Donate for New Server

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Good citizens of the BoM, I need your support again. You've probably noticed that for some time now our current server has been performing far below expectations in terms of speed, not to mention the occasional load/timeout issues. I've already found a suitable, much more powerful replacement with a new server provider, but this means a) that we will be moving to a new server soon and b) we will need to pay for this new server every month and the price will be nearly double what we're paying now. All of the current issues we're having, however, should be a thing of the past.

RPGCodex, one of our hosted sites, will be covering the majority the expenses since they've grown considerably larger than SP over the years.

However, we'll need to contribute as well. Additionally, over the next few months I'll be moving the BoM to new forum software, since our current provider is no longer worth sticking with. In the meantime, I'm going to reinstate the chat app that I've bought a licence for now and enable temporary content uploads that I've tested some time ago. However, due to impending migration to different forum software, the full transition to automated content uploads will only happen after the move.

I'm hoping that we can raise at least $1000 to pay for all the costs mentioned above.

You can help us reach this goal by donating for an SPS account (new or renewed). PLEASE DON'T FORGET TO PUT DOWN YOUR BoM USERNAME IN THE DONATION NOTES! I especially welcome donations from those of you who have never supported SP with a donation before - now is a great time to show your support for the community!

Any amount that you can part with to help will be greatly appreciated, so thank you in advance! If you would like to donate less than the minimum SPS account subscription (<$15), you can of course do so as well. Please check this link for more details.

Q: What's in it for me?

Donating during the current donation drive will get you all of the SPS account perks (listed below), plus some additional ones:

• Acknowledgement of your contribution in a list of donors in this thread
• Unique Server Fundraiser Contributor award icon, visible in all your forum posts (requires a donation of $35 or more)

The standard SPS perks you'll also be getting:

1. No More Advertising!

One of the first things that you will notice about becoming an SPS account holder is the option to remove all advertisements from Sorcerer's Place:
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• The removal of all intrusive advertisements from our pages. This means no more pop-ups, pop-unders, flash ads, etc.
• Optional removal of the left and right side skyscraper banners, as well as the top banners.
• The removal of ads from our message boards.

2. Message Board Perks
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• By becoming an SPS account holder, you will have the following unique features added to your account in our forums:
  
• A special icon () & title indicating your SPS status.
• Access to a private forum for SPS account holders only.
• A custom portrait/avatar & title. SPS account holders can have titles twice the regular length, and select from over 1000 avatars and portraits.
• The ability to upload an animated profile picture (gif).
• Expanded album pictures (larger width, height and file size, plus double the number of allowed pictures to upload to the albums).
• Expanded signatures (higher character, line and code limits, and the ability to use link advertising and images in signatures).
• Expanded private messages (PMs). 500 PMs storage limit, the ability to send PMs to users who have reached their maximum stored messages quota and the ability to send a PM to a maximum of 5 members at the same time.
• Reputation control (the ability to see who has given you negative or positive reputation points).
• The ability to change your user name up to 5 times.
• Private calendars (very similar to Outlook's calendar).

3. Direct Content Download

As an SPS account holder you will also gain direct access to a number of exclusive download options. While we are only rarely able to offer all our visitors direct downloads of larger files, like game demos, screenshot batches, game soundtracks, etc., we offer this to all SPS account holders.

Additionally, you will be able to download each of the files hosted at Sorcerer's Place without having to wait a few seconds for your download to be prepared. No more waiting in line!

4. Sorcerers.net E-mail Forwarder

As an SPS account holder you are entitled to a @sorcerers.net e-mail forwarder. You are free to specify the name of the forwarder, as well as the forwarding location.

5. Basic Web Hosting

As an SPS account holder you have the option to request a basic web hosting account account with us. At this point we are able to provide all SPS account holders with 300 megabytes of space, an FTP account to access their sites, 1 database (by request) and unlimited monthly bandwidth (within reason). All web hosting accounts are normally set up on our secondary domain (sorcerers2.net) as separate directories, though setting up a separate domain is also possible by arrangement. If you've ever needed some www-accessible place to put up various images, files, a personal website or something similar, this SPS account feature should come in handy.

6. Beta-testing New SP Features

As an SPS account holder you have the opportunity to try out and provide feedback on the upcoming site or message board features before everyone else.​

SERVER FUNDRAISER CONTRIBUTORS

• Atmer
• Beren
• Blackthorne TA
• dmc
• Eyebreaker7
• Gaear
• henkie
• Michael M.
• Merlanni
• Montresor
• Old One
• reepnorp
• Rotku
• Shelley W.
• T2Bruno
• Tarrasque

 

Eyebreaker7 has donated first, so we're now at $35 of $1000 needed!

 

IPB and XenForo are the only alternatives that come anywhere close to vB in terms of functionality. Unfortunately, XenForo is in legal limbo since its developers are being sued by the company now in charge of vBulletin, so its future will be uncertain until the lawsuit that's been dragging on for over a year (and will likely drag on for another or more) is finished. So unless there's a significant break concerning the lawsuit in the next couple of months, IPB is pretty much the only option to move to. Since many vB admins are in the process of switching to IPB, they're making significant improvements in their import process and scripts to accommodate that, making the decision that much easier since I want to lose as little data from vB as possible.

 

Thanks to Montresor and Gaear's generous donations, we're already at $200 of $1000 needed.

 

I'd like to thank Ineth for the cool banner for this fundraiser! I know it comes at a bad time money-wise for a lot of us, so it's going to run for as long as necessary. Unfortunately we can't really wait with the move to a new server any more so the plan is to go ahead with it later this week.

 

Thanks to donations from Tarrasque, Atmer and Michael M., our new total is $380 of $1000 needed. Way to go!

Gaear, Ineth is already my first choice when it comes to doing anything graphics-related for SP. It'd be awesome if he could do a new site design as well since that's something that's been on my to-do for years.

 

Donations from reepnorp and Merlanni have raised the total to $475 out of $1000 needed! Almost half way there!

 

I've got a very good idea since I'm even further away from the server so the connectivity is even worse for me...

 

Thanks to generous donations from Old One and henkie, the new total is now $640 of $1000 needed! Thanks, guys!

 

Several reasons... first, the site you linked is about 10x as popular as SP if you look at their active users & number of posts. Secondly, gaming traffic is next to worthless to advertisers - we're probably getting 10 cents for every advertising dollar they get. Thirdly, a very large chunk of gamers block all ads by default, which means we're also serving fewer ads, combined with the fact that even fewer gamers ever click on any ads, which lowers the advertising income even further.

As for the costs, they don't really rise parallel with the size of a large board. A board 10 times the size of ours doesn't need 10 servers to handle it - even one beefed up one or two at best would likely be enough if they had nothing else running on them. On ours, we also run several hosted sites, which affects the overall performance as well. As for the software licence costs - they're the same for a board the size of ours or theirs. (Incidentally, they're running the forum software we'll be moving to.)

I could probably go on here and assume that if they offer subscriptions ala our SPS that they've got hundreds if not thousands of subscribers whereas we've got 34 active ones... but you probably get my point.

It's certainly a valid question, though. The sad truth of the matter is that some websites are worth far more than others in terms of advertising income. If we had theirs, we could easily cover all the costs without me having to ever ask for donations. Unfortunately, we don't...

 

No problem, perfectly understandable.

 

Thanks to Rotku for chipping in; we're now at $675 of $1000 needed!