A quick state of the forums address
- Thread starter Mike
- Start date
Thanks, I'll get my bags packed for the move. 
Mike
Well-Known Member
I'm running an instance of IPB as a test site and I really like it. There are some things that are a bit different, but once you sort the differences, it has a bit more of a 'professional feel' about it.
I would like to start converting sites the first of the week, but we shall see how that plays out.
I would like to start converting sites the first of the week, but we shall see how that plays out.
Mike
Well-Known Member
One of the other sites will be converted on Monday, so we will have a live site you will be able to see, real soon.
I think you are going to really like Invision. Everything about it is so much smoother and more polished. I was always impressed by vBulletin, but Invision just blows vBulletin out of the water. It's good stuff, trust me. (Notwithstanding the near $1K I spent to set it up on all four of the forum sites!!)
Here are some screenshots from the test site. On the left is the forum index page, the middle is the portal page and the right is the gallery page.
I think you are going to really like Invision. Everything about it is so much smoother and more polished. I was always impressed by vBulletin, but Invision just blows vBulletin out of the water. It's good stuff, trust me. (Notwithstanding the near $1K I spent to set it up on all four of the forum sites!!
)Here are some screenshots from the test site. On the left is the forum index page, the middle is the portal page and the right is the gallery page.
Mike
Well-Known Member
It is a nice format and it really is very easy to use. I find that whilst it is completely different from what we've been using, it is more intuitive.
This is one of those times I always try to avoid. I hate talking about money, partly because I know I don't have much and I know I'm not alone in that aspect. When I was appointed my pulpit, I warned the congregation that I was not and had no plans to be a fund-raiser. And that hasn't changed.
But facts are facts, so there's no sense ignoring the elephant in the parlor.
We have a rather small cadre of loyal members that have been regularly donating to support the operating costs for the forums. In case you were wondering, all those members whose forum usernames show up in blue are supporting members. They have found the site to be worth kicking in a few bucks to help keep it alive and growing. Without them, this place would not be here, because the site has grown well beyond being a hobby site to be hosted on a $4.95/month shared hosting package.
A few months back, several members asked for some sort of idea of what it was going to take to keep the doors open around here. It can be a difficult figure to sort, because costs can (and usually do) vary from month to month. But I sat down and figured if we can pull in $150/monthly, that would pay the bills. $150 puts nothing in my pocket, puts no food on my table, puts no gas in my vehicle, pays no utility bills, etc. The costs of running the site eat up that much money each year.
Then someone mentioned it would be nice to see some sort of representation of how donations were doing each month. So I added a script to give you a graphic representation of how well or poorly we were doing each month.
To be frank, that has been more than faintly reminiscent of the forum T-shirts everyone had to have, a year or so back. Everyone wants, wants, wants, but when the rubber hits the road, everybody takes a powder.
When Internet Brands threw me the curve ball on their software upgrade expenses, I could see it was time to start looking for an alternative to vBulletin. And I used what was left of the T-shirt profit to purchase a new package from Invision. By the time the smoke cleared, about $325 changed hands, so I could continue to provide you with the same forum functions and experience as you've enjoyed to date.
Let's look at some numbers here -
July donations - $90.00
August donations - $125.00
September donations - $95.00
October donations - $125.00
By my tally (and I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, so correct me if I err), that is a total of $435.00. Which, by my calculations is something around $165 short over the four-month period.
I don't like to be sobbing on anyone's shoulder, but my job is going away on me. I lost my health insurance package about a month back and I'm actually surprised we worked last week. Unemployment in this area is at 17%. In Friday's newspaper, there were a total of ten jobs listed in the classifieds. All minimum wage opportunities.
Neither unemployment or minimum wage is going to allow me to pay the mortgage. Over the last couple months, I've been jettisoning unnecessary expenses. I really don't need the Wall Street Journal delivered each day. Who really needs luxuries like call forwarding? As for HBO, Showtime and the like, those offerings are over-rated anyway. The trip to Scotland next May wasn't really necessary, so those plans got scrapped.
