For Sale: Halforums

[Dave]

Okay, maybe not for sale. But how'd you like to lease a slightly used Halforums for 1 month?

While the wife is out of work I find myself increasingly in the shithouse financially. I may end up having to do this again in January, but if someone wants to step up and own themselves a website for a month, I will give the information to pay it.

Cost is $155 and will NOT go to my PayPal, but directly to the Webhost so you know I'm not taking your money and running to Walmart to buy something shiny.

I'm doing it this way because I don't want donations and don't feel I'm bad enough off to start crying in my beer.

If you want to be the guy or girl you can step up here. If you want to do it and remain anonymous you can send me a PM and I'll give you the information there.

There's no hurry as the bill doesn't come due until the 4th so if you want a few days to think about it you are welcome to do so.

Whomever steps up will get to choose a skin for the new site and I'll rename it in their honor.

 

[Ravenpoe]

Pm sent, yo!

 

[checkeredhat]

I can't afford to lease it from you, but this seems like enough of a reason to show my gratitude to you for everything you do to keep this place up and running for the rest of us. And to Poe, or whoever winds up taking over for a month, same thing.

I am just so glad this place exists.

Hope your financial luck turns around real soon, Dave.

 

[Espy]

As two poor grad students my wife would kill me if I spent that much on the forum BUT if some folks want to split the cost a few ways I'd be down for pitching in.

 

[Dave]

I've had an anonymous donor in November and I think that same anonymous person may do it again. I'm waiting on them to respond.

And I hope you all know how much I hate even making this stupid thread. Which is why it's marked "Stupid".

 

[Gusto]

Damnit, Dave, open donations.

 

[figmentPez]

so you know I'm not taking your money and running to Walmart to buy something shiny.

As long as you keep the forums running, I wouldn't care if you used leftover donations to sprinkle gold-dust on your bran-flakes.

 

[rabbitgod]

so you know I'm not taking your money and running to Walmart to buy something shiny.

As long as you keep the forums running, I wouldn't care if you used leftover donations to sprinkle gold-dust on your bran-flakes.[/QUOTE]

That's pretty ballin'


I can't help this month, but I'd be down for a ESPY style split in January.

 

[drifter]

Damnit, Dave, open donations.

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[Jay]

That

 

[Dave]

No.

 

[makare]

His pride gets in the way of saying he needs money unless it is one lump sum.

 

[Hylian]

Damnit, Dave, open donations.

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[Espy]

I don't want to brag but I had this amazing idea while I was away from my computer and so I felt like I should come in here and say it's time to open the site up for donat...



Damn it Gusto. Stop stealing my thunder.:angry:

 

[Dave]

His pride gets in the way of saying he needs money unless it is one lump sum.

That's part of it, I suppose. The other part is knowing that there are people a lot worse off than me and I don't want to put up "donations de jour" kind of things. I'll get through just like always.

 

[makare]

Those people worse off then you might enjoy a chance to give a buck or two for something they like but nooooo you have to do it this way. So they end up just feeling like crap, "I can't even afford the forum for one month. I hate myself" and then they all go on violent drinking binges that land them in jail where they make special friends, whether they want to or not, with their cell mate

And all because you can't put up a simple donation button.

You bastard.

 

[Dave]

I love you, makare, but please don't drop the soap.

 

[MindDetective]

I guess you could always give us something in return, Dave, for any donati... Oh wait, you do.

 

[Gusto]

I can't afford [nor do I have the interest] to buy the site for the month. I can afford to support a good chunk of it for that month.

Call it a Christmas present, if you want.

 

[makare]

I can only afford to bust your balls but damn it it will be the best ball busting I can muster. Cuz I care for you. :hug:

 

[Cajungal]

Damnit, Dave, open donations.

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What if we promised not to start 80 bajillion "We love dave" threads this time? In fact, I'd like to take this moment to say that I hate you. Always have.

 

[PatrThom]

Can't. Not won't, can't. Sorry. I mean that.

--Patrick

 

[doomdragon6]

I'll do it if we can put Kami-Con ads up all over the place. ;D

 

[Terrik]

Yeah I hate Dave and I'd never, ever give the old man any of my hard earned money. However, I may accidentally click a link that led to some sort of withdraw of currency without my knowledge.

I'm clumsy like that.

 

[CrimsonSoul]

His pride gets in the way of saying he needs money unless it is one lump sum.

So Dave is like the peachtree financial commercials "it's my money and I need it now!"

 

[Math242]

if you need it again in January, just send me a pm and i'll pay the bill

 

[Jay]

3 Step Process

- Give in to your pride and open donations to the masses of the mundane.
- Find new host at a more reasonable rate, 150$ a month is fucken BALLS. Do you even get revenue from this site in any fashion?
- Kill vBulletin

 

[Espy]

Is 150 a month a lot for a forum? I don't know much about that sort of thing.

 

[Terrik]

But you're a SUPER MOD. I thought you had...special powers or something. You should know these things.

My world is shattered

 

[Espy]

I'm a big picture kinda guy. I don't deal with the little stuff. Except the bannings. I looooooooooove dealing with the banning.

 

[Jay]

Depends on what we use our forums for. $150 a month for a recreational discussion forum is insane though. I refuse to believe that with so many of us in here, primarily geeks, we cannot find a decent host with a decent plan.

 

[Disconnected]

Call it a Christmas present, if you want

don't call it a comeback

 

[strawman]

The reasons why this package is $150/mo:

* It's fully managed (which means they keep the server software up to date to protect against security concerns, as well as manage the firewall, DDOS attacks, etc)
* They are specifically aware of the nature of the forum software being run, and tune their servers and databases to manage the particular load forums place on the servers
* They have a phone number and one can call them for immediate assistance with technical issues.

It's reasonable for people who want to take a hands-off approach.

If you want to cut the cost, though, you're going to need someone who has the skills and desire to manage some of the above issues.

But when you take into account the savings:

Unmanaged Dedicated Server | Aspiration Hosting - Premium Hosting Solutions

and find you can get a quad core processor, 8GB of RAM, 1TB hard drive, 4TB bandwidth for $50 less a month, and this is a dedicated server, not a shared vps, then it becomes hard to justify the high cost of a "specialized" server, since the quad core 8GB combination would be blazing fast for any large forum, nevermind our relatively small forum.

Note that I'm not suggesting this as a solution, I have no experience with that host. One can find and compare hosting companies and pricing via HostMonk - Compare hosting packages - VPS hosting, Web hosting, Dedicated hosting and many other sites.

 

[Jay]

1/3 of the price. That's about right.

 

[Dave]

The main reason it is $155 is because for a time we were using a metric fuck-ton of CPU. Once we switch to Xenforo we won't need what we have. I plan at that point to look around and move to a lower-cost host.

Here's what we have now:

VPS4

This is from a vBulletin specific site called URLJet.

I'm looking at a site called WiredTree and moving to this:

See why I'd change? I know a guy who uses WiredTree and he says they are WONDERFUL.