Future of Secret Projects Hosting - Donations - decisions to be made.

[PaulMM (Overscan)]

Well, if we get enough money, we could possibly pay for 2 years hosting, or have more options like superior backups, so I would say yes.

[ouroboros]

A little late now, but I have been using Servage.net for several years now and by all appearances they provide reliable service. Perhaps use them as a file/backup dump site?

[PaulMM (Overscan)]

So, I have purchased a new VPS (virtual) server from a company recommended to me by a friend. Its pretty cheap and will allow me to set up comprehensive offsite backups to Amazon S3 with a reasonable total monthly outlay. I prefer this to a backup solution with the hosting company (the current arrangement) as its safer - if the hosting company goes bust then all the data is safely stored with Amazon.


I won't know exact figures yet until I finish the solution design, but I expect the donation fund to last more than a year, perhaps closer to 2 years.


I will be setting up the server over the next week and testing it out with a preliminary copy of the forum software. I am intending to do a migration upgrade to resolve a few minor backend issues which are preventing me from using the best antispammer module currently. I will take the opportunity to test out some possible changes to the forum and will invite a few people to participate in testing.


Once I am happy that the new server is working correctly, I will cut over to the new server (with a few hours downtime to copy the data over), and my friend can then decommission the old server.


The new server is lower specced than the previous server, but 55 euros a month is too much to expect users to contribute to, so we have to downsize and it should still be plenty fast enough for our forum purposes.

[PaulMM (Overscan)]

Forgot to mention, new server is in San Jose, California rather than Frankfurt, Germany. This will improve speed for North American (and Pacific!) users but decrease speed for European users. As the majority of forum users are US-based, this is probably a good thing.

[Michel Van]

i for the moment "on the rocks" do to surgery cost.
wen the cost figures are here, i can donate in begin of early next year.


on Backup
I would prefer additional second backup solution.
Like NAS at one of the forum administrators, if they got one.
Why ?
so good Amazon S3 is, it will one day fail, see the Photobucket disaster in last september.

[PaulMM (Overscan)]

I have a backup of the forum on my PC which I update monthly.


However, Michael, the chances of Amazon losing the backup at exactly the same moment that the webhost lost the server or went bankrupt is pretty tiny.

[Trident]

As I am nowadays in a position to donate, I would like to add my name to the list of people who are prepared to contribute further. Additionally, I would also like to second mz's request for a payment method other than Paypal - any information on this subject?

[PaulMM (Overscan)]

On the Paypal page, it says
 
Don't have a PayPal account?
Use your credit card or bank account (where available). Continue
 
If you click continue you can donate via credit card (possibly debit too?)

[Trident]

The link in your last post doesn't work on my end (says "Sorry — your last action could not be completed") but instead there is actually a credit card payment form directly on the donation link from the first page, so that's fine. I'm going to look into this a bit closer - you might have a donation incoming sometime next week!

[Sundog]

Hell, I don't know why i didn't see this earlier. Is the donation button broken? It isn't working for me. Just give me the account to donate to and I'll send something over. I know I've done it before, but I don't know if you can re-donate through old links at PP.

NM, I saw your link on the first page. Thanks for the great website.

[PaulMM (Overscan)]

I fixed the donation button recently but it seems to have broken again in transit to the new host.

[Gridlock]

I think that you can also list the email address of the PayPal account somewhere, so that even if the donate functionality dies people can still manually send the donation by logging into their PayPal account and choosing "Send Money".


A sustainable option would also be dollar-or-so monthly recurring billing, you'd then only have to gain 40ish "subscribers" to not worry about the server month to month. Not sure if PayPal is best bet for this or some more focused service. I know I'd chip in few bucks a month for this site and I'm hardly a major user.

[PaulMM (Overscan)]

Donation button is fixed.


Courtesy of Mark Nankivil, a small thank you bonus to all donators will be emailed out in the next day or so.

[tartle]

You should have my contribution now!
Great Forum for developing ideas, so keep going!!! I've been on next gen duties for 7 weeks, but Grandson has gone home to mum now!

[northerndancer2000]

I'm sorry I didn't see the small donations needed banner.  (I can get somewhat target fixated when looking for something.)  On the theory of better late than never, I've shot a donation out to you. 


This is a great place and I've learned so much from you all.  Thank you.


J F F