Ome
Admin
LV
14
- Messages
- 14,513
- Solutions
- 2
- Reaction score
- 29,455
- Awards
- 31
Following on from the discussions regarding the 'suspended account' thread. here is a more detailed account of the reasoning behind why we need/rely on your donations.
As many of you know, these forums were set up over 25 years ago by a fan of DALLAS. It had a very basic start with a discussion surrounding DALLAS which evolved over the years and became what it is today. The site has no means of earning money and is advertising-free. We have looked into adding advertising, but the traffic is very small and wouldn't generate enough income to cover the monthly costs. We have survived many years from donations, however, the main income has come from the owner, who no longer visits the site. We have had help from members over the years, but that has dwindled down and we understand that the cost of living increase has had an effect on everyone so we understand why members have had to stop donating.
The bill comes due every month, but the company does not send the owner any notice when the site goes down due to non-payment. This latest outage lasted longer because there was not enough funds in the account to immediately cover the bill. We had no idea that he always paid the difference (whatever amount that had not come from donations) and agreed that it was not fair to him that he pay for a service he actually no longer uses. It is up to us, the members who benefit most from the site's existence, to foot the bills for its operation.
If members could donate the price of a cup of coffee once a month (£4) we should be okay to keep the site going for as long as they keep coming. If we end up receiving more than we need, then we will come back and let everyone know and maybe we can change it to £3 a month, or even £1, depending on how many members can help out.
If possible, this needs to be a monthly contribution and if we receive that we can set up an automatic payment that does not need the owner to manually make each monthly payment.
We have had some great donations in the past few days and a huge thank you is coming your way.
Any surplus money, in the beginning, would go towards an upgrade and other maintenance issues.
We have looked for cheaper alternatives, but would struggle to transfer everything over and the cheaper hosting costs would mean we have to trim down this forum and cut out threads with heavy attachments, images, videos and such.
We hope we have covered everything, however, if you have any questions, we will do our best to answer them.
Thank you in advance and long may the forums flourish.
As many of you know, these forums were set up over 25 years ago by a fan of DALLAS. It had a very basic start with a discussion surrounding DALLAS which evolved over the years and became what it is today. The site has no means of earning money and is advertising-free. We have looked into adding advertising, but the traffic is very small and wouldn't generate enough income to cover the monthly costs. We have survived many years from donations, however, the main income has come from the owner, who no longer visits the site. We have had help from members over the years, but that has dwindled down and we understand that the cost of living increase has had an effect on everyone so we understand why members have had to stop donating.
The bill comes due every month, but the company does not send the owner any notice when the site goes down due to non-payment. This latest outage lasted longer because there was not enough funds in the account to immediately cover the bill. We had no idea that he always paid the difference (whatever amount that had not come from donations) and agreed that it was not fair to him that he pay for a service he actually no longer uses. It is up to us, the members who benefit most from the site's existence, to foot the bills for its operation.
If members could donate the price of a cup of coffee once a month (£4) we should be okay to keep the site going for as long as they keep coming. If we end up receiving more than we need, then we will come back and let everyone know and maybe we can change it to £3 a month, or even £1, depending on how many members can help out.
If possible, this needs to be a monthly contribution and if we receive that we can set up an automatic payment that does not need the owner to manually make each monthly payment.
We have had some great donations in the past few days and a huge thank you is coming your way.
Any surplus money, in the beginning, would go towards an upgrade and other maintenance issues.
We have looked for cheaper alternatives, but would struggle to transfer everything over and the cheaper hosting costs would mean we have to trim down this forum and cut out threads with heavy attachments, images, videos and such.
We hope we have covered everything, however, if you have any questions, we will do our best to answer them.
Thank you in advance and long may the forums flourish.
