Hosting costs 2014 - all donations gratefully accepted :)

[Thomas W-P]

Just a quick note to say I have paid for another year's hosting. Donations have been good this year already, so costs are covered, but as usual any donations are gratefully accepted.

For those that don't know I am recovering slowly from three broken ribs and a sprung shoulder joint sustained in a mystery bike crash (flat straight road with no traffic, nephew heard me yell and turned to find me unconscious and covered in blood - I remember nothing). I am still rather delicate and my physical confidence has been knocked. My recovery relapsed badly a couple of weeks ago when my dear old dad collapsed and died whilst playing tennis with undiagnosed heart disease. So I am rather delicate emotionally too.

I do hope to include the erg in my recovery, but my left shoulder is rather weak and pathetic at the moment.

[Paul Victory]

Thomas, I'm so sorry to hear that terrible news about your father. The last couple of weeks must have been a dreadful time for all your family.

Look after yourself and make sure you are fully recovered before going anywhere near an erg (or a bike for that matter).

[Stan]

Thomas, many condolences over the sad news about your father. As Paul says, look after yourself!

[nervtoeter]

My condolences, get well soon and take your time.

[Jill]

Thomas, many condolences to you and your family on the death of your dad.

We both appreciate how much you contribute to the running and upkeep of this website and hope that you make a full recovery.

Take care
Richard and Jill Underwood

[Jarflax]

Thomas,

My condolences, losing a parent is very difficult.

James

[strider77]

Really sorry to hear about your Dad Thomas, my thoughts are with you mate

[redshell]

Thomas,

So sorry to hear about the sudden death of your Dad.....my thoughts are with you and your family

[Rodger]

My condolences for the loss of your dad, Thomas.

[CamiCrew]

Thomas I'm sorry about the loss of your dad, that is very sad news. Condolences to you and your loved ones in a difficult time.

Take care with the shoulder recovery.

LInk for those who may not know how to donate toward hosting:
http://www.freespiritsrowing.com/conten ... donations/

Thanks for all you do here, Thomas, and for taking care of admin tasks like payments even when you have many other things on your mind.

[commodoreann]

Thomas,

We both send our condolences to you. We understand how difficult this period of life is for you and your family.

Ann & Peter

[Thomas W-P]

Thanks for all the good wishes. I don't even remember posting that. It has been a bit of a blur these last three months.

My ribs are OK, my shoulder improving and with counselling I am becoming more myself. Onwards and upwards.

[Jill]

Dear Thomas - good to hear about the improvement to your injuries and hope that you carry on making progress.
Also glad that you are finding the counselling beneficial - just being able to chat away to someone can be a help.
Take care.

Best wishes
Jill and Richard Underwood

[Recess]

Just a quick resurrection of this thread...

Plummy and I were talking about the hosting costs of this forum at the weekend - and although I floated the idea of Google Ads to pay for it - we got on to talking about paying a £5 yearly subscription for it. The problem is, what do you get for your £5? Meterboard access? A different part of the forum? That would be a good reward, but would the lack of the free meterboard put off a lot of the silent members of the forum, and make them go elsewhere?

So I got to thinking - how about just a badge of honour? I'm a member of bikeforums.net and although they've now added a whole bunch of complexity to the membership of the forum, they used to have a basic 'Premium Membership' - you paid £5 - and got a red star next to your name. Nothing else.

It was just a badge of honour to show that you supported the forum.

Is this an option? Pay £5 a year, get a special icon next to your name?

John

[gregsmith01748]

I'm not sure how I feel about the badge idea, but I have an alternative idea. If we designated a specific month of the year as "pledge drive" month. For that month we nominate a "pledge captain" who just takes on the job of tracking progress to our funding target. Essentially a daily post to the forum saying how many donations and the total donation amount to date and the distance to the goal.

We could also take a page from national public radio and incorporate a free spirits logo swag selection as part of the donation process. You know, donate 10 pounds and get a FS sweat band. donate 20 and get a tee shirt. I imagine we don't even need to do that, but it might be a good way to improve team identity.

By the way, I'd be willing to be pledge captain, if you like. Just help me understand the total need and give me a way to look at the paypal transactions, and I'd be happy to annoy people.

[Rodger]

Just a quick resurrection of this thread...

Plummy and I were talking about the hosting costs of this forum at the weekend - and although I floated the idea of Google Ads to pay for it - we got on to talking about paying a £5 yearly subscription for it. The problem is, what do you get for your £5? Meterboard access? A different part of the forum? That would be a good reward, but would the lack of the free meterboard put off a lot of the silent members of the forum, and make them go elsewhere?

So I got to thinking - how about just a badge of honour? I'm a member of bikeforums.net and although they've now added a whole bunch of complexity to the membership of the forum, they used to have a basic 'Premium Membership' - you paid £5 - and got a red star next to your name. Nothing else.

It was just a badge of honour to show that you supported the forum.

Is this an option? Pay £5 a year, get a special icon next to your name?

John

Sounds good to me. An icon on the meterboard should raise the number of members that are aware of the hosting cost issue and make the pool of contributing people larger.

Greg, your idea doesn't exclude John's, does it? It could be another layer placed on top of the premium member icon when that one on its own doesn't result in enough contributions. I'm not against it, but I would hate to be the 'designated pledge driver' if the job was to rotate between members.

[Rob C]

Thomas is the one who knows what traffic this site generates, and thus what hosting resources are needed. Back in this thread last August he said costs were covered, which is why I didn't put in, but would do so, if I can, when next he says funds are needed.

I run a couple of small sites that perhaps don't get as many active visitors as this, but those cost less than £50 for a year. On the other hand I also operate some dedicated computer gaming servers, which need more potent hardware and bandwidth, and those can cost £50 a month if you want to support a load of simultaneous players. I'd suspect this site is somewhere in between, hedging for the lower rather than higher range of those expenses. I don't think we need to know actual costs.

