Post by Martin on Feb 23, 2016 14:45:36 GMT
You may have noticed the new 'Contribute now with Paypal' button at the bottom of the forum...we're working on making it smaller and less obvious!
Upon checking the forum's server account last week, it was discovered that our number of visitors (members, not including guests) page views has risen considerably from around 68,000 in Sept, Oct and Nov up to around 98,000 per month.
This means that while it usually costs around £5 per month for ad-free on the forum, the excess over and above 50,000 page views is charged at a higher rate, leaving a bill for December and January of around £25.
A decision was taken the other day to increase our ad-free page views to 100,000, which will save money, but will still represent a fee increase (probably about £9 per month). Added to the domain name charges and the Proboards server forwarding (allowing us to use the domain name) and we predict the actual hosting costs for the forum from now on will cost anywhere between £125-£150 per year.
It was posted in November 2013 that through the generosity of some of you guys we had funds to cover the next two years, and while this was the case, we can only see the costs rising from now on (a good thing if we're more successful).
So, what all this is about is......we've decided to place an unobtrusive 'Paypal' contribute button at the bottom of the forum. This is there purely to cover admin costs for ad-free viewing (server costs) and is nothing to do with Proboards.
This allows any member to contribute any amount (even £1) at any time.
If, for example, all of the active members contributed as little as £1, once per year, that would be sufficient to keep the ads away and allow us to continue to have our unique forum identity.
What we don't want is for just a few regulars to accept the burden of contributions again - please don't do that, or even think we're suggesting it.
It would allow us to cover actual costs from month to month, and even if only a fraction was raised towards the annual requirement, it would still be a great benefit.
If, however, contributions proved to be over and above what we needed, the excess could be diverted into our group events, or we could sponsor some more charity events.
NOTE: Any contributions are 100% voluntary, and will not in any way affect membership status nor confer any special privilege. Please only consider a contribution if you are able to do so - there is absolutely no pressure or expectation.
------
Please feel free to comment about this in the feedback section, either for or against, and we'll review the situation again in due course.
Thanks
Upon checking the forum's server account last week, it was discovered that our number of visitors (members, not including guests) page views has risen considerably from around 68,000 in Sept, Oct and Nov up to around 98,000 per month.
This means that while it usually costs around £5 per month for ad-free on the forum, the excess over and above 50,000 page views is charged at a higher rate, leaving a bill for December and January of around £25.
A decision was taken the other day to increase our ad-free page views to 100,000, which will save money, but will still represent a fee increase (probably about £9 per month). Added to the domain name charges and the Proboards server forwarding (allowing us to use the domain name) and we predict the actual hosting costs for the forum from now on will cost anywhere between £125-£150 per year.
It was posted in November 2013 that through the generosity of some of you guys we had funds to cover the next two years, and while this was the case, we can only see the costs rising from now on (a good thing if we're more successful).
So, what all this is about is......we've decided to place an unobtrusive 'Paypal' contribute button at the bottom of the forum. This is there purely to cover admin costs for ad-free viewing (server costs) and is nothing to do with Proboards.
This allows any member to contribute any amount (even £1) at any time.
If, for example, all of the active members contributed as little as £1, once per year, that would be sufficient to keep the ads away and allow us to continue to have our unique forum identity.
What we don't want is for just a few regulars to accept the burden of contributions again - please don't do that, or even think we're suggesting it.
It would allow us to cover actual costs from month to month, and even if only a fraction was raised towards the annual requirement, it would still be a great benefit.
If, however, contributions proved to be over and above what we needed, the excess could be diverted into our group events, or we could sponsor some more charity events.
NOTE: Any contributions are 100% voluntary, and will not in any way affect membership status nor confer any special privilege. Please only consider a contribution if you are able to do so - there is absolutely no pressure or expectation.
------
Please feel free to comment about this in the feedback section, either for or against, and we'll review the situation again in due course.
Thanks