Hey folks,
By now it’s very likely that many of you have noticed that there’s a new tab on your profile page, called “Billing”.
I knew a lot of you would have misgivings about this. I want to take this time to reiterate that we will never make any portion of this website subscription-based, and we will never run outside ads on the site.
Not while I’m in charge.
But people have asked me how they can contribute to improving and maintaining our little corner of the internet.
And as much as I’d like to say that I can handle all of the potential expenses, we do have need of items that are beyond the scope of what I can easily afford on my own.
Let me explain.
Our website is not hosted by a private company. This is why we have less to worry about from companies or individuals who might want to take us offline.
Instead, our website lives on a test server. It’s privately owned by one of my friends who works as an IT professional. The company he works for provides him with the server equipment so that he can test it, get used to it, figure out how to best make it work, and how to optimize it.
There are only two things that the company does not furnish:
Storage Drives, and an Uninterruptible Power Supply.
This is because neither of these things are necessary for what he’s expected to do with this server. Those things are only necessary when you have a public-facing website on the server, and you want to make sure it rarely goes offline.
Most of you noticed that we had two service outages last week. This is because we are lacking both of those things. Our website is on an aging hard drive array that is not even actually onboard the server, but merely attached to it by a USB cable.
(Yes, 100% of our traffic is all routed through a single USB3 cable.)
To make such service outages less of a problem, we need to find a way to provide storage and uninterruptible power.
This is why I’ve decided that we need a fundraiser.
What you should know:
- This is a temporary event
- We hope to only need to do this once
- There will be No Stretch Goals. Once the goal is attained, the fundraiser stops.
- Our goal is $1500 USD
How are we going to do this?
Starting today you will notice that there is a new tab on your browser, called “Subscriptions”
There you will find nine badges for sale.
$10 for each of the three bronze badges, $20 for the Silver ones, and $30 for the Gold badges.
Each of these is purchasable Just Once.
This means that donations from any one person are capped at $180. I chose to do this on purpose. While I know there are people willing to do more, I don’t want you to. This is a passion project for me, just as it is for most everyone here. You shouldn’t have to pay in to take part in this community, and you definitely shouldn’t be spending that much on it.
Do I have to donate to see any of the posts here?
You are Absolutely Not Required to donate.
Donations do not provide any benefits other than a spiffy badge and a title to go along with it.
Are you kidding? There’s no way I’m paying to see goddamn fluffy art!
If you happen to be the sort of person that wants to make a big deal out of not donating anything, (C’mon, I already said you don’t have to donate!) I’ll happily give you a free, gold “Because Fuck You, That’s Why” badge.
No hard feelings, and you’ll have a badge to say “I was here way back when we had that fundraiser!”
How do I make a donation?
Navigate to our new Subscriptions tab, select one of the nine badges, and pay with any major credit or debit card. Payments will be processed by Stripe.
What if you don’t reach this goal?
If there aren’t enough donations to afford the parts we need, I’ll use what donations we do get, and I’ll cover the rest. It just might take longer for this to happen, and we could potentially have some down time between then and now. No big deal.
What if the fundraiser ends before I have money to donate?
Life goes on as usual, and we’ll have a much more stable website. Go get yourself some ice cream and draw some fluffies.
But I want a cool badge too!!
Honestly I’ve had a lot of fun playing with badges, and we’re sure to have a lot more badges to give out, as we progress. But the ones associated with this fundraiser are Limited Edition and they will never be issued again.
Hey! I noticed I can buy the Level 3 badges without first buying levels 1 and 2!
Yes, I noticed that too. There’s only so much I can do while keeping this fundraiser as in-house as possible. I will still thank you all the same, no matter what order you donate in.
Are the storage drives or the UPS more important?
Definitely the storage drives. Once we can have the website fully on-board the server rather than being merely connected to the server it should speed up the site considerably, and help with most of our outages. That’s why we’ll be buying the hard drives as quickly as possible.
Can I get a refund
I think by now most of you know that I try to be a reasonable guy. If you need the money back so your grandma’s cat can have a tonsillectomy or something I’ll happily help you out. But if there’s any chance that your donation might put you in a difficult spot, it’s probably best if you hold off on donating and take care of yourself first. I would rather have to fund this on my own that to put any of you in a difficult spot.
My country uses a different currency, am I unable to donate?
Stripe is a payment processing service that is used all around the world, and they should be able to convert your currency to USD
It’s hard to see those black numbers on the black page that you’re supposed to type your credit card number into.
That’s true. I think the people that programmed this functionality were biased toward Light Theme users. I apologize that I’m not able to edit this. You may want to temporarily switch to the Light Theme while you submit your donation.
And finally, I’d like to thank anyone who considers contributing to this endeavor. You all are like family to me, and I consider it an honor to have you here. I have some big plans for our websites, and I hope you’ll come along for the ride.
Artwork by @CookieCrunch
