Russ, when there's nothing ventured, there's nothing gained. :winkn:
Corley's site is up and running and is available to the public, so that is that. Perhaps I am speaking in error here, because I am really unsure if the site is Corley's, Tom's or Gerry's or if it is a joint operation between the three. Corley is the one who was slinking around, contacting various members of this site to promote it, so for simplicity's sake, I'll refer to it as Corley's site.
Like I said earlier, I really have no problem with people wanting to start their own sites. As I have said to Corley, this isn't the first time someone has set up a site in the same niche. (He opens a site in the same niche, but repeatedly claims his site is not a competitive site.) A couple others set out to teach me a lesson and maybe Tom, Corley and Gerry can succeed where the others have not. As you'll see in my earlier post, I wish anyone setting off to set up their own site the best of luck. I have also wished Corley the best of luck in an e-mail.
Here's one of the problems I have with people like Corley. I don't skulk around on other T-Bucket sites to invite members to come over here. I don't slip e-mails and private messages to the vendors/sponsors of other sites, encouraging them to come over here. I set this site up and went to work trying to optimize it for the search engines. The traffic this site gets is all natural, I'm not abusing the resources of other T-bucket sites to direct people to this one. Corley denies he is trying to attract people to his new site, that he is above board in everything he has done, but from where I sit, contacting members of this site to say, "Hey, we're setting up a new site at dub-dub-dub-dot-ournewsite-dot-com, but don't tell anyone about it just yet," seems to be nothing but. I've no problem if he wants to contact members of this site via e-mail to tout his new site. I do, however, have a real problem when he's doing it, right here in my own house. I purposely avoid participating on other T-Bucket sites, so I cannot be wrongfully accused of trawling for members.
Corley creates more ill will by his choice of words in his contacts with other members. First of all, I need to make clear that I'm not here to get all warm and fuzzy with anyone. When a member plays self-appointed expert and starts blowing smoke to other members, I'm going to call them out on it. If that turns your stomach, you have the choice of not reading what I've written, or going elsewhere. I can't seem to impress upon anyone that I hold no hostages and everyone is as free to leave here as they were to come here. When someone starts telling me how to run this site, they're likely going to get ushered to the door, as most of you have seen from time to time. If that seems cruel to anyone, I remind you again that I am not holding you here against your will. If people want to say I'm ranting, so be it. Get used to it, get over it or get out. How difficult is that to understand?
Corley has made comment to more than one person (yeah, Corley, some of your pals are more loyal to me than you imagined) that I am somehow getting rich by operating this forum. He has even accused me of falsely misrepresenting site expenses and site income. I've no idea how he figures he has any right to know my income, but he's so easy, I figure I may as well prove him wrong, yet again. Some of the other new forum admins tried suggesting I'm getting fat from this site, so let's lay out Mike's
curriculum vitae for all to see who is being honest and who is talking out their backsides.
I've been online for over 30 years. I've used, managed and owned dial-up BBS systems. I've moderated, admined, co-admined and owned more sites than I can count. I've admined phpBB2 sites, phpBB3 sites, MyBB sites, SMF sites, vBulletin 3 sites, vBulletin 4 sites and Invision sites.
My first, live phpBB forum was set up on a horrid hosting account and the site was down more than it was up. After 6 months of grief, I moved the site to another host that wasn't much better. After a couple months, I also converted from phpBB forum software to vBulletin 3.0.7. The owners of that hosting company were in a cash flow pinch and offered me a lifetime deal, consisting of my then-current plan hosted for life and an identical, second plan that would also be hosted for life, if I paid what amounted to two years on my then-current account. Like an idiot, I bought in on the deal on 18 October 2006. On 20 October 2006, I purchased a second vBulletin license and on 21 October 2006, this site was set up.
By June 2007, we were suffering from lousy service. The members who have been around long enough will remember the 3 and 4 minute page load times. vBulletin software has a function that will allow the software to turn away traffic when server loads got as high as 5. I can remember seeing days when load averages would remain above 30! Numbers in the upper 50's were common, everyone was griping about how slow the site was running, so it was time to start shopping for a new host.
