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I’ve had a think about this and whilst I think it’ll need to be one or the other – list of contributors OR running total. If you have both we might as well post exactly who posted what since you can deduce one from the other over time and I don’t think that would serve any good purpose.
Perhaps we can have a special forum and anyone who has contributed can post to say so – then it’s up to them… personally I wouldn’t want my info disclosed if I had donated but maybe that’s just me.
As far as I’m aware the aim of this whole finances thing isn’t to introduce new elements of competition as to who gave what but also more importantly not to create more admin, but to hopefully lighten the load of running costs a bit and if there’s some left over then there’s time/money to develop the site further.
I email each of the contributors to say thanks too but tbh I’d leave it at that – surely that the site continues to run as hassle-freely as possible is the point?
For example I could probably have fixed the remaining duff pics links in the time it’s taken to word this and the last post, both of which are threads which only exist because of the discussion about financing the site – *nothing to do with syncros*.
This was one of my initial concerns re even discussing the financing of the site in the first place when it’s been floated as an idea in the past since it could very quickly get to the point where I’d pay the hosting fees just to not have to answer questions about the ins and outs of running of it (because I’d rather be working on my syncro) – which was basically how it’s been run so far.
The reason I went along with it was that firstly my work has changed a lot over the last year or so and whilst I’m much happier in my work, I don’t earn anywhere near as much as I did so the running costs of the site are more relevant, plus now it’s on it’s own server which compounds the previous but primarily if it did work and coster were covered and then some, it might mean we actually have some working capital/time to progress the site further whcih might be its best chance to evolve, since none of us seem to particularly have oodles of spare time to give to it so far.
However, this is not design by comittee and my jury is still out on whether we’ve done the right thing…That said, it has been very nice to see that people actually do care enough about the site to contribute.
Before, the site was hosted on a server run by a friend of mine as a favour, however he’s done a few favours for people and a couple of his sites have done rather well (itvibe.com for instance) and his box has been slowing down a fair bit as a result.
As part of my work I run a website selling DVDs (www.acidgfx.com) which has also been running on a different server also as a favour, but that site has grown massively since we started selling DVDs by download and has got to the point where it could do with its own hosting, but because of the enormous space requirements for the DVDs and the integration to the webserver its own server was really the only option even though it doesn’t really warrant a whole server to itself financially.
This site now sits on that new box along with a few small sites for friends and family who have specific website requirements and all pay a modest hosting fee and help recover the cost of the box and the time it takes to manage it.
The upside to this technique is everyone gets very good hosting because there’s not many sites on the server – where normally you might have fifty or a hundred small sites on a box like this, we’ve currently got about ten, but the burst bandwidth requirments of my DVDs site means I couldn’t put that many sites on here – i.e. it we loaded the box up with as many sites as it would normally have, it would all grind to a halt once a few people started downloading DVDs at the same time.
The long term implications are that if my calculations are wrong or there are other unforeseen problems, I’ll have to spend more time earning money to pay for it since it’s on a 12 month contract.
Given the size of this site and the attached photos etc if I were hosting a similar site for someone else I’d say it would probably be about £20/mo, allowing in that a little bit of support time for if things go wrong etc.
So basically if it made that back over the year in donations that would make a noticable positive difference, since it would make this site one of the last remaining contributors needed to mean the server is actually close to paying for itself… which in turn would probably give it and all the other sites on it the best chance of hassle-free long-term-running.
The “recent expenses” are simply the cost of taking on the box and figuring out how to make it fly under its own steam, other than that nothing is changed. It’s a copllection of the sites nobody else wanted or could host because of unreasonable requirements in some way.
If it turns out that the site has collected more than that in donations then firstly *fantastic*, but secondly it might mean there’s some working capital to fund other projects like developing the site further or the legal costs of t-shirts round two
That’s The Plan anyhow…does that more or less cover it?
ah I need to do a search and replace on the whole forums database chris – I’ll try and sort it asap.
hi guys yeah sorry for the lack of info but it’s there… I realised looking at another site that we ought to have it in the 3 main currencies – i.e. UKP, EU and USD for members’ convenience. I’ll amend soon though
modereators pls see other updates regarding pics…
hmm will mull it over – sounds quite good though.
I suppose if someone doesn’t then log in again within 6 months the account could be deleted just like usual…so for those 1-post wonders it works as a for sale fee with free attached 6 months membership, and for any new long-term members who keep their account alive and post, it costs them nothing to continue.
Perhaps the best way to test it would be to just implement it from now on – anyone who’s already a member can stay so. I guess we can just send a paypal invoice to the new signups or I’ll knock up a paypal checkout page and then people can send the payment along with their registration…
does that sound unfair to anyone? How does £2.50 sound? that’s no more than about $5 is it?
I’m still in two minds about this – on the one hand having some sort of revenue from the site would help contribute towards the cost of the server which is definitely a good thing – but on the other hand I don’t want to start a segregation between those who’ve paid and those who haven’t…
I was wondering whether we could offer other perks to so called “premium” members… e.g. access to a private ftp server which could have on it a LOT of useful stuff which is no longer available like SSPs, scans of syncro brochures to name but a few. However then theoretically we create a segregation – and why should some of the more long-standing members have to pay when they actually provide much of what is on offer (like chris said).
I’d have thought that if we were to talk to a number of car-related suppliers we’d proabably be able to quite easily negotiate discounts, but we also need to bear in mind this needs to work globally since our members are all over the place and a 5% discount from demon tweeks isn’t much use to Les in Canada.
Also either then things like logins for said FTP server need updating regularly or eventually they get passed around (as they do/fact of life) and the structure gets eroded and we end up with everyone on vortex/clubgti forums pillaging our server.
It seems like the only thing which is fair is to get some kind of contribution as people directly take a benefit from the site – like the 1-post for-sale wonders but even there as has been mentioned before that might prevent them posting and thus the members might miss out on some genuinely interesting stuff…plus it then needs looking after to make sure it runs as planned which is also extra admin for someone or extra programming for someone else.
I for now guess we could just put a paypal donate button on the front and see what happens…
Hi – sorry for the error – but yes chris is correct we’re on the new box
Apologies for the lack of notice but there was a window to transfer it and I took it.
I reinstalled the server three times in all before I was happy with the config and this time around I clearly forgot a couple of the DLLs this site uses. Sorted now though – I haven’t checked yet whether subscriptions are working too but they should be.
So far I’m very pleased with the new box – I’ve been getting consistently excellent speeds off it despite it being quite modest hardware and so far everything has worked ok on the newer windows server platform. This should give us a number of options for the site so I think could be a very positive move.
ah yes apologies – i had to make some changes to the setup – I’ll post with a new link once it’s all stable
ok thanks for info all – bought a new server yesterday (one fo the uk ones) and have just uploaded the site – if you coudl let me know how it runs please:
http://london.acidgfx.com/webs/VWSyncro_co_uk/
If it all works ok I’ll switch the domain name across asap. I reckon I’ll disable the forum for this site once it’s been switched – otherwise we’ll get chaos with posts getting left on the old site..
