Shifti:Site support: Difference between revisions

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It's been a great run so far, and I hope it'll keep going as good. But keeping a server online is not easy or cheap. Rather than have to deal with the potential problems that can arise from a single person paying all of Shifti's bills, now you, too, can help keep this wonderful resource online. Just click the "Donate" button below and your money will be used to pay bills to keep Shifti going. (It may also be used to cover hardware repairs for the server, too!)
<div style="float:right; text-align: center; border: 2px solid silver; margin: 10px; padding:5px; background:white;"><donations/><small>'''''Click the image to<br/>donate via PayPal'''''</small></div>
::&mdash;[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:23, 3 January 2008 (EST)


<div style="font-size: 16pt; text-align: center;">Emergency News</div>
Shifti is a free website (both for reading and for hosting) and doesn't run advertisements, but it still has expenses. We hope to cover these via donations.
As any administrator is free to do, I've been closely tracking Shifti's bandwidth usage. This is because Shifti is currently connected via that the ISP calls a "Basic DSL Package" - which has no limit on how much bandwidth can be used, but does have a very visible limit on the "Size of the Pipe" (ie: the maximum concurrent connections and speed of data). In less than four days Shifti has reached about 155 megabytes of traffic. At that rate some users may have problems accessing Shifti, and for what is becoming a very important resource, that is not a good thing. After speaking with the ISP, I do have a price on upgrading the connection to it's maximum. The figure is $180US. I ([[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]]) was planning on having this done at the start of February, but that appears to not be soon enough. So please, people, if you have the money to spare, donate!
::&mdash;[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 00:35, 4 January 2008 (EST)


<div style="text-align: center;"><donations/></div>
(If the donate button does *NOT* show up above, you can still send donations - the account is shade-NOSPAM-at-NOSPAM-entermail-REMOVE-THIS-AND-NOSPAM-dot-net - we are currently experiencing some problems with the extension - any programmers out there that have figured out how to get extensions that worked in 1.12, 1.13 and 1.14 to work in the 1.15 branch, please tell me what I need to do via my [[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk page]]!)
 
==What your donations go towards==
 
Currently the most significant expense is a $120 fee for bandwidth that comes due every six months. Our first run-in with this in January of 2008 came quite unexpectedly (along with a $60 service charge) and we were forced to put up a banner to solicit donations. Fortunately it was only a short while before we'd covered it and we could take the banner down again. We've left the channel open for further donations, however, in the hopes that the next time the bill comes due we'll already have enough stored away between now and then to cover it without needing to resort to a funding drive.
 
==Why PayPal?==
 
By using [https://www.paypal.com PayPal] we can provide "complete accountability" for all donations. However, it does come with a downside - there is a transaction fee built-into the system. What that means is that, from a $20 donation Shifti gets $18.92. But don't think you should try to include said fee in your donation - the difference isn't enough to mean much. With the current target it'll come to something like $10, and, with the currently available information, the fee will account for something like $6. With that being the case, if Shifti does, actually, fall short by that amount I ([[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]]) will cover the difference out of my own pocket.

Latest revision as of 19:44, 12 March 2011

Click the image to
donate via PayPal

Shifti is a free website (both for reading and for hosting) and doesn't run advertisements, but it still has expenses. We hope to cover these via donations.

(If the donate button does *NOT* show up above, you can still send donations - the account is shade-NOSPAM-at-NOSPAM-entermail-REMOVE-THIS-AND-NOSPAM-dot-net - we are currently experiencing some problems with the extension - any programmers out there that have figured out how to get extensions that worked in 1.12, 1.13 and 1.14 to work in the 1.15 branch, please tell me what I need to do via my talk page!)

What your donations go towards

Currently the most significant expense is a $120 fee for bandwidth that comes due every six months. Our first run-in with this in January of 2008 came quite unexpectedly (along with a $60 service charge) and we were forced to put up a banner to solicit donations. Fortunately it was only a short while before we'd covered it and we could take the banner down again. We've left the channel open for further donations, however, in the hopes that the next time the bill comes due we'll already have enough stored away between now and then to cover it without needing to resort to a funding drive.

Why PayPal?

By using PayPal we can provide "complete accountability" for all donations. However, it does come with a downside - there is a transaction fee built-into the system. What that means is that, from a $20 donation Shifti gets $18.92. But don't think you should try to include said fee in your donation - the difference isn't enough to mean much. With the current target it'll come to something like $10, and, with the currently available information, the fee will account for something like $6. With that being the case, if Shifti does, actually, fall short by that amount I (ShadowWolf) will cover the difference out of my own pocket.