I cleaned up an old Pentium II PC, installed Linux on it and turned it into $100.00 so a fellow could have an InterWeb box. Who has the time to keep up an aquarium, so I'm trying to find a buyer for my 55 gallon set-up.
Sadly (no actually, I am pissed more than sad), I'm going to have to sit down and write an ad to sell my Total Performance kit. I can't afford to move forward with it and I damn sure can't eat it or burn it for heat. So my decades-long dream is going to have to go.
Are you getting the point here?
Let me see, it's the first of November. Which means if I open this e-mail account over here... Yep, sure enough, there's the bill from the hosting company. The invoice was generated 63 minutes after midnight. I guess that means they want their money.
I'm really trying to find a polite and politically-correct way to say I am not making all these sacrifices in my life for you to have a forum to enjoy. I'm trying to cover my own freight here, so don't be lulled into the erroneous belief I am going to cover this site's expenses out of an unemployment check. Because that dog ain't gonna hunt.
Take a look at this thread - http://www.tbucketeers.com/forum/f17/monthly-forum-donations-4224/#post54446
Roll through each post and look at all the repeat donations from the same people. Those are the people that are paying for you opportunity to read this message. And guess what? The same people cannot afford to cover the entire cost of operations and neither can I.
If you discover you cannot seem to locate this site on 1 December, you will understand why. Sorry to be blunt, but I figured it was easier to give everyone fair warning of what is going to happen if things don't change in the next 30 days.
This is one of those times I always try to avoid. I hate talking about money, partly because I know I don't have much and I know I'm not alone in that aspect. When I was appointed my pulpit, I warned the congregation that I was not and had no plans to be a fund-raiser. And that hasn't changed.
But facts are facts, so there's no sense ignoring the elephant in the parlor.
We have a rather small cadre of loyal members that have been regularly donating to support the operating costs for the forums. In case you were wondering, all those members whose forum usernames show up in blue are supporting members. They have found the site to be worth kicking in a few bucks to help keep it alive and growing. Without them, this place would not be here, because the site has grown well beyond being a hobby site to be hosted on a $4.95/month shared hosting package.
A few months back, several members asked for some sort of idea of what it was going to take to keep the doors open around here. It can be a difficult figure to sort, because costs can (and usually do) vary from month to month. But I sat down and figured if we can pull in $150/monthly, that would pay the bills. $150 puts nothing in my pocket, puts no food on my table, puts no gas in my vehicle, pays no utility bills, etc. The costs of running the site eat up that much money each year.
Then someone mentioned it would be nice to see some sort of representation of how donations were doing each month. So I added a script to give you a graphic representation of how well or poorly we were doing each month.
To be frank, that has been more than faintly reminiscent of the forum T-shirts everyone had to have, a year or so back. Everyone wants, wants, wants, but when the rubber hits the road, everybody takes a powder.
When Internet Brands threw me the curve ball on their software upgrade expenses, I could see it was time to start looking for an alternative to vBulletin. And I used what was left of the T-shirt profit to purchase a new package from Invision. By the time the smoke cleared, about $325 changed hands, so I could continue to provide you with the same forum functions and experience as you've enjoyed to date.
Let's look at some numbers here -
July donations - $90.00
August donations - $125.00
September donations - $95.00
October donations - $125.00
By my tally (and I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, so correct me if I err), that is a total of $435.00. Which, by my calculations is something around $165 short over the four-month period.
I don't like to be sobbing on anyone's shoulder, but my job is going away on me. I lost my health insurance package about a month back and I'm actually surprised we worked last week. Unemployment in this area is at 17%. In Friday's newspaper, there were a total of ten jobs listed in the classifieds. All minimum wage opportunities.
Neither unemployment or minimum wage is going to allow me to pay the mortgage. Over the last couple months, I've been jettisoning unnecessary expenses. I really don't need the Wall Street Journal delivered each day. Who really needs luxuries like call forwarding? As for HBO, Showtime and the like, those offerings are over-rated anyway. The trip to Scotland next May wasn't really necessary, so those plans got scrapped.
I cleaned up an old Pentium II PC, installed Linux on it and turned it into $100.00 so a fellow could have an InterWeb box. Who has the time to keep up an aquarium, so I'm trying to find a buyer for my 55 gallon set-up.
