clearly upsets a number of people and what little they gain by it seems to be easily lost by putting people off shopping there. Happily it will not stop me shopping there, I will just not pay for the download and I will shop there as they give me access to vendors who I have supported in the past but I have not been able to for a while thanks to my self imposed ban from buying from another site.

On the wider point I think we should show some support for the effort they have put in. If they do not see any return for their efforts other than a lot of criticism they may well come to the conclusion their efforts were a waste of time.

And if they don't hear anything "negative" they may think their work is done and call it a day. You people need to stop the fear mongering and yes, that's what it is. You don't want to say anything critical because you might hurt someone's feelings. But the point is, criticism, both critical and being mean is how we improve ourselves. I'm always critical of my renders. But I'm always striving to improve myself. Truth be told, and trust me, I've been to ALL the stores in the last month or so, and they could ALL stand some improvement in some areas. Including, DAZ, Renderosity and yes, even Hivewire. But I'll just keep those criticisms to myself. God forbid I have a better shopping experience anywhere. and don't want to make anybody cry.

 

[Hornet3d]

And if they don't hear anything "negative" they may think their work is done and call it a day. You people need to stop the fear mongering and yes, that's what it is. You don't want to say anything critical because you might hurt someone's feelings. But the point is, criticism, both critical and being mean is how we improve ourselves. I'm always critical of my renders. But I'm always striving to improve myself. Truth be told, and trust me, I've been to ALL the stores in the last month or so, and they could ALL stand some improvement in some areas. Including, DAZ, Renderosity and yes, even Hivewire. But I'll just keep those criticisms to myself. God forbid I have a better shopping experience anywhere. and don't want to make anybody cry.

I think you may have misunderstood I was not saying do not criticise, hence my suggestion that we show some (not total) support for their efforts. I fully support those who feel upset by the download charge to complain in an effort to get it changed. Personally I think the fact they have made the changes they have to be much more important, put another way, I would have been far more disappointed if they had removed the charge and left the site as it was.

If you did not misunderstand, then that is OK with me, your opinion is as valid as mine, I just tend to have a balanced outlook on most things in life, which is strange as some of my friends and family regard me as being mentally unbalanced in many areas.

 

[Deleted member 325]

Extremely disappointing in CP. Not an overhaul at all. Worse, changes that were promised were not made. -_-

Guess SM really does want support for Poser to die off.

 

[Glitterati3D]

And if they don't hear anything "negative" they may think their work is done and call it a day. You people need to stop the fear mongering and yes, that's what it is. You don't want to say anything critical because you might hurt someone's feelings. But the point is, criticism, both critical and being mean is how we improve ourselves. I'm always critical of my renders. But I'm always striving to improve myself. Truth be told, and trust me, I've been to ALL the stores in the last month or so, and they could ALL stand some improvement in some areas. Including, DAZ, Renderosity and yes, even Hivewire. But I'll just keep those criticisms to myself. God forbid I have a better shopping experience anywhere. and don't want to make anybody cry.

And, if they get no credit for what they do, they'll just say "screw it, we can't make them happy no matter what we do" and quit listening at all.

There is nothing wrong with pointing out there is still much left to do to make their customers happy.

What is not OK is constant, non-changing criticism no matter what steps they take.

Ever had a boss who said "still not good enough" no matter how much time and effort you put in to do what he asked?

 

[eclark1894]

And, if they get no credit for what they do, they'll just say "screw it, we can't make them happy no matter what we do" and quit listening at all.

There is nothing wrong with pointing out there is still much left to do to make their customers happy.

What is not OK is constant, non-changing criticism no matter what steps they take.

Ever had a boss who said "still not good enough" no matter how much time and effort you put in to do what he asked?

Tracy This was a good first step, but seriously, the changes made so far have been mostly cosmetic. Maybe it's the language they were using by promising an "overhaul" of the site and delivering what basically amounts to a fresh coat of paint. So as i told Miss B over in the SM forum, I'm willing to take a "wait and see" attitude, but I have no qualms at all about telling them "hey you missed a spot!"

 

[James R.]

