Hey folks, we wanted to let you know that we will be turning off Listings and Credits on DEV. We will be making this change today, and everyone with existing credits will be able to use their credits via Promoted Billboards and/or receive a refund for purchased credits.
We're making this change to focus more on features that are pivotal for our members, such as the home feed experience and essential building blocks for the open-source Forem project. Unfortunately, we've never been able to invest adequately in Listings to make it a core feature.
Although the idea of a marketplace remains relevant within the community, we're incorporating it into a broader strategy that focuses on the most impactful elements.
To replace many of the functionalities offered by Listings, we've been investing in Billboards. These are flexible display areas we use as admins to target specific messages to particular members, and we now allow members to do the same via a similar system to Listings and Credits. You can access these features through our Pro Tools service.
Pro Tools enables you to create Billboards to promote within the community or to display alongside your organization's content. Like Listings, Billboards can be targeted based on tags, geographies, and other criteria. To use Pro Tools, you must be an admin of a DEV Organization, which is free to create on DEV.
Additionally, we're offering advanced insights, metrics, and APIs to help you understand your organization's content performance on DEV. This feature is available immediately and will continue to improve. We're also exploring how to extend Pro Tools to individual user accounts in the future.
What Happens to My Credits?
If you sign up for Pro Tools and link your account, we'll automatically detect any credits you've earned or purchased on DEV. You can use these credits to promote Billboards through Pro Tools' Credit Purchase flow. You can also use unlimited Billboards alongside your organization's content without using credits, benefiting from the same A/B testing features available in Pro Tools.
We will also be reimbursing and re-funding all current live Listings and reaching out directly to folks who might miss this message. The process takes a few steps, and we will begin today and sew everything up within the next few days.
A Continued Focus on Privacy and User Experience
We emphasize privacy and a positive user experience in our development of Billboards. All billboard serving occurs within DEV, and if other Forems adopt this feature, it will remain a closed loop there as well. You have the option to disable promoted Billboards and restrict their appearance next to your content in your settings. We view these as generally adding value and are committed to maintaining this quality.
You can browse how Billboards work within the Forem codebase.
If you would not be a user of Pro Tools yourself, we encourage you to forward the tool along to someone you work with who might want to promote an event, job listing, or developer-facing product or service.
If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to ask in the comments or via yo@dev.to. Those who've found value in Listings might be disappointed, but we're confident that this shift represents a more significant, long-term investment in our platform's features.
Happy coding!
Top comments (22)
Sounds like big improvement. I like it 👌
The Listings is clear, but what about Credits? When users receive a badge, you present credits. Is it changed now?
Yeah, we’re turning off credit awarding for the time being. As mentioned, all legacy credits can still be applied to Pro Tools for promoted impressions.
We may reintroduce credits for badges in the future but would be in a simplified capacity.
I never noticed that you get credits when you get a badge!
I mean, I haven't used credits so I haven't been looking particularly hard but I didn't realise there was a link.
My personal opinion is that credits for badges is a good motivation keeping members active. A little gift for good content and achievements is worthy 😌
If we're admins of multiple orgs, how do we connect those to the forem pro account? For example, I'm admin of Virtual Coffee and OpenSauced, but I can only figure out how to get one there:
Hold tight, we have this functionality behind a feature flag and had been handling it via support, but I think we are pretty much ready to turn this on.
I'll circle back shortly, this could go live today. Thanks for highlighting this.
thank you!
Okay, this has shipped — you can now see this in your
Account SettingsYou can either link a new DEV Org to your current Pro Tools Team, or create a new Pro Tools Team for that org — depending on whether the same team manages multiple DEV org, or the same person manages two distinct orgs on DEV, which each deserve a distinct team on Pro Tools.
Let me know if you run into any problems.
Is there a deadline for the migration? Or will dev.to indefinitely remember the amount of remaining credits I have (i.e., until I sign up for the Pro Tools in the future)?
This is currently indefinite, but we will provide ample notice of 6+ months when we ultimately put a deadline on this.
I'm all in for the better system. And that users can just opt-in or opt-out, I think it's very reasonable. I always unsure with the effectiveness of Listing, putting all the promotions in one bucket.
Let say my organization has two members on DEV. Both has 5 Credits, how would the system handle it, we can only link from one account?
Technically they could each sign up for Pro Tools and add pool them to a team there — however, I could see how that would be confusing. You can contact us and we'll make sure to work it out for you, but I will also circle back and see how we can modify our logic to more intuitively handle this situation.
When it doubt, we are very much seeking to accommodate everyone and provide ample support.
Looks great!
Happy to test this new system.
Note Dev is currently offering 10k free impression (150€ value).
But I think there's a bug: if you convert your existing credits to impressions, and then try to buy credits, you don't get the 10k free impressions. Make sure to do the actions in the opposite order until they fix the bug 😅
Thanks for the heads up — confirmed the bug, we'll patch this.
Have you reached out to support to get your credits? If not, I can treat this as a ticket and backfill your free 10k.
Thanks!
I sent them a message at yo + billing 30minutes ago ;)
Just wanted to mention it here in case anyone else had the issue.
While we are at it, I have some questions.
What's the role of this form? Is it worth filling it?
Do you have another advertising system in place that is suitable for small accounts?
Some initial feedback:
This is what I see currently, and it's not going to be easy to manage visually 😅
Tried to set up a Forem Pro account to transfer my credits...but I have to create an org to do that?
If I make an org, how do I then link my username so my credits transfer, do I have to add myself to my own org?a
Hi,
Just letting you know that listings references are still coming through via e-mail newsletters/digests.
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Thank you for the transparency and letting us know the reasons.
I opened the site on my phone, stared at the dashboard for a moment, and I was like, there seems to be something wrong, missing or different, hmm🤔
But then the notification cleared it out 🫠