I purchased a plan with Downtown Host that was still inexpensive, but we finally had a host that was willing to provide what they promised. I had learned my lesson about paying too far ahead of myself, so I was paying $9.95/month.
We soon grew to a point where we needed a lot more resources and DTH's best offering was going to cost $60/month, which was just too far out of our price range.
By then, I was plenty aware of what to avoid in a hosting offer. And because of their excellent service, we moved to a KnownHost VS2 plan. A few months later, we upgraded to a VS3 plan, then on and on, in what almost seemed like monthly upgrades.
We upgraded to a KnownHost Hybrid HY1 server and then to a HY2 server. And we just kept getting bigger and bigger. More members, more posts, more images and more traffic kept demanding more and more.
The site is now on a dedicated server that I hope will continue to fill our needs for another 3 years or so. (He says with his fingers crossed.) I went with the $49 setup fee, so the base server costs $259/month. We also have the 750 GB drives, which adds another $20/month. Monthly hosting expenses - $279.
When we moved onto our first VPS, I figured we had all the resources in the world and was considering a general, streetrod forum as a sister site. So, when we moved to the VPS, I set it up with a unique domain name.
I've edited out the private details, but as you can see, that domain expense is $20.61/year.
Again, I've edited out some private details, but you can see the tbucketeers.com domain costs $9.32/year.
Yes, there are other domains on this invoice. And I am aware one of our newer forum admins has wrongfully accused me of operating other sites on the server this site resides on. He's just another "expert" who has no clue what he's on about. In addition to this site, the Aztech network currently has three, small forums and four blogs running. These sites are spread across two of KnownHost's virtual private servers. Remember the two lifetime hosting plans I suckered into? Those two packages host my test sites, where I currently have a phpBB2 forum, a phpBB3 forum, a MyBB 1.6 forum, an SMF 2.0RC5 forum a vBulletin 3.8.7 forum, a vBulletin 4.1.3 forum and an Invision 3.0.5 forum running for testing purposes.
The server this site resides on has the T-Bucket Forums, the T-Bucket Forums WordPress blog and the T-Bucket forums store site. Nothing more. Shame on anyone who is so bold to lie about my ethics.
So we're up to $29.93/year in domain expenses.
But we're not finished. Because I have a rather extensive background with all of the above forum software packages, including the free and open-source software the other admins prefer to use, I know what works and what doesn't. I know what is secure and what isn't. And, as a result, we use commercial software.
There's the costs associated with our Invision forum software. Once you have purchased a license, you're faced with $50/year license renewals.
This is the software that drives our Tech Library, so tack on another $30/year to renew that license.
There's the costs for our Gallery software, so add another $20/year.
Software licensing comes to $100/year.
Who's been keeping track with a calculator, because here is where I prove everyone a liar -
Annual hosting - $3348.00
Annual domain costs - $29.93
Annual license renewals - $100.00
i add that up to an annual total of $3477.93. Now, let's divide that number by 12, so we can see what this place costs to operate each month. Oh, gee, that comes out to $289.83/month.
Yeah, Corley, I'm sure getting rich by accepting $270/month in donations, aye? A shortage of $19.83/month comes to $237.96/year that I'm covering out of pocket.
Corley wants to gripe about the income I receive from the ad placements on this site, which is alright with me. My income is absolutely none of his business. I am not allowed to disclose actual income from the Google ads on the site by the Google Terms of Service, but I will say it averages out to about $1.00/day. And that is from ad placements on four forums and three blogs, not just from this site. In the interest of full disclosure, anyone who is interested can see our advertising rates on
this page.
Corley made a claim that I was telling lies about him slinking about, contacting members of this site to let them know about his own site. Let's look at who's being honest and who's telling the lies, OK?
), so you'd think I'd learn.... but ..........................