And, if they get no credit for what they do, they'll just say "screw it, we can't make them happy no matter what we do" and quit listening at all.

There is nothing wrong with pointing out there is still much left to do to make their customers happy.

What is not OK is constant, non-changing criticism no matter what steps they take.

Ever had a boss who said "still not good enough" no matter how much time and effort you put in to do what he asked?

Well said.

Some people are determined to only see the flaws they want to see, to the exclusion of any good thing that exists.

The CP and Poser teams truly are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

 

[James R.]

FWIW, I was told by marketing, "it's a work in progress, but it's started and that's huge".

I agree. They're working on it. And believe it or not, they're listening.

They just might not give every individual every feature every individual demands or shape the store the way someone demands in an angry forum post.

Give it some time, guys. Please.

 

[Ken1171]

I also had a HDD failure back in 2013, and lost all the work I did in the previous 3 years, plus all of my Poser runtime. For the Poser runtime, I just reinstalled from backups - I don't trust store downloads at all, since some of the stores no longer existed, whether or not they charged for extended downloads.

3 years of personal work may sound like a lot, but it could had be much worse if I didn't have backups for the rest of it. I have neglected how frequently I was backing things up, but now I have learned my lesson the hard way. I now backup more often, and that is that. I can't blame the stores that have closed. The moment I buy something electronic, it is my sole responsibility to keep a backup copy of it. Many stores actually say that when they provide the download link, and given my HDD's sudden death, I now believe that even more than ever. Consider I was keeping a backup copy on the SAME drive, under a separate partition - how stupid is that?

I can't speak for CP, but I think the (100% optional) extended download fee is standard practice among software retailers. They all do that, so I don't think SMS would even understand a request to have it removed, in the same sense that Corel wouldn't understand it. If Poser is eventually sold to yet another software retailer in the future, they will charge for extended downloads too, because that's common practice.

It is not helpful to compare SMS with DAZ, because they are NOT software retailers. Not the same line of business. We can't expect them both to function the same way. Each line of business have their own business rules. Poser is one out of many other software they sell. DAZ makes contents for living - apples and oranges.

 

[Hornet3d]

It is also true that, if this is a lifetime download facility, or at least for the lifetime of the store, there is a cost to this. They have to store the current product files anyway but if they hold on to the products that are no longer in the store that is extra storage medium required and extra storage space that is needed for back up. One of the reasons there are very few cloud storage services that offer unlimited storage.

 

[Miss B]

It is also true that, if this is a lifetime download facility, or at least for the lifetime of the store, there is a cost to this. They have to store the current product files anyway but if they hold on to the products that are no longer in the store that is extra storage medium required and extra storage space that is needed for back up.

Very true Hornet, but every other 3D content store has the same fees and issues with their web host's servers, and yet they don't charge for downloading again when you lose, for any reason, the copy of the product you downloaded when you first bought it, so I still can't rationalize their decision to do so.

What offends me the most is their setup to add the fee automatically into the Cart. I think they could set it up so you "choose" to add it to the Cart, if you want it. Then you wouldn't have to deal with removing it for every purchase.

Also, and I just discovered this yesterday when I was looking through my account History and Wishlist. The History covers everything it had since SM took over Poser and CP, but I was shocked when I checked my Wishlist, which should've been empty. It wasn't. The one item in my Wishlist, is the fee for extending downloads past the initial month. It would NOT surprise me if somehow that's how it shows up all the time in the Cart, even if you don't want it. Well, I just deleted it, so it will be interesting to see what happens the next time I decide to make a purchase there.

 

[Janet]

I bought this cat there several years ago: Cheshire Cat I lost it and could not get it replaced. But considering they are making improvements and I now use Amazon cloud service for backing everything up, I might just buy it again. I used to back up on portable storage devices but they always go bad after a few years.

Edited to add: The graphic at the top of the site looks fantastic!

 

[Hornet3d]

Very true Hornet, but every other 3D content store has the same fees and issues with their web host's servers, and yet they don't charge for downloading again when you lose, for any reason, the copy of the product you downloaded when you first bought it, so I still can't rationalize their decision to do so.

