Ladies and gentlemen of ogboards.com,
As you know, in January 2012 we launched our initial fundraising campaign. The support was overwhelming as the posters of this site generously donated $1800. At our usage rate at that time the money raised would have been good enough to keep this board going through June of this year.
Since then, ogboards.com has grown in popularity, and the number of posters has increased much faster than we ever dreamed. We switched hosts to Liquid Web(LW) early last year and were happy with the service they provided until we tried to upgrade to the next hosting level($60 to $90) to future proof our site. The upgrade uncovered many problems with LW. For a variety of reasons, we were forced to live on the $300/month hosting option for several weeks so that the site was usable. After many sleepless nights and angry conversations with LW, we decided to migrate to another option.
We were able to find a host that specializes in vBulletin sites and made the decision to go with them. The transition took place seamlessly early Sunday morning. We are already experiencing improvements in performance. We do have the option to move to a less powerful hosting option to save some money during our off-season, or to upgrade to a more powerful server to handle increased traffic.
We currently have roughly 3,500 members, and just over 2,000 of those are active posters. As I said earlier, the host we are working with has a lot of experience hosting sites that use vBulletin. Their largest forum boasts over 200,000 members.
Our new host will cost us just under $130 a month, which means to keep the lights on we will need approximately $1600 a year. We had sufficient funds in our account to make the first quarterly payment, so we’re good through the end of May. At that time, without additional funds, we will no longer be able to maintain the site.
Here’s where we need your help. Factoring out all of Moon’s parodies (please refer to your updated list), the annual payment equates to roughly one dollar per year, per poster. 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.
We have a PayPal account at ogbpitboss(at)gmail.com, which you can access to contribute. 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 apart from a custom title by contributing. 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.
If you have any problems working it, please let me know via PM. We deeply appreciate any money you choose to give.
Go Deacs!
Those who have donated: If not already, by the end of today you will be placed in a separate subgroup that is able to change your title to any custom title you'd like. The directions to change your title is listed below. Obviously, any titles that are horribly offensive or out of line, we'll have to address, so please don't go down that road.
Go to: Settings -->My Settings-->Edit Profile-->Second section will be listed as "Optional Information - All information will be viewable by other forum members. Custom User Title: Your current user title is______. In the blank box, enter the title you'd like, and click save at the bottom of the page.
If you have any trouble, let one of us know.
As you know, in January 2012 we launched our initial fundraising campaign. The support was overwhelming as the posters of this site generously donated $1800. At our usage rate at that time the money raised would have been good enough to keep this board going through June of this year.
Since then, ogboards.com has grown in popularity, and the number of posters has increased much faster than we ever dreamed. We switched hosts to Liquid Web(LW) early last year and were happy with the service they provided until we tried to upgrade to the next hosting level($60 to $90) to future proof our site. The upgrade uncovered many problems with LW. For a variety of reasons, we were forced to live on the $300/month hosting option for several weeks so that the site was usable. After many sleepless nights and angry conversations with LW, we decided to migrate to another option.
We were able to find a host that specializes in vBulletin sites and made the decision to go with them. The transition took place seamlessly early Sunday morning. We are already experiencing improvements in performance. We do have the option to move to a less powerful hosting option to save some money during our off-season, or to upgrade to a more powerful server to handle increased traffic.
We currently have roughly 3,500 members, and just over 2,000 of those are active posters. As I said earlier, the host we are working with has a lot of experience hosting sites that use vBulletin. Their largest forum boasts over 200,000 members.
Our new host will cost us just under $130 a month, which means to keep the lights on we will need approximately $1600 a year. We had sufficient funds in our account to make the first quarterly payment, so we’re good through the end of May. At that time, without additional funds, we will no longer be able to maintain the site.
Here’s where we need your help. Factoring out all of Moon’s parodies (please refer to your updated list), the annual payment equates to roughly one dollar per year, per poster. 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.
We have a PayPal account at ogbpitboss(at)gmail.com, which you can access to contribute. 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 apart from a custom title by contributing. 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.
If you have any problems working it, please let me know via PM. We deeply appreciate any money you choose to give.
Go Deacs!
Those who have donated: If not already, by the end of today you will be placed in a separate subgroup that is able to change your title to any custom title you'd like. The directions to change your title is listed below. Obviously, any titles that are horribly offensive or out of line, we'll have to address, so please don't go down that road.
Go to: Settings -->My Settings-->Edit Profile-->Second section will be listed as "Optional Information - All information will be viewable by other forum members. Custom User Title: Your current user title is______. In the blank box, enter the title you'd like, and click save at the bottom of the page.
If you have any trouble, let one of us know.
Last edited by a moderator:
