Suggestion For Forum Funding

[2.0]

Those are hypothetical perks taken from 3 or 4 boards that had the system like that from the start. It would take a lot of discussion if anything were to be implemented, because you have some basic perks right now and you don't pay for them now. The ones i mention would mostly take away or greatly diminish most of what you have right now.

[Jobe]

Other ideas for perks (that mean losing some privs you have now) include for example images in signatures. Where as a regular member you couldn't have images in your sig but as a VIP/Donator/Whatever you could.

[*AJ*]

2.0 said that already :p
Re: the forum needing structuring for the purpose of adding perks isn't that long winded and more work for the admins to do? Also, doesn't that mess around with the bandwidth too?

[Nay]

Not buying .com domains would also be a nice way to save money ;)

[Jobe]

Nay, but then not buying them means someone else can buy them and then use the maliciously.

*AJ*, The only extra work for Admin's would be checking issues in the subscription system if any, and the initial setup. Other then that it's all automated.

[Fender]

A .com domain isn't that expensive, certainly not as dear as they used to be. We're paying around £10 a year for ours and I'd be more than happy to bung a few quid Pete's way to put towards the running costs of this forum to ensure its survival, as I'm sure others would.

I think, given the current situation, that introducing tiered membership with perks and so forth may be a bad move. I would suggest that donations be requested on a purely philanthropic basis rather than for anything that other fora might then offer free.

[storm]

If it's not too rude to ask, how much does the cost of running a forum come up to? From reading the other posts the cost seems to be £5 (.net), £55 (if leased licence), £10 (.com) = £70 (total). (I had no idea where to start looking on bluehost's website for hosting costs...) Also, are some of these costs one-off or do they all need annual payments?

And, does Peter get any revenue from that little ad at the top? Does he get revenue based on the click through rate or...would we have to buy/register on their website? If it's just a matter of clicking...I don't mind. I'm with those who support getting ads placed to help with costs. It's just more stable, more neutral, and automatic.

[LazyPanda]

Originally Posted by Saffron

All the suggestions that have been offered are to do with increased priviliges for payment (or limited priviliges without payment if you want to look at it that way).



There is nothing that would prevent any registered user posting, or being involved in the forum discussions (with the exception of the VIP boards that 2.0 mentioned)



So anyone in that situation would still be able to participate.

I wouldn't stick around if I weren't able to fully customize my EVERYTHING. I'm very big on that, actually. If I were stripped of the ability to customize my avatar, sig, page, etc... and the only way to get them was to donate - and I had no feasable way of doing so? Frankly I'd tell the board where to go and how to get there.

[Jobe]

Originally Posted by LazyPanda

I wouldn't stick around if I weren't able to fully customize my EVERYTHING. I'm very big on that, actually. If I were stripped of the ability to customize my avatar, sig, page, etc... and the only way to get them was to donate - and I had no feasable way of doing so? Frankly I'd tell the board where to go and how to get there.

It wasnt really a case of not being able to, was more of a case of being able to do more if you donated, as in more then you already can.

Like another popular perk is the ability to close or even delete your own threads.

[2.0]

Originally Posted by Jobe

Like another popular perk is the ability to close or even delete your own threads.

That would open up the question of thread ownership.

[*AJ*]

Originally Posted by 2.0

That would open up the question of thread ownership.

That's a debate of it's own

[Jobe]

Originally Posted by 2.0

That would open up the question of thread ownership.

That can be addressed in the rules. And is also useful for example for "Help" threads where the user being helped may not want any more replies after the problem has been solved.

[Nay]

Originally Posted by Jobe

Nay, but then not buying them means someone else can buy them and then use the maliciously.

I laughed. We're no corporation here, and I'm sure the 50 people that post here at a given moment in time could get over some mockery by an individual who spends money on giving us a bad name (which is no loss to the community, I'd say)

Anyway, what I was trying to say with that statement is that if Peter lacked resources to keep this place running, he wouldn't have bought a .com domain.

[2.0]

From my point of view, .com domains aren't that expensive. From network solutions, which is a pretty standard registrar in the marker, it's $9.95US a month for a 1 year contract, or $89US for a multi year contract. We're not talking thousands here.

