davep wrote:

Phebagirl wrote:Good day from Pheba, from the farm: Hubby and I are good for 50.00. Just tell me when to send, where to send, and how to do it. Pheba

On the left_hand pane, there's a donate button in the Donat-O-Meter window. Or click here. It uses paypal.

Aaron, are you on target for this month?

Indeed we are... & much thanks to everyone for their contributions.

In word & deed.

Aaron I would like to make a donation of an amount that would make it worth your while to move to a new board/server, if I can afford it.

phpBB v3 is out, that could be an alternative if the vBulletin option has any problems like datbase conversion and stuff.

lys3rg0 wrote:How about a conversion of the whole forum to vBulletin? Wouldn't that speed up things?

I second that motion.

How would I safely send cash from Hong Kong? I have a bank account but no checks, and my money is in HK dollars.

Narz wrote:

lys3rg0 wrote:How about a conversion of the whole forum to vBulletin? Wouldn't that speed up things?

I second that motion.

Third

I was going to suggest running it on one of those pre-existing group server sites like google groups or yahoo groups or (there are many others). Just picking whichever one gives the greatest similarity to the current system. Then you can set up www.peakoil.com to forward to the other address.

But if you really want to run the software yourself, then there are surely many off the shelf downloadables like vBulletin. What is it currently, hand-crafted scripts? That seems like a huge waste of effort.

Yes, IF:

1) the payment can be done over an encrypted conection using credit/debit cards (more international)
2) the new software supports unicode (more international)
3) open source is used (better ROI)

zensui wrote:Yes, IF:

1) the payment can be done over an encrypted conection using credit/debit cards (more international)
2) the new software supports unicode (more international)
3) open source is used (better ROI)

Ah, they upgraded the servers last week, chief.

From time to time PO.com has had a tip jar or donation link but niether one seems to work very well. I was thinking about it today and a large number of web sites have two sides, a free side for everyone in the general public and a subscriber side for people who want to be seriously involved in the website. Specifically I am thinking of personallity sites like Glennbeck.com where you can get a ton of free stuff as a member of the general public but where a few nominal extra's are availible if you subscribe to the web site as a paying member.

So how about if you want to visit the subscriber side it costs you a dollar a month, something cheap for the ole timers but still a money raiser for the website. You could make it different levels based on years of participation, the 04 crowd gets the most extra's and so on to encourage people to stay with an old handle instead of changing all the time.

Yes/No/Maybe/Crazy idea?

I have been thinking about something similar.
To be usefull a pay site has to offer something extra. It's no use thinking about this unless you have a good offer on the table to make people pay.
What triggered me was that the website was very slow from time to time. Perhaps it is possible to make the website a bit faster for paying members. It is working fine now, but it will be much slower again once the oil price goes back up. I am not an IT expert, so I'm not sure how easy something like this would be to implement.
Another thing that payment could do remove limits, such as larger Avatars, Signatures and the ability to incorporate larger pictures in posts (some peopel upload huge pictures etc in their posts, so perhaps free members should have some limits there). Using limitations for free members could decrease server load while triggering people to pay. Ofc. the limits should not stop people from posting: content is the biggest value of this website.

The terms and conditions prevent the site owner from saying this, but there is nothing to prevent *me* from saying it :

Click on the ads!

I voted no, not because I'm a grinch, just my finances are tight and I'm very wary of taking on any recurring subscriptions with anything.

Maybe a good solution would be to add features for the paid memberships without taking away what people get for free at present.

Some kind of premium membership with perks like an email address @peakoil.com, maybe some free ads for those who have business ventures that would interest the community, etc.

Good point!

lowem wrote:The terms and conditions prevent the site owner from saying this, but there is nothing to prevent *me* from saying it :

Click on the ads!

Nice idea but we don't have any behind-pay-wall content to offer, and none is planned (that I'm aware of, that is).

yeah, if everyone clicked one or two ads every day.... But would that make a difference? or how much of one?

uNkNowN ElEmEnt wrote:yeah, if everyone clicked one or two ads every day.... But would that make a difference? or how much of one?

Depending on the target audience and traffic levels, it should be possible to get at least a few hundred dollars per month. That should be enough to sponsor a couple of dedicated servers.

For Google Adsense, each click is worth anything between 1 cent to 1 dollar, typically let's say 15 cents each.

5000 clicks per month at 15 cents each on average should translate into around $750 per month.

So, yeah. There you are.

Click on the ads!

Why doesn't PeakOil.com have an annual donation drive lasting for a month? A lot of other sites do this and take in enough to keep running.

We are a volunteer community - but:

IMHO, we don't need a server fund, it seems the server works fine and is being paid.

What we need a stipend for someone like Shanny or MD or twilliam to take care of what seems the inevitable software trials of any site of our standing.

These three are here whenever they can, to do whatever they can, on a volunteer basis, perhaps they need some recompense for those efforts.

So?

I could try to set up a server here/

An easy way to accomplish this would be a "donate here" PayPal button. My guess is that the membership would be most comfortable with that kind of arrangement. Nobody would feel pressured to commit to monthly contributions, and those who can afford it could donate whenever they choose to.

There are some little tricks you can do that actually help with donations. Ron Paul's site did very well in part, I suspect, because they had a flashy little doodad that listed the most recent contributors and how much they gave. Believe it or not, people like to see their name on the screen.

You could also have some kind of status tag for donors, like "community supporter" or some such.