BadmintonForum has grown.... our bandwidth usage has grown to a point the hosting company has sent me a notice saying that we are over the bandwidth limit and we are facing a higher hosting cost. while higher bandwidth means higher readership and it is a great thing for the forum, it also means that it will be tough for the person who's paying the bill (erm... me) to support the website. as a result, i am seeking donations to support BC/BF. i have been trying to find ways to support the website. after much thought, i believe seeking donations from the users is the best way to go about this. by seeking voluntary donation, i am not forcing anybody to pay a membership fee nor forcing anybody to view ads and banners. being voluntary, i hope that users who thinks they enjoy coming to BF and have the financial means can have the choice to support the website. i hope the contribution from you will be able to help BF. i am not sure how well received this scheme will be. however, i will continue to cover up the cost if the donations is not enough, and if the scheme is well received, the amount will definitely help BF expand in the future. thanks all, kwun the BC/BF billpayer.
oh... all these talk and i didn't say how.. there is a donate button at the top right corner of the page. click that and it will bring you to paypal. unfortunately that is the only online payment method i am able to take. you will need to register with paypal in order to make payment, i apologize for the inconvenience. alternatively, you may opt to pay me via a check in the mail, or if you have other ideas for donations, please PM me...
I just saw the paypal donation icon a few minutes ago and was just about to post a message asking if you were in need of donation. Erie that was. I know that server costs are not cheap these days, especially with a site that is as CPU-intensive as yours. I hope this site never has to be shut down as funding is already limiting too much of badminton as it is. It would be a shame to see a site like this go offline. It's also unfair for a single person to pay for a service the entire community enjoys. From what I have seen of other community-based sites, they were usually quite sucessful at paying their server costs and allowing the site to grow. I hope BF meets that same level of success. How do you plan to accept donations? So far as I know, paypal only conviently accepts credit cards issued by American banks. This excludes a large portion of your user base. Paypal accepts other methods payment too but it's notoriously difficult to deal with them that way, so I hear. If this donation drive is not as successful as you hoped, have you considered moving to a new server? I know of some hosts that charge only $4 for 700mb of space and 13 gb of bandwidth and allows scripts (php, asp, cold fusion, etc.) The reliability is compareable to major hosts (99.0% uptime average vs 99.5% industry standard.) I have my concerns about the speed of the site though since you'll probably have to share your server with many many other sites. Hope it goes well ! BRL
Looks like I was stuck in a time vortex or something as some of the pages on BF had the donate link while others did not. Now it looks like it's all there. Last time I was stuck in this time-loop was when I replied to a thread as it was being locked. I was scratching my head during that one.
Maybe you can try to be an affiliate for a badminton online store. Like everytime someone from here purchases something from there through the link you provide, you get some money. I'll probably be giving you all my money that's in my paypal account to help you out...the total amount in my account is only $4. Ill either give $4 or less to help you out. I pretty much get $4 every month in my paypal account. I havent gotten any recently. Oh no sorry, i cant donate...even though i have the money it wont let me since i didnt put in a credit card. And seeing that i dont have a job and/or credit card, i cant do anything. But once i do all the money that adds up will be donated...or well some of it
hey there kwun, i'm guessing you have ur own machine. are you on broadband or ADSL? if so can you not host the site on your own machine? Given that i'm not sure where you're based i'm not sure of the feasibility of this idea, but broadband in the UK is only $25 dollars a month - and you would benefit from having the quick connection as well. I'm guessing the major downside to this may be that your current host may have a much quicker connection. It's worth some investigation anyway Neil PS as soon as i finish uni and get a full time job i'll make a donation for sure - wouldn't want to see the world best badders forum disappear
may i suggest what is being done on another one of the forums i go to? the administrator has ads for everyone, but gets rid of them for members that pay...