Sadly (no actually, I am pissed more than sad), I'm going to have to sit down and write an ad to sell my Total Performance kit. I can't afford to move forward with it and I damn sure can't eat it or burn it for heat. So my decades-long dream is going to have to go.
Are you getting the point here?
Let me see, it's the first of November. Which means if I open this e-mail account over here... Yep, sure enough, there's the bill from the hosting company. The invoice was generated 63 minutes after midnight. I guess that means they want their money.
I'm really trying to find a polite and politically-correct way to say I am not making all these sacrifices in my life for you to have a forum to enjoy. I'm trying to cover my own freight here, so don't be lulled into the erroneous belief I am going to cover this site's expenses out of an unemployment check. Because that dog ain't gonna hunt.
Take a look at this thread - http://www.tbucketeers.com/forum/f17/monthly-forum-donations-4224/#post54446
Roll through each post and look at all the repeat donations from the same people. Those are the people that are paying for you opportunity to read this message. And guess what? The same people cannot afford to cover the entire cost of operations and neither can I.
If you discover you cannot seem to locate this site on 1 December, you will understand why. Sorry to be blunt, but I figured it was easier to give everyone fair warning of what is going to happen if things don't change in the next 30 days.
Sorry it's taken so long mike.
Nov. 1, 2009 03:35:08 PST
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Transaction ID: 8V3551109C663945E[COLOR=#333 !important][COLOR=#333333 !important]Hello Richard Henderly,[/COLOR]
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Brucer
New Member
hey guys,
mike i was reading over this post and i can understand, just seems like everything is going up up up in price except everyones pay.. i myself being a tool and die maker am preparing for a layoff, whether short term or long term.... have actually been working 4 days a week and had a 2 week temporary layoff over the course of the last 6 months, ive made less money this year than i have in the last 18years, its saddening...
have you ever thought of taking an older computer you have and converting it to a server using linux or win xp and apache webserver? it would be pretty much free and you could put as many forums on it you like.. would be easier to maintain(wouldnt have to remote into it), only thing is you would have to have a business dsl connection... this is what a gaming friend of mine done but he was using php nuke, so that might be different...
i'm not the smartest cat in the hat, but i do know as far as processing power it doesnt take much for webhosting and gameserving, i'm from a gaming background and i use to have a server co-located about 30 miles from me and i remoted into it using VNC, and i ran a battlefield2 16man server and a Call of Duty2 16man server, running at the same time.. it was an amd 2400 processor with 2 gig of memory and a geforce 2400 vid card.. and no sound card. the gaming servers would put far more load on it than any webserver would... these servers just deal with data, no graphics to actually process, on the host/server, the images are stored but not processed, the graphics are processed from the person clicking the button to view the image.. but i dont know very much more about the webservers/webhosting..
i do know its not difficult to put a webserver up using apache webserver, i'm not that great on computers but i have had an apache webserver with my own webpage that i built on it years ago, used it for our squads website, yes we were hardcore into tournament game play..... i used
win xp and apache webserver, used netscape to make my webpage, and you basicly just stored on the webhost side of the disk drive where apache was installed... windows server 2k i'm sure has all this stuff built into it...
i know you could do it with your knowlege, just trying to give you an idea you might not have thought of, at that point the contributions could go into your pocket and make it worthwhile to you, instead of that money going into a hosting companies pocket....
heres a link to an invision board i stuck up a few months back, just toying around.. T-Bucket Town
i put a redirerct on it just to see if i could still do it.. http://tbuckettown.servebeer.com
mike i was reading over this post and i can understand, just seems like everything is going up up up in price except everyones pay.. i myself being a tool and die maker am preparing for a layoff, whether short term or long term.... have actually been working 4 days a week and had a 2 week temporary layoff over the course of the last 6 months, ive made less money this year than i have in the last 18years, its saddening...
have you ever thought of taking an older computer you have and converting it to a server using linux or win xp and apache webserver? it would be pretty much free and you could put as many forums on it you like.. would be easier to maintain(wouldnt have to remote into it), only thing is you would have to have a business dsl connection... this is what a gaming friend of mine done but he was using php nuke, so that might be different...
