Why we're here

[hiero]

I've been asked quite a bit in PMs about two things:

how do people help with money

how do people know this won't be DML2 and be sold soon for profit to VS


I'll write something up and sticky post it tomorrow, but the short version is we will have a donation button some time next week and we will post financial statements to show we are covering expenses and not trying to make money.  As to DML2?  Never.   but I'll discuss it a lot tomorrow.   This will blow up and crash before it turns into what that forum turned into with VS. 

thanks statler

[JohnnyDucati]

Thanks, Stat. 

I think that this site will grow and the newly revised DML will perish.

It's like a fresh start with an old friend(s). 

This is awesome.

JohnnyD

[bigiain]

Please, with your pseudo-communist/collectivist notions.  Oy, gevalt.  Okay, Nate owns the board.  Thank you.

Fair cop (I think of myself more as a "chardonnay socialist" then pseudo-communist, but I'm first to admit there's very little difference (except that I don't drink white wine either, but "shiraz-socialist" doesn't quite sound right)).

What I was trying to get across though, was that yeah, ultimately _somebody_has "ownership" of some essential part of a site like this (ultimately the domain name registrant I guess), but that we've set this place up in the hope of avoiding the long term plan being to sell up to someone like VS.

I dunno how to _ensure_ that _can't_ happen in the future tho, unless there's an affordable way, you're going to have to trust Nate not to sell you all out... (just the same as I have to trust him)

cheers,

big

[El Matador]

I've been asked quite a bit in PMs about two things:

how do people help with money

how do people know this won't be DML2 and be sold soon for profit to VS


I'll write something up and sticky post it tomorrow, but the short version is we will have a donation button some time next week and we will post financial statements to show we are covering expenses and not trying to make money.  As to DML2?  Never.   but I'll discuss it a lot tomorrow.   This will blow up and crash before it turns into what that forum turned into with VS. 

Will there be some sort of titanium membership again?

[bigiain]

out of curiousity, how much does it cost to run something like this?  i assume someone somewhere has to pay for the space, format licence, etc.

Actual monetary costs?

You can get a forum like this up and running on a ~$5(US)/month hosting plan (which is what we've been on since late Jan or early Feb). Since you hordes all turned up this week we've ramped that up to godaddy's premuim hosting plan which looks like it's costing ~$15/month.

.com domains cost ~$10/year to register (the group who started this registered maybe a dozen or so between us, and ended up using this one) (And Brad, if you're thinking about a .com.au domain, they're a little more expensive at ~$30/year, and there's also a requirement that you have a company or registered business or trading name that relates to the domain name...)

The other costs are the time involved in setting it up... Four or five of us spent a fair bit of time over a month or two getting this to the stage it is now, and we're not completely happy with how we've done it (but it seems people are happy enough, so we haven't done _too_ badly I guess). If you're happy with a default template set, you could be up and running in an evening. If you're picky about colours and layouts and stuff, you could easily spend hundreds of hours (or thousands of dollars if you need to pay someone else to do it).

cheers,

big

[Augustus]

Hi all.  I'm new to this forum after all the changes on the other one.  I sent them an e-mail letting them know it was pretty tacky.  Peoples posts were actually turned into adds.  Words would turn green red and other colors acting as a link to an add.   And all the blinking made me sick.  I look forward to poking around your site.

[tobyseattle]

Hey all-
I'm coming here from the DML--saw the link on DesmoNorthwest.  This site feels more like the DML than the "DML" does.  I always liked the community feel of the original DML, seems like it's been replaced.  You've got my support! wt:

[lucazuma]

Actual monetary costs?

You can get a forum like this up and running on a ~$5(US)/month hosting plan (which is what we've been on since late Jan or early Feb). Since you hordes all turned up this week we've ramped that up to godaddy's premuim hosting plan which looks like it's costing ~$15/month.

.com domains cost ~$10/year to register (the group who started this registered maybe a dozen or so between us, and ended up using this one) (And Brad, if you're thinking about a .com.au domain, they're a little more expensive at ~$30/year, and there's also a requirement that you have a company or registered business or trading name that relates to the domain name...)

The other costs are the time involved in setting it up... Four or five of us spent a fair bit of time over a month or two getting this to the stage it is now, and we're not completely happy with how we've done it (but it seems people are happy enough, so we haven't done _too_ badly I guess). If you're happy with a default template set, you could be up and running in an evening. If you're picky about colours and layouts and stuff, you could easily spend hundreds of hours (or thousands of dollars if you need to pay someone else to do it).

cheers,

big

...so all the rumors on how "someone" HAD to sell "some-other-board" because he couldnt afford to run it are bullshit?

[Popeye the Sailor]

...so all the rumors on how "someone" HAD to sell "some-other-board" because he couldnt afford to run it are bullshit?

Servers are expensive, especially when clogged with years of pictures, threads...etc....

[lucazuma]

Servers are expensive, especially when clogged with years of pictures, threads...etc....

...but still un-cloggable or at least easyer to mantain if the membership quota (for exsample) had been yearly and not una tantum...and on and on...

[Popeye the Sailor]

...but still un-cloggable or at least easyer to mantain if the membership quota (for exsample) had been yearly and not una tantum...and on and on...

Eh....Jeff made his choices, we made ours.


I won't say anything bad about it because it wasn't my money.

[bigiain]

...so all the rumors on how "someone" HAD to sell "some-other-board" because he couldnt afford to run it are bullshit?

Not at all. They were doing things differently over there, they owned colocated servers and had to pay for lots more stuff than we're currently paying for,because when they started there was no such thing as a $5/month hosting plan with pint and click forum installation. The other "cost" for the other place was the time and effort spend dealing with advertising and sponsors - we're hoping to minimise the overhead involved with keeping this place going, and thereby minimise the need to keep advertisers and sponsors happy.

Jeff quit his day job and started up a great monster parts business - I dunno if you've ever run a small business yourself, but you don't end up with any free time or money to keep a hobby like a busy web forum going. I _think_ when he sold out (and I've never talked to him about it) that they told him all the same things they told us as mods for the last 6 months "we won't change anything", "we'll consult with you all before we do anything" - I'm sure he though he was leaving everything in safe hands...

Didn't turn out that way.

I really appreciate what Jeff (and his helpers) built over the years, and the literal overnight success of this place shows that it fills a need for people, and the overnight ruin of the other place shows that the place _is_ the people who form the community. We (the mods) _tried_ to tell VS that, but we've all seen what happened...

big

[somegirl]

pint and click forum installation.

Freudian slip?

[lucazuma]

...i know, its easyer to do the comment on the aftermath than the forecast, but still i think other possibilities were out there....


just not happy man here...

[somegirl]

What happened, happened.  It's just time to move on now.