I run a small forum (past 6 years as administrator) and it's around $400US per 2 years for servers/hosting fees for VPS hosting with a company called A2 hosting.com. Unmanaged hosting for those with the time and abilities is cheap, managed hosting becomes a lot dearer. Web hosting is also cheap through them.
I can not afford any such payments myself for the forum and didn't start it but was asked to take over as administrator when the original owner had mental health problems. I was also administrator on the previous forum with 3,000,000 members world wide, again, fully funded by donations but I had absolutely nothing to do with the financial side of that place. I was asked to step up when the owner had a child and no longer had the time but I was happy for him to handle the financial side of the business. I believe that site cost $1500 per month.
The little forum I run, sadly members are dropping like flies (small community discussion forum for members of a much larger defunct forum to keep in touch, some members just got old and passed away sadly). Friendships were formed over the 17 years of the much larger forum being up and a lot of members became online friends. It's just a place for us to keep in touch basically and discuss common interests and maintain friendships formed over a lot of years of getting to know each other.
Every time it comes time to renew servers there's a couple of things I do as the administrator. I have my son search out the best deals/hosts (he programs, runs servers and understands a lot of the finer details that I don't) and I put out a request for donations. At last renewal there were only around 10 members in a position to donate but the funds came in without a hitch in the shortest possible time to maintain the place. There's no donation lists kept or published and everyone participating in the forum are thanked for their contributions, whether financial or content to keep the place interesting.
I have read on here in the past the owner/administrator doesn't want to make it a subscription forum and I wholeheartedly agree. I've also seen mention from a lot of members where they would be only too happy to make a donation to keep the forum running. There's absolutely nothing wrong with accepting donations to keep the forum alive. A lot of people would really miss the place were it to go down.
I myself would like to add to the list of members who would be only too happy to donate. The trick is no precise amount expected, whatever people can afford/are prepared to donate. The funds would roll in so fast and would keep the place running.
If the administrator reads my post a couple of tricks, old hosts tend to be like insurance companies and add loyalty taxes to keep pricing cheap for new clients so it's best to shop around when renewals are due and multi year sign ups save a considerable amount of money.
Thanks for confirming the Paypal link is still down, I thought it might have been my system just now. I prefer to use Paypal so I will wait to see if it is going to be repaired
I've set up an automatic payment of $2 per week to the IIS bank account. I'll never miss it but IIS gets $104 a year. It's a bargain considering the amount of time I spend on this site and the enjoyment I get from it.
Ok sent some via above paypal link...jeez i hope Mike can sort it. Really needs a big sponsor...Corporate benefactor????? I'll try send more later but i am concerned this site has been awesome for years.
Mike a true scholar and gent....and Spartan !
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave221
Just made a donation via PayPal, hope we can save IIS. A regular subscription fee sounds like a good start.
Ice in Space at risk of shutdown
Donated, too valuable to lose!