i'm not the smartest cat in the hat, but i do know as far as processing power it doesnt take much for webhosting and gameserving, i'm from a gaming background and i use to have a server co-located about 30 miles from me and i remoted into it using VNC, and i ran a battlefield2 16man server and a Call of Duty2 16man server, running at the same time.. it was an amd 2400 processor with 2 gig of memory and a geforce 2400 vid card.. and no sound card. the gaming servers would put far more load on it than any webserver would... these servers just deal with data, no graphics to actually process, on the host/server, the images are stored but not processed, the graphics are processed from the person clicking the button to view the image.. but i dont know very much more about the webservers/webhosting..
i do know its not difficult to put a webserver up using apache webserver, i'm not that great on computers but i have had an apache webserver with my own webpage that i built on it years ago, used it for our squads website, yes we were hardcore into tournament game play..... i used
win xp and apache webserver, used netscape to make my webpage, and you basicly just stored on the webhost side of the disk drive where apache was installed... windows server 2k i'm sure has all this stuff built into it...
i know you could do it with your knowlege, just trying to give you an idea you might not have thought of, at that point the contributions could go into your pocket and make it worthwhile to you, instead of that money going into a hosting companies pocket....
heres a link to an invision board i stuck up a few months back, just toying around.. T-Bucket Town
i put a redirerct on it just to see if i could still do it.. http://tbuckettown.servebeer.com
Mike
Well-Known Member
OK, we have a live and operational Invision forum running on one of the other domains.
The site can be seen here - Clann Alba Forums
I am already working on a red and grey/silver style for this site, so it will maintain somewhat of the same look. We should be able to integrate our old, stand-by logo well when it's all said and done.
It's a time-consuming job getting all the forum/usergroup/member permissions set up after the database is converted, but it can still be done in 50% of the time it would take if we were converting TO vBulletin.
We will be converting the Patriot Alert Forum site on Thursday morning, so I suspect it will be another week before we get to converting this one.
The site can be seen here - Clann Alba Forums
I am already working on a red and grey/silver style for this site, so it will maintain somewhat of the same look. We should be able to integrate our old, stand-by logo well when it's all said and done.
It's a time-consuming job getting all the forum/usergroup/member permissions set up after the database is converted, but it can still be done in 50% of the time it would take if we were converting TO vBulletin.
We will be converting the Patriot Alert Forum site on Thursday morning, so I suspect it will be another week before we get to converting this one.
mikesplumbing
New Member
Two things if I may.
How about searching for more advertisers? Any of you guys know some of these companies that could benefit from this site? If you know them personally ask them to participate.
The other thing we can do is to keep supporting RPM because that's also an important and steady streem of money to help pay for the site cost. And purchasing material from Ron is a great deal to boot.
Right now we have two ways to thank Mike and keep the forum alive, donate to the cause and purchase product from RPM or any other advertiser.
I'll give Bear Fiberglass a call and ask them again if they want to advertise their bodies here.
MIke
How about searching for more advertisers? Any of you guys know some of these companies that could benefit from this site? If you know them personally ask them to participate.
The other thing we can do is to keep supporting RPM because that's also an important and steady streem of money to help pay for the site cost. And purchasing material from Ron is a great deal to boot.
Right now we have two ways to thank Mike and keep the forum alive, donate to the cause and purchase product from RPM or any other advertiser.
I'll give Bear Fiberglass a call and ask them again if they want to advertise their bodies here.
MIke
benT
Active Member
mikesplumbing said:
I think we're going to become a sponsor (Pro-Kote Indy), and intended to do it sooner but have gotten caught up with expansion of our ceramic line... and the thoughts went on the back burner. I'll talk to my Dad again this week and see if we can get it set up soon. I agree that we need to get more sponsors involved and show that we support them. Not sure why Spirit backed out, but there has to be others. Maybe Speedway? I dunno.. I do know that Mike doesn't need to be supporting our needs before his own.
mikesplumbing
New Member
Hummm, if only I knew where I could have parts ceramic coated for my T Bucket.
Mike
Mike