What offends me the most is their setup to add the fee automatically into the Cart. I think they could set it up so you "choose" to add it to the Cart, if you want it. Then you wouldn't have to deal with removing it for every purchase.

Also, and I just discovered this yesterday when I was looking through my account History and Wishlist. The History covers everything it had since SM took over Poser and CP, but I was shocked when I checked my Wishlist, which should've been empty. It wasn't. The one item in my Wishlist, is the fee for extending downloads past the initial month. It would NOT surprise me if somehow that's how it shows up all the time in the Cart, even if you don't want it. Well, I just deleted it, so it will be interesting to see what happens the next time I decide to make a purchase there.

Of course that is true and I agree that it should not be added automatically and I honestly feel they should lose it as it seems to upset many, I was just making the point there is a cost. You do have to look at the full package though and the prices at CP seem to be lower than some of the competition. Some the the prices elsewhere are way above CP and so they can well afford the cost of storage.

While I feel that the fee should be discontinued I do worry that some people see the ability to download as a replacement to backups and that is a very risky attitude in my view.

 

[Hornet3d]

I bought this cat there several years ago: Cheshire Cat I lost it and could not get it replaced. But considering they are making improvements and I now use Amazon cloud service for backing everything up, I might just buy it again. I used to back up on portable storage devices but they always go bad after a few years.

Edited to add: The graphic at the top of the site looks fantastic!

I agree that the graphic is absolutely great and they look to be supporting 3D artists in general which is not true of all marketplaces and, to a degree, is against the trend.

 

[eclark1894]

To be honest, I don't know if CP even has a full time staff. I don't think so. This is probably the most attention the store has had since SM acquired it.

 

[Ken1171]

I still can't rationalize their decision to do so.

I have explained this above - it's a common business practice among most software retailers. I am not saying it's good, but instead that nearly all of them do it.

What offends me the most is their setup to add the fee automatically into the Cart.

Agreed. Many software retailers used to do this in the past, but have changed in the recent years. I think SMS is the only one I know that still does it.

The graphic at the top of the site looks fantastic!

Yes, and Dawn is being featured there! ^___^

To be honest, I don't know if CP even has a full time staff. I don't think so. This is probably the most attention the store has had since SM acquired it.

I suspect they might be as understaffed as the old Poser team was. This might explain why it's difficult to get things through. By far not as fast as people expect from them. We have a similar situation right here with the HW staff.

 

[Miss B]

I suspect they might be as understaffed as the old Poser team was. This might explain why it's difficult to get things through. By far not as fast as people expect from them. We have a similar situation right here with the HW staff.

Yes the HW "staff" is a very small group, but look at all the "volunteers" we have here willing to help out wherever, and whenever, they can.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

I don't actually have a problem with the extended download fee being added automatically. It's a reminder that if I want to be able to download that product after the initial download period, I need to purchase the extended download. Easy enough to uncheck it.

It would be more a shock if I later went to download a lost product only to realize I couldn't because I'd forgotten to add the extended download fee.

But then too, I rarely buy from Content Paradise, so maybe for those who shop there a lot, it is annoying to have to constantly remove the fee.

Too bad it can't be an opt in kind of thing where you set the fee to either never be added automatically, or always be added automatically. But of course, what would probably happen is that if you had opted out, the first time you added the fee to an order, it would change your setting to opt in. Computers think they are SO smart.

 

[eclark1894]

I don't actually have a problem with the extended download fee being added automatically. It's a reminder that if I want to be able to download that product after the initial download period, I need to purchase the extended download. Easy enough to uncheck it.

It would be more a shock if I later went to download a lost product only to realize I couldn't because I'd forgotten to add the extended download fee.

But then too, I rarely buy from Content Paradise, so maybe for those who shop there a lot, it is annoying to have to constantly remove the fee.

Too bad it can't be an opt in kind of thing where you set the fee to either never be added automatically, or always be added automatically. But of course, what would probably happen is that if you had opted out, the first time you added the fee to an order, it would change your setting to opt in. Computers think they are SO smart.

That's actually the problem. Computers don't think. They do what they've been told.