Z31Performance.com - Donation Drive - Updated 10/17

WOW you guys, just WOW. Sorry I have not updated the total in a few days, but some bad news and some GOOD NEWS. I was just adding up the donations and we have exceeded the goal. In under a week, we raised over $1150 from donations!

The bad news is that after I had my eyes set on a VPS (Virtual Private Server), I started comparison shopping and ended up talking with sales personnel at three other hosting companies. I was told what the first company said the exact opposite of: That a VPS soultion won't offer good performance for a PHPBB3 forum with a large SQL database. :-( Could I make a bigger frown face here?
Anyway, I confirmed this with a very db-savvy aquaintence in the IT department at work; when using features like search are being used to query the database, page load times and everything else would virtually (no pun intended) come grinding to a hault momentarily. This means one person bombarding the "view new posts" could massively slow down the forum for everyone. We can't have that, so dedicated server option it is. The problem is that's a lot more money… the benefit of a few hosting packages I'm looking at is that they offer tech support WAY beyond simply fixing issues. They can deliver customized forum layouts, install MODs, update software and ensure the best available security (so we won't ever get hacked like what happened ~4 years ago when we were running phpbb2). There is also a 100% uptime promise to go along with that…

Personally I am leaning towards wanting to improve the forum in every way possible, even if it means spending a little more money. Just to throw it out there… I am willing to put up more out-of-pocket expence in complete transparency (IE you'll all know the costs) if it's desired. It's also time to get the forum sponsors to renew. At the very least we should have AT LEAST year paid for at this point, and I will be taking this "donation drive" global announcement down this week.

What will the new costs be? I think a yearly drive a month before needed would be a good option. We all seem to live on here these days, I would not object to a yearly drive.

+1 Even just 5% from the sales, that just about no one would get if it weren't for this site making it possible, I think would easily cover the costs. You may be able to sell the parts without z31p, but the z31 would not be getting near as much attention as it is if it weren't for this site providing the info and motivation for owners.

I'm all for a reasonable approach… but I kind of feel like the forum 'making a cut of the money' on people's sales is getting out there… If people make money easier (selling parts, services, etc) by the forum being here, they can donate of their own good nature or just enjoy it for free without paying like many do. I've commented on how many people have donated, and I'm really impressed that as many people were willing to kick in some dough to help make things better. THat really speaks to having a great community of people here.

The rate is $159/month or $1908 per year for everything included. Subtracting my current hosting fees (for two different hosts) from that and it's still ~$110/month more. The hardware would be an Intel atom dual core, 4gb ram and 80GB storage. SSH/root access, 24/7 monitoring and a Managed backend so we could easily implement features such as a realtime chat, etc.

I think if that much needs to be collected each year then more incentives could be added for donations. Right now we have the donation badge, but we could do stuff like make different levels of badges for donation amounts… maybe add in a forum section available to people who donate (donator's social lounge or w/e). These incentives could last for a year after the donation to provide incentive for helping the site each year, even if a little bit. A new badge could show how many years said person has donated, etc.. These are just things that I have seen on other forums. It's better to not have "elitist" items like these I think, but something has to pay the bills!

I think alot of people would like that approach, I for one do not want anything special for helping. I feel it is the least I can do to have a place to gain and share knowledge.

Thats not a horrible deal for what we would be getting but, I do see the shock value there compared to what you had initially looked into. I say we just keep the drive going till we can at least hit that mark. I will donate more as I can, Ill have to admit I am one of the new posters. I have been wearing that button out since I have been unemployed the last month, hell I may be the big cause of it alone sadly.

I definitely think that doing a percentage of classified sales is a stretch and would stifle the part trading or people would just go around it. I personally think the additional incentives sounds good. We could do tiers for donations and for example:

Threw 5 bux towards the cause.

Our club server is VPS. We got double the posts, active users are 50-250 at same time. Search is used. We never had any problems.
But we use SMF forum software and db is converted from YaBB -> phpBB -> SMF :-?

Usually sales persons do not know how the products actually works. They want to sell better becouse they get more money.

Sent $30 your way for now. Without these forms, I don't think I'd even know anything Z31 related.

So it was you who did it! I always knew you were up to no good shromy! :nanan?re

[quote]juanchoturbo85z31 wrote: Had to learn the hard way just like the others. lol.

+1 I would also enjoy having the search & view active topics back.

Just donated $30 for the cause.

Sent a support donation today.

KUTGW

Sent a donation. I'll send more when I get back from cruisin the seas for 7 months