Site Donations

[Bartman]

Hi everyone,
I've tried to avoid this but I'm going to open a donations link for a limited time to allow anyone that wishes to post a donation for the site upgrades I'm working on. All money donated will be put back into the site and if there's a strong response I'll shut donations off when the budget is met.
In planning to upgrade the hosting service I've come across an option that is very appropriate but it's four to five times more expensive than I anticipated. It will allow generous picture allotments, blogs, very fast site response times, etc. but the advertising income I've been working on won't cover it yet. So I'm asking this one time for your input.

You don't have to give a single penny and I'll still love you forever .

Here's the link. Please post your site name in the comments area with your donation so I can keep a list thanking those that participate.

<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
<input name="cmd" value="_s-xclick" type="hidden">Donations closed....Thanks!

</form>


Thank you very much! I'm hoping to have the site transferred by the end of this weekend.

Bartman

 

[Macsgrafs]

My mrs has just sent you a few $'s as a starter, hope its ok Bart.


Ross

 

[Bartman]

Thanks Ross, the site's going to rip when the work is all done.

 

[BorisS]

i sent some from account hildegard schwarz, thanks for the work !

boris

 

[Macsgrafs]

Thanks Ross, the site's going to rip when the work is all done.

Many years ago I used to run an adult website, our bandwidth cost were $900 per month!!!!! But B/W has reduced in price now, have you tried www.uk2.net they have really good options for website hosting, if you dont mind a shared server...they also have great tech support 24/7 which I found hard to come by with others. Who ever you move with, always try tech support before the move...you can see if they live up to thier name then

Ross

 

[Bartman]

the site is going to what is called a VPS hosting service where server resources are dedicated to the site and not on a first-come-first-served basis like shared hosting. with 150 GB of disk space, 3000 GB of traffic allowance and 3 GB of RAM we shouldn't need another upgrade for years.

thanks for the donations Macsgraf, BorisS and Droider. i'll place the order today and start getting things arranged for a service move in the coming days.

bart

 

[Macsgrafs]

How long will the site be offline for during the migration? 48 hours normally....hope not as this is the best site out there for MR knowledge. I will donate some more nearer to my payday honest guv, cheque is in the post

Ross

 

[ctbon]

I dropped a tip in the jar, Bart. This site has been invaluable.

 

[Bartman]

many thanks to Kilby, ctbon, and another donor whose real name doesn't easily match up with anyone on the site that I recognize so I'll just say thank you. the new service was purchased today (the first month was at least) and I'm making arrangements for the move.
if anyone chooses to make a donation please keep it at $10 or under, I'm really not comfortable receiving any more than that from any one person but thanks to those that were so generous.
Bart

 

[RTRyder]

many thanks to Kilby, ctbon, and another donor whose real name doesn't easily match up with anyone on the site that I recognize so I'll just say thank you. the new service was purchased today (the first month was at least) and I'm making arrangements for the move.
if anyone chooses to make a donation please keep it at $10 or under, I'm really not comfortable receiving any more than that from any one person but thanks to those that were so generous.
Bart

Some more added to cookie jar...

Ken

 

[moslow]

Just saw this bart...done deal... Thanks for the Great site...
sorry went over a bit..

 

[MICROFOE]

Done.

 

[Bartman]

Thanks guys. I really appreciate it.
I'm now planning a software upgrade that will add personal blogs, a better integrated homepage, and eventually a mobile site for cell phone viewers.
I'm also going to close off the donations window. A number of you stepped up and I am very thankful for that. With the improvements made to the site I'm now getting away from commission based advertising and will be adding monthly subscription advertisers that we recognize from the multi-rotor community.
The GoPro ad will stay somewhere on the site and will continue to pay a commission if you use the link to make a purchase (2 so far this year....woo hoo!).
So with that, donations are now closed. Thanks.
Bartman

 

[Bostnsprts]

Damn I must have missed it. The link isn't there. You should just have the link always open. People don't have to donate, but can if they're able. What's the harm?

 

[Efliernz]

Damn I must have missed it. The link isn't there. You should just have the link always open. People don't have to donate, but can if they're able. What's the harm?

+1

 

[Bartman]

Bostnsprts
I tried using commission based advertising so as to not extend a hand to the membership but it didn't really work out. We've been credited with five transactions so far and three of them were my battery purchases and two were GoPro purchase made by Emowillcox (thanks Mike!) so that isn't exactly going to keep the site up and running.
The server we were on was really slow and it was causing a problem. It became worse more quickly than I expected and before I could get any money flowing from subscription advertisers. I opened up the donation window only because a few people suggested it as a temporary measure to allow me to secure a faster hosting service and to pay a web guy to do the migration of the site software and database.
It went well and the site is thriving. Advertisers have stepped up and we're moving in the right direction. I'm still a bit behind in certain efforts but the long waits for page loads and movie playbacks are gone.
Thanks for the offer but if things continue to go well here I don't think we'll have to ask for donations again. You pay enough for the products you buy. If people value the opportunity to advertise their products and services here, then we should be fine and we'll all continue to reward the vendors with the best products and services.
Thanks again!
Bart