Mike
Well-Known Member
As you've doubtless noticed, there have been some changes made to the site. The good news is that you won't have to endure these changes for long.
After spending the last week, weighing all the options, I've made the painful decision to close the T-Bucket Forums.
I actually was preparing to do just that, back at the first of the year. The site had outgrown its hosting package again and was going to require a rather large financial commitment to keep up. Monthly expenses had exceeded what I was willing to spend out of pocket, some 2-3 years ago, and without support from the members of this site, we were going to be dead in the water. I really couldn't see the way forward and was resigning myself to closing things down at that time. A small percentage of our members stepped up with donations that were going to allow us to expand into much larger quarters, so I decided to carry on as before. Since October 2006, I've done everything I could to ensure we were running on the most robust and functional software. I've worked countless thousands of hours, trying to tweak things to run faster and smoother. When members asked for a photo gallery, I added one. When members complained about slow page loads, I purchased better hosting. When members requested a tech library, I nearly drove myself insane, setting one up. When members requested a member's map, I waded into a Beta script that fought me for several days, setting up a map. Late last October, an upgrade to the forum script nearly killed our search engine traffic and I've just managed to get that turned around in the last 6 or 7 weeks. I don't even want to think of the time I've invested in getting that snafu squared away.
A small handful of you could see none of this just magically appeared on its own and you financially supported the site. Frankly, I think the members who decided against offering any financial support should be doing this, because it was them who were realizing the benefits, but I'll step up and offer you my gratitude. Some of you have made overwhelming donations and have requested anonymity. And I've tried to be a good steward of those dollars.
We've been blessed to have such faithful support from the forum sponsors over the years. It took a lot of trust on their part to give this wee forum their hard-earned profits and on behalf of everyone here, I want to thank each one of them for being there to help.
This past month has been an interesting one, to say the very least. When we started experiencing problems with some Windows/Internet Explorer users having problems logging in, I never imagined it would require such a huge investment of time to find a work-around. Over the last month, I've spent nearly 200 hours, trying to sort out the problem.
I wanted to get everyone up to speed with the latest gallery script and spent countless hours working through the teething pains of a Beta script and upgrading it through all of the growing pains to the final release version. I upgraded the member's map script (twice), upgraded the classifieds script and upgraded the tracker support script.
None of which addresses the bad penny that seems to like coming back to play more head games, refereeing all the normal day-to-day squabbles and helping out members who have forgotten their passwords or cannot figure out how a forum feature works.
Monday, I received the invoice for the renewal of all the licensed software that drives this site. And I began to question what this is really all about. Today, the first message in my InBox was the invoice to renew the hosting for the month of May. And so I visited the site to see donations fell $65 short of the quota for the month. Which might seem like no big deal to the majority of you, because you've never really paid attention to that quota anyway. But it is a big deal to me and I am not willing to risk spending that much or more, again next month.
The icing on the cake? I discovered a member had sent me a Private Message, offering to make me a deal. If I were willing to lift the Warn Status on his account (which is at 0, along with everyone else), he would be willing to "be good" and abide by all the forum rules and regulations. Pretty good deal, aye? He apparently feels he's done something wrong, but if I lift his warn status, he promises to play by the rules. Do I look like a babysitter, or what?
So here is how things play out from here. Damned if I'm going to spend 350-400 hours of my own time, each month, working to make this site better and then have to dig into my own pocket to cover the donation shortages to boot. Paying for the right to spend all my free time here just isn't part of my plans. Screw every last bit of that. To those who have made donations over the last month, I have covered the donation shortage out of my pocket, to keep the site open until 31 May. All of this has really left me in a rather rotten mood, so don't be surprised to discover the forum closed to all except forum sponsors and those who have donated to keep the forum afloat.
Yeah. I know. It's upsetting to me, as well.
After spending the last week, weighing all the options, I've made the painful decision to close the T-Bucket Forums.
I actually was preparing to do just that, back at the first of the year. The site had outgrown its hosting package again and was going to require a rather large financial commitment to keep up. Monthly expenses had exceeded what I was willing to spend out of pocket, some 2-3 years ago, and without support from the members of this site, we were going to be dead in the water. I really couldn't see the way forward and was resigning myself to closing things down at that time. A small percentage of our members stepped up with donations that were going to allow us to expand into much larger quarters, so I decided to carry on as before. Since October 2006, I've done everything I could to ensure we were running on the most robust and functional software. I've worked countless thousands of hours, trying to tweak things to run faster and smoother. When members asked for a photo gallery, I added one. When members complained about slow page loads, I purchased better hosting. When members requested a tech library, I nearly drove myself insane, setting one up. When members requested a member's map, I waded into a Beta script that fought me for several days, setting up a map. Late last October, an upgrade to the forum script nearly killed our search engine traffic and I've just managed to get that turned around in the last 6 or 7 weeks. I don't even want to think of the time I've invested in getting that snafu squared away.
A small handful of you could see none of this just magically appeared on its own and you financially supported the site. Frankly, I think the members who decided against offering any financial support should be doing this, because it was them who were realizing the benefits, but I'll step up and offer you my gratitude. Some of you have made overwhelming donations and have requested anonymity. And I've tried to be a good steward of those dollars.
We've been blessed to have such faithful support from the forum sponsors over the years. It took a lot of trust on their part to give this wee forum their hard-earned profits and on behalf of everyone here, I want to thank each one of them for being there to help.
This past month has been an interesting one, to say the very least. When we started experiencing problems with some Windows/Internet Explorer users having problems logging in, I never imagined it would require such a huge investment of time to find a work-around. Over the last month, I've spent nearly 200 hours, trying to sort out the problem.
I wanted to get everyone up to speed with the latest gallery script and spent countless hours working through the teething pains of a Beta script and upgrading it through all of the growing pains to the final release version. I upgraded the member's map script (twice), upgraded the classifieds script and upgraded the tracker support script.
None of which addresses the bad penny that seems to like coming back to play more head games, refereeing all the normal day-to-day squabbles and helping out members who have forgotten their passwords or cannot figure out how a forum feature works.
Monday, I received the invoice for the renewal of all the licensed software that drives this site. And I began to question what this is really all about. Today, the first message in my InBox was the invoice to renew the hosting for the month of May. And so I visited the site to see donations fell $65 short of the quota for the month. Which might seem like no big deal to the majority of you, because you've never really paid attention to that quota anyway. But it is a big deal to me and I am not willing to risk spending that much or more, again next month.
The icing on the cake? I discovered a member had sent me a Private Message, offering to make me a deal. If I were willing to lift the Warn Status on his account (which is at 0, along with everyone else), he would be willing to "be good" and abide by all the forum rules and regulations. Pretty good deal, aye? He apparently feels he's done something wrong, but if I lift his warn status, he promises to play by the rules. Do I look like a babysitter, or what?
So here is how things play out from here. Damned if I'm going to spend 350-400 hours of my own time, each month, working to make this site better and then have to dig into my own pocket to cover the donation shortages to boot. Paying for the right to spend all my free time here just isn't part of my plans. Screw every last bit of that. To those who have made donations over the last month, I have covered the donation shortage out of my pocket, to keep the site open until 31 May. All of this has really left me in a rather rotten mood, so don't be surprised to discover the forum closed to all except forum sponsors and those who have donated to keep the forum afloat.
Yeah. I know. It's upsetting to me, as well.
