• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

2021 OGBoards Fundraiser

tsywake

Sheikh of Smoke
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Ladies and gentlemen of ogboards.com,


As you know, in January 2012, February of 2013, January of 2015, and April of 2017 we launched our previous fundraising campaigns. The support was overwhelming as the posters of this site generously donated enough in the most recent campaigns to keep us afloat for 3.5 years. Our current operational costs are approximately $1500 per year, made in 4 quarterly payments. In addition, our software is now a few years old, and we we're due for an upgrade, pending appropriate funds. As of the last payment for the upcoming quarter, our coffers are once again dry.


Here’s where we need your help. We obviously know that not every poster will donate, but we hope many of you will contribute. Like PBS we are member supported from Posters Like You. There is no obligation to give and the amount any individual poster gives or doesn’t give will not be public information at any time. This is a strictly voluntary contribution to help defray our hosting costs. We have purposely chosen to refrain from putting advertisements on the site, and we’d prefer to keep this a place built by and supported by WFU fans. If you enjoy the features of the message board and product we are offering, we ask that you help us keep it going. This is not ogboards going public. You will not obtain an ownership stake in the boards for giving, nor will you gain any special benefits or decision-making power aside from being able to select a custom title. We will not treat posters differently or grant them increased leniency in our moderating decisions on account of a contribution.


OGBoards currently has roughly 5,000 members, and just under 2,000 of those are active posters. During our previous campaign, over 100 posters contributed something from as little as $5 up to $250 (with an average of $42). We raised a total of $4,500 dollars. Which was an amazing effort.


We have a PayPal account at ogbpitboss(at)gmail.com (directs to tsy's Fulton Creek Farms account), which you can access to contribute, and a Venmo @tsywake (last 4 of phone# 0523). You are also welcome to mail a physical check if you do not use paypal nor Venmo; PM tsywake for the address. When you do mail the payment, please include your username. If you do choose to give, we recommend a contribution somewhere between $20-$50. You can give more, you can give less, or you can give not at all. Follow your hearts. You will not receive any special benefit. If you do try to extort any special treatment, or pull the "I'm an owner of this board now" card, we reserve the right to out your weaselly ways to the entire community.


When you submit the payment, please include your username so we know who to attribute the Thank You. As an added incentive, if you are an alum, please indicate your year along with your username for a friendly year/decade competition.


If you have any problems working with PayPal or Venmo, please let tsywake or one of the other Mods know via PM. We deeply appreciate any money you choose to give.


Go Deacs!
 
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Just donated....should be a 501(c)3 given the psychological anguish caused by LOWF.

TY
 
Tell me more about the software update. Any new features or interesting changes?
 
Tell me more about the software update. Any new features or interesting changes?

Pasting Cookout's response on the Tunnel's thread. He's much better at the explanation than I ever would be.

We're eying a switch to an entirely different software system, which means logistics have been a little hairier to figure out than past vbulletin upgrades (which were more or less plug'n'play with just a little bit of downtime). The total costs, just monetarily speaking, are probably going to be somewhere between 2-300 dollars for the software license itself and potential addons, more if we have to involve any technical consulting (which I'm hoping to not need, but we do have a pretty big database right now). There will be some growing pains since we're all pretty familiar with the software here and over the years TWDeac and I have added lots of various touches to improve things, so we may have feature gaps we have to work to fill from the get-go, but I think we'll see some more up-to-date behavior that means those add-ons aren't as needed.


I think just getting on something more modern should hopefully immediately improve things on the speed front, but if we don't see noticeable upgrades on that front from software changes alone, phase 2 will be seeking another hosting provider since I think they're sub-optimal lately (and tbh we may have to push that up as part of upgrade, depending on full requirements for new software stack). A third option may involve having to start archiving and culling old enough threads. We've always really prided ourselves on having a long history to search through here, but the truth is that it's a very large set of data to maintain and move around and keep optimized, which is why most forums implement some sort of hard cutoffs with archiving. It'll be a last resort, but I wouldn't be surprised if we finally have to take that plunge just to keep things snappy.
 
Just wanted to point out that we have a lot fewer posters than we did the last time we had one of these pledge drives so we might need to dig a little deeper.
 
Just wanted to point out that we have a lot fewer posters than we did the last time we had one of these pledge drives so we might need to dig a little deeper.

Also, people that have been here for years should be more established in their careers and be able to give more as well. Let's do it, people.
 
Thanks for all of the donations so far. For those that send checks, I'll try my best to PM you once it arrives. For those on Venmo, I'm liking the notification as confirmation. For Paypal, well Paypal sucks and does not make it easy for me to confirm. However, if you see a confirmation from either Riverside BBQ or Fulton Creek Farms, it went through :)
 
why don't you do an assessment based on the number of posts per member? PhD would be good for at least $3,000.
 
Those who don't need the additional $1400 Biden Bucks should just donate the entirety to the boards. Think about what these mods could do with tens of thousands of dollars.
 
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