Hi guys,

In terms of ad placements, I covered this a little in my welcome note. The issue is that we need to have a 728x90 (horizontal) ad and a 300x250 (box) ad in the top-fold of the site, somewhere. The top-fold being the first 900 pixels on the site, height-wise. If you can think of a better place to put that box ad then I'm open to suggestions. Originally we had it above the download button but we quickly changed it when we thought people wouldn't like that even more than where it is now.

Hi guys,

I'm still getting to grips with the new system at the moment. The work process Rappo used was extremely convoluted and obviously made just for him to use, which is something we plan to rectify very soon. To put it into perspective, quite a few admin tasks need to be done via direct queries to the database rather than through any sort of website interface/admin panel.

Sorry about the gaps in current quality of admin work and keep pointing out these things so I can get a better understanding of the system. We'll get there soon.

Thank you for the awesome welcome, Rappo!

I'm going to put the TL;DR at the top of this post for just-in-case reasons and say that very, very little on 5Mods is changing any time soon. The site is remaining the same, there's no plans for any sort of merge with Nexus Mods at this time, and any changes are going to be mostly quality of life alterations in the short term.

With that out the way, I'll be short and sweet and simply say that it's both an honour and exciting to be able to take over the reigns of a site and community as large and established as 5Mods. As a very brief bio, my name is Robin, I'm 30 years old and I live in the UK. I've been running NexusMods.com for coming on 16 years now and I'm proud to be able to host so many awesome mods for so many great games.

Anyway, enough of that, back to 5Mods.

I've been conversing with Rappo for going on 5 months now about anything and everything to do with this community, and while I have a lot to learn about the ins and outs, I'm eager to do my very best.

I want to keep things as "normal" as possible for all of you both in terms of how the site looks and works, but also in how it's moderated and maintained. This isn't about bringing and forcing Nexus Mods rules, styles and etiquettes on to 5Mods, this is about keeping 5Mods as 5Mods for the foreseeable future.

In the very short term we're already making one change right now which I hope isn't frowned upon too much.

We're in the process of finding the right place for our ad slots and unfortunately this does mean changing a few placements as our advertisers are a bit strict on placement -- normally to improve the browsing experience for you. For example, we're not allowed to place ads in places where you could easily mistake a placement for actual content on the site i.e. we can't put a box ad amongst all the search results on the site in case new users mistakenly click the ad thinking it's a file. It also helps to prevent those pesky "Download button" ads from confusing users further. Unfortunately, that's exactly where a lot of the ads currently are (or were) on 5Mods.

Instead, we need to make distinct areas for ads, typically in a "header and footer" system and we must try and keep these placements as uniform as possible. This means having the same number of ad placements on every page. The result is that on some of the pages of the site you'll see less ads than before, but no pages will have more ads than before Rappo passed the site on to us. So it'll either be the same number of ad placements, or less. Right now, it's turning out to be less on quite a few pages.

Obviously 5Mods is quite custom and a one size fits all approach isn't going to work, but we're trying to find the best locations possible that don't detract from the content of the site or confuse users and at the same time trying to remain as sympathetic as possible to the site's format.
I apologise if we get this wrong initially and I would be happy to listen to feedback, within reason, on how we can make the ad placements look better or fit better moving forward. I understand a lot of you are using AdBlockers so this isn't a major issue for these users.

Moving on to the short term (as opposed to the "right now") it is my intention, moving forward, to change the site so it allows for instant approval of new file uploads without the need for admin interaction at the upload stage.

To combat any potential issues that can arise from this we will bolster the moderation team here at 5Mods to ensure the current rules are being followed properly and that any files that don't fit the uploading criteria are handled swiftly. Similarly, we will also look into implementing VirusTotal scans on all new file uploads, much like we have on Nexus Mods, to ensure peace of mind. This is a system that works very well at Nexus Mods and I am confident the same can work at 5Mods, thus reducing massively the delay on releasing new files to the site while also reducing your reliance on me as a bottleneck.

I hope to consult 5Mods users on this topic soon before I implement anything as I imagine it has the potential to spark some controversy.

In terms of "plans", that's it right now. We've got nothing else on the radar for 5Mods other than keeping things going as they always have as much as possible.

If you need to talk to an admin about any issues or for any issues that you would normally talk to Rappo about then your point of contact will now be myself.

As you can imagine, trying to wrap my head around all the inner workings of the site, your etiquettes and culture is almost overwhelming so it's going to take me a little while to get used to things, but I'm determined to do right by you all. So, please bear with me and point out when I goof up to help me learn quicker. I'm in constant contact with Rappo as well so between you all I'm confident I can continue the great work that's already gone on here at 5Mods.

Thank you.