How much would increasing bandwidth on bluehost cost? I think it'd be reasonable to find that out before arguiing that anything is a waste of money.

[Nay]

I pay quite little for my own hosting. Okay, it's 250MB traffic a month, because I really don't need more (I'm not sure how much this forum would need, per month, but I doubt it's too much), and it's 100MB server space. I pay €30 (£24) a year. So even if a .com is £5 a month (=£60 a year), you could get 2.5 GB traffic a month with 100MB server space, with my host.

So, that was the position I was arguing from.

[Fender]

I've just checked with the company we registered with, reg-123, and the pricing for domains is as follows:

.COM is £8.99 a year
.CO.UK is £2.79 a year
.NET is £8.99 a year

Prices exclude VAT @ 17.5% but, even so, it's certainly not expensive. That includes web and email forwarding, full DNS control and so on.

The main expense for a busy site would be bandwidth, but I thought Pete had a pretty good deal with his host anyway? I can't remember the details but I seem to recall the bandwidth allowance was fairly substantial.

[2.0]

According to the whois on the website "ATTN: isketchorum.net 1,500 GB storage and 15,000 monthly bandwidth".

It also says "1,500 GB Storage and 15,000 GB Monthly Bandwidth for ONLY $6.95 per month."

15,000 GB seems like quite a bit. And for seven bucks a month... that's mighty cheap.

[Jobe]

If iSketchForum has 15000GB monthly bandwidth, then they're nowhere near reaching it when the forum gets suspended for resource use. Even if that figure was on MB making it 15GB, iSketchForum still doesn't come anywhere near that.

So that leaves only the hosts rather strict processor usage limits. Which with the number of times it's affected iSketchForum with such a low load seem way over the top.

[Peter]

I'm flattered by the amount of people saying they are willing to donate but I'd feel a little guilty seeing as I do occasionally use the hosting for testing sites and I have a couple of other domains hosted on there (there's nothing on them though) lol.

This is a breakdown of the costs of running the site yearly:

$80 for hosting+domain (although it only costs $80 if you buy two years at a time)

$8.88 for the isketchgallery.net domain.

$10 for the isketchforum.com domain (I'd forgotten I'd even bought this - lol!)

$40 for the vBulletin license renewal.

$39 for the gallery license renewal (although I don't renew this yearly as it's not a massive part of the site).

So it's costing $140/year pretty much, or just under $180 if you choose to include the gallery software license.

I'm not a huge fan of the idea of giving people who donate special privileges cos it might create a bit of a divide which discriminates against people who can't/don't want to donate.

Someone has mentioned the ads (Jobe I think). The bring in hardly any pennies (I've attached the earnings report for the last 6 months so you can see for yourself). It's a .csv (Comma Separated Value) file that can be opened in most spreadsheet/database software. I hadn't checked the amounts in ages and to be honest I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered I'd made $45 dollars in the last six months because I wasn't expecting anything at all, lol. All the same it is not a massive amount so if you see an ad that interests you (there's a lil ad box at the bottom of the forum homepage) I encourage you to click it. I'm not saying "click the ads" because that's not allowed.

Someone else mentioned bluehost and there was also some speculation of what they offer in another thread about downtime:

Bluehost offer 'unlimited' bandwidth. I use quotes cos basically we're on a shared server so if we got greedy their fair usage policy would kick in and the site would get suspended for a number of days. We only currently use 4-5GB/month which, imo, is well under the limit (whatever that may be). We also have unlimited disk space so there's no concern there as we're currently only using 2GB.

If or your friends ever need PHP web hosting I would definitely recommend them as I did my research and they are the best value for money - they offer a lot of features, amazing resources, very good support and even SSH access. Be sure to use my affiliate link though and the proceeds will go towards the forum.

[db1986]

I wouldn't mind making a small contribution. I think it's a good idea.
As for these "perks", I've seen VIP members on other fora who must get extra features "attached" to their profile, and other features like this.
I will still be helping Saff on the competition side of contributing too. That's as long as I don't run out of ideas