If more money would allow greater things than are done at present, then fine. Otherwise, and I'm not sure that we need to know actual costs, unless Thomas starts shouting that he needs more cash, is there a need to fix a problem that doesn't exist?

Of course if someone is running something else on behalf of FreeSpirits that is also incurring a cost (hosting, or perhaps just significant time) then they should also say so and perhaps some funds could be diverted their way too?

[JonT]

I've looked through this thread and can't actually see how much a year is required. Have I missed something?

I'm more than happy to help out because I get so much motivation and enjoyment from being part of the group.

Jon

[Thomas W-P]

Hi guys

The costs are $10 a month with icdsoft. The donations help but don't cover it year on year though I stopped counting it years ago. There is a page with stats but I never look at it. I will put the URL in here if I find it. I don't think that there is that much traffic in the grand scheme of things.

Added:
http://www.freespiritsrowing.com/stats/
User/password is bangers/mash

The big problem is (hah!) motivation. I barely row now (though I always intend to) because I discovered cycling (and its dangers ). Case in point is that the site needs an upgrade and I've just not got around to it. The upgrade is quite large and erases all the work I did a few years ago on look and feel .

I still feel a Free Spirit though! Funnily enough I was looking at the upgrade yesterday so it is on my mind. I also need to get my head around the new season. Restarting the meterboard was problematic last year and I got some way to making it automatic this and future years but stalled and don't remember much...

Regarding badges, I have thought about that. You could have a donator badge? I also looked at handicapping the meterboard until x people have donated, but never implemented it. I like the idea of a rank for donators.

If I actually cleared a profit (never my intention!!) I guess it would motivate me to sort things out but that would be the only point. I don't need the money.

Cheers

[Thomas W-P]

You have spurred me in to action:

1) Updated the 3.0.x site (this one) to the latest version.
2) Copied the site over to the dev server and got it working - you can see that the look and feel is completely destroyed
http://dev.freespiritsrowing.com/forum/

[Recess]

Crikey that's a very 'standard' look to it! How much work did it take to get the current version into looking how it is? Does the option still exist in the update? I have up running forums a long time ago for this very reason. Updates would either break it completely, or none of the formatting I did would carry over - and I'd have to do the redesign all over again.

As for gathering money, I like all of the options discussed. My badge idea seems (to me) the simplest to implement if we want something to show we've done something. Greg's fundraiser idea is great - though needs someone to take charge of it. Buying a sweatband for $5 more than it should be is a good idea - though would you do this every year?

You'd have top hope we could all donate $5 a year - it would only take 24 of us to meet the costs after all! But I guess it's easy to miss / avoid / forget when it comes to actually donating (I know I missed and forgot last year!!)

Do we need to have a specific fundraising date, or is it better to come through in dribs and drabs for you?

And I assume you wouldn't want to add a Google Ads banner at the top of the page?

John

[plummy]

I think handicapping the meterboard until a donation is received has plenty of mileage. I would exclude anyone under 16 having to pay though, to encourage the youngsters.

Given the value the team site and meterboard has for people I would be astonished if people couldn't/wouldn't stump up £5/$5 a year to stay part of it. Any excess could be put towards team kit, race fee entries, anything we want and maybe raffle them off.

[Paul Victory]

I think handicapping the meterboard until a donation is received has plenty of mileage. I would exclude anyone under 16 having to pay though, to encourage the youngsters.

Given the value the team site and meterboard has for people I would be astonished if people couldn't/wouldn't stump up £5/$5 a year to stay part of it. Any excess could be put towards team kit, race fee entries, anything we want and maybe raffle them off.

I think we should leave it completely voluntary, but we should have a fundraising target each year and update the outstanding balance. It could be made a sticky at the top of the main forum. People can still contribute after the target has been reached, but having a reminder that there are unfunded amounts will prevent people forgetting about it. I've paid a few quid from time to time, but need to be reminded or I won't think of it.

One of the great things about Free Spirits is the freedom. There are hundreds of people on the meterboard who never post in the forum. I kind of feel that having people identified as not having paid a sub goes against our ethos.

Just my two cents worth (or should that be £5) and this is more a gut feeling than a well thought out argument. I'm happy to go along with whatever's decided.

Paul V

[dr3do]

I think we should leave it completely voluntary, but we should have a fundraising target each year and update the outstanding balance. It could be made a sticky at the top of the main forum. People can still contribute after the target has been reached, [...] One of the great things about Free Spirits is the freedom. There are hundreds of people on the meterboard who never post in the forum. I kind of feel that having people identified as not having paid a sub goes against our ethos. [...] Just my two cents worth (or should that be £5) and this is more a gut feeling than a well thought out argument.

This one describes perfectly, how I'm feeling about a "£5 fee" for every member. I would prefer too, to keep it voluntary and would prefer not to get a badge for a donation. But I find it very important too, that the costs are covered, even with some some sort of "over reach".

[Rob C]

A compulsory fee would drive many casual free spirits away from the site and be counter productive. Contributions should remain voluntary. A badge of honour may work, but it depends on how easy it is to administer. Some forum systems have mods available that can create a subscription and that may work, but it all adds to complication and something else to break or have a potential security hole that needs patching.

Thomas will have stats available via the hosting as to how many visitors the site gets compared to regulars. But ads are rarely productive for smaller sites that don't generate traffic and especially unique visitors.

It doesn't surprise me that upgrading the forum software in turn breaks a lot of the styling and templates. Each main version of the software will have it's unique layout. If there are any mods to add functionality those will be broken too. It's why a lot of sites don't upgrade until forced by being that out of date they are vulnerable to hackings or whatever.