WTF, Instructables?

So, I was wandering around instructables today and discovered their eBooks. Basically, a bunch of related articles put together into one PDF (or ePub if that's your style). My first thought was "Hey, that's awesome!" so I went to download it. ...only to discover that I can't download them unless I have a "Pro" membership... -_^ Also, the download buttons don't show up in FF for some reason...which confused the hell out of me for a while... Though, interestingly, I'm apparently not supposed to be able to download single-instructable PDFs or do the 'view all steps on one page' thing unless I have a Pro account, and my account can do that...idk, maybe because I made my account a long time before they invented Pro accounts so I'm grandfathered in for the features that they made before then?

Anyways, I thought this was not only a dick move, especially since they don't tell you that you have to have a Pro account to download them anywhere in the ebook pages (at least not that I saw) until you go to download them, but also disingenuous and completely against the spirit of the instructables project (at least as I see it). Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for financially supporting the site. In fact, once I get a job again I'll probably go ahead and buy a 2-year subscription ($40) just because that's the only way they have set up to financially support them and I do really believe in the idea of the site and want to support them in their operating costs (and before you ask why I didn't do this a while ago, I only found out about the 'Pro' memberships today). Also, having less ads is worth $1.67/mo, imo. :P

That being said, I still had a problem...that being that I couldn't access the eBook that I wanted. Now, I could have just paid the $1.95 to get a month of Pro now, but like I mentioned before, I think that the whole idea of forcing that is against everything that the site community represents...especially since looking at these ebooks, they're just the PDFs of the various individual ibles pasted together with a ToC...ie, no editing...so I set about finding another way... Well, you know, another way besides just going to the individual ible pages and downloading the PDFs because of the loophole my account apparently has... :rolleyes: I checked with no account and with a brand new account, and it appears this only works for grandfathered accounts like mine, but I found a coding fail. :P Basically, if you click the button, it tells you "go get a Pro account, peasant!"....but if you, say, happen to find out the URL for the PDF or ePub file you want...and just go there...well, I'll let you figure it out. :whistler:

I've been disenchanted with instructables for a while. As soon as they limited the number of pictures you could look at in a single step I got pissed off. It's not a bandwidth issue, it's just to piss people off that want to see how something is done. The site's content is generated by people like me. It's not made by paid pros like Make: Mag, so it pisses me off quite a bit. I would understand having to pay for access to high res images or nicely formatted PDFs for printing, but they restrict viewing an image and 800x600.

It's really easy to get a free pro membership. You can easily get 3 months worth by submitting a cool project with a good writeup and decent photography. If you get featured on the front page you get the 3 months. I have over three years built up, from a combination of winning contests and getting featured.

I think you're right about getting grandfathered in. I had those same features with a normal membership even after pro was introduced.

My only real problem with Instructables is their judging for the contests. I was recently 1 of 20 finalists in their Makerbot contest, in which they gave away 5 Makerbot Thing-O-Matic 3d printers. I ended up getting second place (a leatherman, t-shirt...) but a couple of the projects that won the 3d printers were relatively boring, uninvolved and simple (IMO) compared to mine (my bamboo and carbon fiber bicycle). Something similar happened in the bike contest. I supposed everyone has different preferences, but I still felt gypped.

I agree. The instructables website used to be one of my regular sites. That "Pro" member nonsense has changed it into something I do not like to look at as much.

I didn't know this was a challenge I havent been over there in so long