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Fundraising - hosting fees - thanks to everyone who donated
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David Matzdorf
Site Admin
Joined: Mon Oct 29, 2007 4:06 pm Posts: 5321 Location: Islington, London UK
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Fundraising - hosting fees - thanks to everyone who donated
I have to start a new post about this, because updating the old one didn't really work. I hate hassling people for money, but we have to do it.
Our web hosting subscription expires in January and we don't have enough money in the GOTE account to pay for another year. In the past, we have paid for 3 years at a time, because we get a considerable discount, but the fees have increased sharply - more than doubled. To an extent, the increase is related to recent unfavourable changes in the USA/UK exchange rate.
When I updated our earlier post in October, we had about £50 available. Now we have £115, thanks to donations totalling £65 from five members and one non-member. One year of hosting costs £177 and three years cost £443 (a 16% discount). So we aren't close to being able to cover the charges.
There are other expenses coming up next year, such as renewing our domain name. We also need to update the forum software (this is long overdue) and that will require us to pay for the service.
So we need to raise a few hundred pounds in order to continue. It would be good if we can pay for the hosting well into advance and avoid having to hassle people for money every year.
We really don't want to lose the accumulated experience and knowledge here after nine years of discussion and imagery. We have 1,600 members, of whom several hundred post, and the admin team can see from the activity reports that we usually have more than 10 guests reading the forum at any time (there are 14 right now). There are 103,000 posts on 10,000 topics and members contribute an average of 31 posts per day.
So if you want the forum to survive, can we please ask you to put your hands in your pockets and contribute what you can. There is a PayPal "Donate" button on every page.
Many thanks in advance.
David Matzdorf SITE ADMIN
_________________ 51º33'07"N x 0º07'21"W
43m (142 feet) ASL
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Fri Dec 09, 2016 9:02 am |
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David Matzdorf
Site Admin
Joined: Mon Oct 29, 2007 4:06 pm Posts: 5321 Location: Islington, London UK
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Re: Fundraising - hosting fees - we have *almost* enough mon
People have been very generous and we now have enough cash so we don't have to close the site down. Thanks to everyone who has pitched in.
If we can raise another £100 in donations, we can renew for three years, which brings with it a 16% discount. Thus we could save money and avoid having to ask for donations for a few years.
I also hope (but don't know for sure) that another £100 would enable us to cover the domain name fees and to do a long-awaited update on the forum software. We're still using a version that is several years old.
The hosting renewal is due for payment on 27 January, which is 9 days away. If we can collect enough to do the three-year renewal by then, then we will. If not, we will pay for one year and revisit the situation next winter.
Thanks again to everyone who has contributed. We have had donations not only from members, but from a couple of people who never joined, but just like to read the site. At any point during a typical day, we have 10-20 guests from all over the world reading the forum. Right now there are 18.
David Matzdorf SITE ADMIN
_________________ 51º33'07"N x 0º07'21"W
43m (142 feet) ASL
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Wed Jan 18, 2017 11:29 pm |
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David Matzdorf
Site Admin
Joined: Mon Oct 29, 2007 4:06 pm Posts: 5321 Location: Islington, London UK
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Re: Fundraising - hosting fees - thanks to everyone who dona
We had just enough money to renew the hosting service fort three years. That enabled us to take advantage of a discount of about 20% over the single-year price. We also need to upgrade the board's phpBB software, which is going to cost some more money, and the domain name later this year, so we need to raise a bit more. If we can do that, then we can stop hassling people for a year or two . Many thanks to everyone who donated; a couple of people gave substantial amounts. We really appreciate it, from everyone. David
_________________ 51º33'07"N x 0º07'21"W
43m (142 feet) ASL
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Fri Jan 27, 2017 12:17 am |
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Mark Botanicus
Joined: Thu Nov 29, 2018 10:51 pm Posts: 33 Location: Kent UK
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Re: Fundraising - hosting fees - Site data allowance? etc.
Hi David, just out of interest, how many MB/GB of data does this site use (transfer) a month ? Just interested :-))).
_________________ .... a complete sucker for anything odd/quirky/spiny/nasty and amusingly toxic.
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Mon Dec 03, 2018 4:21 pm |
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David Matzdorf
Site Admin
Joined: Mon Oct 29, 2007 4:06 pm Posts: 5321 Location: Islington, London UK
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Re: Fundraising - hosting fees - thanks to everyone who dona
I don't know. We don't support uploading images to the site, only the use of postimage.org and other third party hosting sites, which keeps it down to a manageable level.
We've had great difficulty over a long period with the hosting service over updating the software (which is still on a very old version) and doing regular backups (which are nearly impossible to do without multiple attempts and frequent errors).
Getting information on usage/transfers/bandwidth is also a thankless task.
_________________ 51º33'07"N x 0º07'21"W
43m (142 feet) ASL
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Tue Dec 04, 2018 3:57 pm |
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