Web Hosting tmie again

[Numsgil]

It's time to once more think about Darwinbots' web space.  We still have 2 months before it expires, but I prefer not to wait until the last minute.

$42.66 for renewing our hosting services for another 12 months
$8.95 for renewing the darwinbots.com address for another 12 months

$51.61 total.  I will pay whatever I can of it out of pocket.  If you feel a small donation would be approriate, you can easily send me money over PayPal.  My email is Numsgil2002@yahoo.com

If in the (extremely unlikely) case I get more than $51.61 in donations, I'll purchase more time with it to get a better deal.  ie: renewing for 18 months instead of 12 months.  Or maybe set up a bank account to gather (meager) interest until we need it again next year.

[shvarz]

I'm in.

[Numsgil]

Thanks

[Numsgil]

Bump

[PurpleYouko]

Why not pay off Invision for ad removal then put up our own.

Google ads will more than cover the cost of the ad removal as well as covering other DB overheads.

I have a Google membership registered in my name but I would prefer to keep this seperate.
As you are the official owner of the web space Numsgil, you should sign up for an account yourself.
I'm sure we could convince everybody to click one or two ads a day. That's all it would take.

If you don't want to put them on the forum then just put up an ad campaign on the wiki. Same applies. Everybody can go click an ad or two every now and then.

[EricL Newbie]

I'm happy to kick in some $ whatever is decided.

-E

[Numsgil]

Why not pay off Invision for ad removal then put up our own.

Google ads will more than cover the cost of the ad removal as well as covering other DB overheads.

I have a Google membership registered in my name but I would prefer to keep this seperate.
As you are the official owner of the web space Numsgil, you should sign up for an account yourself.
I'm sure we could convince everybody to click one or two ads a day. That's all it would take.

If you don't want to put them on the forum then just put up an ad campaign on the wiki. Same applies. Everybody can go click an ad or two every now and then.

I actually tried this, but Invision's remove ad program only works for X many views, and the google ads I had up during that time didn't generate enough income to even break even.

If I could figure out a way to move the entire forum from invision to our own webspace, then that might be a different story...

I wouldn't be against ads necessarily, I just don't think we could generate enough income from them...

[PurpleYouko]

Setting up a forum on our own web space is painfully easy. I have done it twice in the last month.

The easiest forum software that I managed to find was phpBB
It is completely open source so you can modify it to your heart's content. Once set up and modded, it can do pretty much anything that invision can do.

I have two active forums up now using my own entirely free (actually paid for by donations) web space. Both are connected to web sites that are in the throes of construction right now.
One site is really the legacy of my rather ill fated "MMORPG Resources" forum and can be found at http://kuro-tejina.shroom.net/index.shtml. Just click the forums button the nav bar to check it out if you are interested.
This site is dedicated to role playing games of all sorts and will be the main sight for my own game (when I finally have the time to code it)

The other site is a resource site for the industry in which I work. You can find it at http:/spec-res.shroom.net/index.shtml though I doubt you guys would be interested in the stuff that is discussed over there.

Both of these sites have very recently (in the last two weeks) been ported over from a different host (who wouldn't allow Google ads unless I bought an expensive hosting package) so they are extremely new.

In the last two weeks, the sites have generated about $15 from ads. Not bad considering that they haven't been there very long.

I'm not quite sure how we could back up the database from this site or port it to phpBB. I don't even know if it is possible. I will see what I can find out.

Incidentally, does the current DarwinBots web space allow ads?

[Numsgil]

Yeah, the webspace for Darwinbots allows just about anything I want.  If you could figure out a way to take the present forum and move it unaltered to the Darwinbots webspace that would be pretty cool.  I just don't want to lose all the posts here or change the basic way everythign works, since I've only just recently figured it out :P

I have added Payapl Donate buttons to the top and bottom of the forum.  That should make donations easier on anyone wanting to donate.  You don't have to donate alot, $5.00 or even $1.00 would be just fine.

[PurpleYouko]

Cool. Very good idea.

Unfortunately, I don't see any way to physically shift the existing forum. At the very least we would have to set up a new forum and find a way to import the existing posts and stuff.

How about putting som ads up on the wiki in the mean time?

[Numsgil]

I dunno, I kind of like the ad-less wiki at the moment...

Ads are kind of tacky.  Donate buttons are too, don't get me wrong, but they're a little less tacky if they're small enough.

[Endy]

Alright finally got the time to mess with paypal again. Should have plenty of money now :)

Should have more than enough to cover expenses and open up a savings account.

[Numsgil]

I'll put extra into my paypal money market account.  That's giving a bit more interest than most banks give.