Hey Kwun, What are your costs and how many people do you expect to help out? Basically, what is a fair rate for a member with a lot of posts, for a member with some posts, etc.? I am sure that many will help you out when we have more information about the costs. I can chip in something. Ron
Re: Idea That wouldn't make a difference since they dont come on here ne more they dont take up any bandwidth! It's people who post the most that take up the bandwitch (ie ME) so u gotta kick the people who post first! ps. This is not a suggestion Kwun... plz dun kick us
Re: Re: Idea OH, I see I see, maybe kwun could limit the amount of posts per week...maybe up to 10 or 14, so approxamently somewhere near 2 posts per day.
Re: Re: Idea I'm not completely sure about this, a lot of the GHOST accounts are probably lurkers who don't post, but still read all the posts, thus using lots of bandwidth. However I think the biggest cause of bandwidth use is actually posting of pics, which is probably the main reason why the size and format are limited. HOWEVER!!!! Before you guys think that I'm accusing people who posts pics of wasting precious resources, I'm not, not by any means, they really, really brighten up the site. I think Kwun wants a way of having it all, all the pics, all the people all the fun. You definately couldn't host this site through your standard cable or adsl line, it'd be incredibly slow with the amount of traffic. If this voluntary donation method provides enough money to survive it'd be good, cutting down capability (this is beginner to sound like work with cost-capability trade offs ) would definately run a distinct second. Voluntary donations are good too since the amount of disposable income within this group would vary massively. Do you really want pop ups, or no pictures, or a slower site? If the answers are no, then donate today! PS (To Kwun) Maybe make the length of a page shorter so that people are unlikely to load all pictures/text on long threads at many times repeatedly, just read the newer bits. PPS (To all) If the picture appears on another site, maybe just use the url instead uploading the pic? PPPS (To Kwun) I'm having problems with paypal Will work on it
Re: Re: Re: Idea Can't really agree on this. Think about this, if ppl really want to ask for suggestion on some stuff, it's very easy to wrap up 10 posts a day (suggestions, trade, sale, debates, etc) for a period of time. Therefore, 2 post a day is surely unreasonable. Plus, I admit sometimes I post a lot (simply replies, 'jokes') and my total posts are high. But I think it's always this "funny" posts put everyone here together as a family, but not a tighten environment as taking exams in classrooms. I also know that a lot of days, I reply in more than 1 threads for suggestions to others. I am not saying I know everything, but in particular categories (say, yangyang, babolat, victor, certain string methods, beginner's racket choices, etc) I do think I know something. I know the feeling of "waiting for reply", and I just try to help out asap. Also, to cut # of posts for ppl seems a very neg. way to let the community to grow. We need frequent (active) posters to let everyone know how popular this site is, and let ppl who needs urgent information (injuries, hint for tourny, rush deal on equipment) get their replies asap. Therefore, I think limit 2 post a day is a very bad way to deal with the bandwidth problem. If several more members step up and contribute several $$$ more, why limit everyone's oppotunity to share information around?
How about a single ads, as in a single ad per page where the donate image/text is. Give the popularity of the site and how easily we can click each day, that should generate enough to cover all of your hosting costs plus some extra towards new software purchases/misc costs etc. I use to run a web site with about 3-5000 hits per day. That generated about $40 a month. With the popularity of your site, I'm sure you can easily beat that. You probably have just as many hits if not more, and each person's much more willing to click the ads than the inconsiderate visitors I got .
Hi everybody, thanks to all who made suggestions. i will try to answer them. BRL: i think PayPal accepts all credit cards. i have received at least one donation from a European member... so far, PayPal or mail are the best way to get me money. there were suggestions in deleting ghost account, i really don't see how that is going to help if anything at all. there were suggestions in limiting number of posts. i think that is a bad idea. the posts are what makes this forum, few post will only kill the forum. similarly for any other suggestions on limiting access. i think limiting access is generally a bad idea, and i count having membership fee being one of them. there were also suggestions on putting up Ads. that is a possibility, but one that i will try to avoid. as i have mentioned, i like the idea of voluntary donation. we will see how that works out. so far there has been only a handful. but hopefully it will grow. thanks all for the support. and esp thanks those who have donated!
Can u let us know what's the new monthly charge will be (estimate if u don't know that exact $$$ amount yet)? And how much better the services compare to the old one?
