Potential Outage 7/3/2022

[Matt K]

Hi all,

Doing some upgrades to the networking. I may have made a configuration change that was too short yesterday in anticipation of the changes. As a consequence, you may experience trouble connecting to the site today but as the changes are propagated, should be resolved. If you have issues by end of day (EST) and into tomorrow, you can report them here particularly if you still are experiencing any residual effects tomorrow.

[MrHCinDE]

Hi MattK,

thanks for the heads-up, I did notice a small interruption but all is working again fine at my end.

But, that's not really what this post is about...

...I wanted to say thanks to you and anyone else involved in the upkeep of the site. I really appreciate that the site is entirely free to users, does not bombard us with ads etc.

Presumably you invest your own time to maintain and upgrade the site, as well as covering some hosting fees etc.

I don't recall ever seeing a donation page but if you ever decided to include a voluntary donation facility you might find folks are willing to support it. Generally the site is a great resource and though there may occasionally be differences of opinion, in the grand scheme of internet forums it's pretty civilized.

Thanks and keep up the great work!

[Matt K]

Thanks for confirming it's still working! Yep, I support the site and keeganso has thus far provided all the funding for the servers. I was a system administrator for a few years and now do tangential stuff so it's tangential to my main job. We're considering options, we don't want to make people feel like they're forced to subscribe so if we go that route, we want to carefully consider how it's rolled out. We feel like the site has been valuable to us, so keeping it alive is payment in and of itself, at least to some degree

[glenp]

It’s probably been said before, but have you considered a donation option before subscription? If you offered the ability to donate at different tiers and be labeled as a contributing member, I’m sure quite a few folks would pitch in. For example:

Bronze: $50 / year
Silver: $100 / year
Gold: $150 / year
Platinum: $250 / year

I know donations don’t typically generate as much cash, but I do think there are quite a few folks here who would donate. Especially with a well crafted quarterly reminder announcement about why you need donations.

Just a thought.

[afugate]

It’s probably been said before, but have you considered a donation option before subscription? If you offered the ability to donate at different tiers and be labeled as a contributing member, I’m sure quite a few folks would pitch in. For example:

Bronze: $50 / year
Silver: $100 / year
Gold: $150 / year
Platinum: $250 / year

I know donations don’t typically generate as much cash, but I do think there are quite a few folks here who would donate. Especially with a well crafted quarterly reminder announcement about why you need donations.

Just a thought.

I second the donation option.

This forum is one of my "go to" places on the interwebs. I'd chip in to help and prefer this to a subscription that might limit participation.

--Andy in OKC