VOD Subscription eMail ???????????

[uberveg]

Surely the VOD forum turns a profit in itself,  my little advert on the bottom right cost £50 per year. The big ones along the top are £200 per year....

[neisel]

Think Paddy is targeting the non contributors or information leeches as I call them on our Classic Car Forum

Not 100% sure you have entirely understood the concept of the free, open access internet forum.

[1958steveflying]

Paddy has posted on this thread on VOD  http://www.vegetableoildiesel.co.uk/forum/viewthread.php?tid=36600#pid413304
 along with a few others, he had put this..

"The subs(ription request is genuine and you dont have to pay it - it's not a bill. BUT, if you dont pay it you may have restricted access to the forum. "


And I added this...


"I said a few years ago that a membership fee could be charged and restricted access available for non members and was shot down in flames.

Like I said back then the Vw T4/5 forum charges a fee and for that you can advertise goods and chattels and have access to how to do guides and the like. Along with the ability to communicate with other members via the forum. I still think it is a good idea, people who come on to sell oil and other Bio/veg related items would benefit and not unreasonable they should pay a little for the pleasure.
I also strongly disagree that it is down to the select few to donate year on year for everyone in the world to benefit the forum staying on the www. "

[Tony]

Surely the VOD forum turns a profit in itself,  my little advert on the bottom right cost £50 per year. The big ones along the top are £200 per year....

How much???!! Should be easily turning plenty of profit for that! Are you sure?

[uberveg]

I know! This is what paddy quoted me. Although it seems only one external site has a banner at the top, thought oilybits used to be there too...

[petep900]

I tend to agree that the advertising currently carried on VOD should cover costs.

Interesting those figures you quote uberveg - plenty of coin there for hosting
and lets not forget hosting also cover the Goat Industries main site

[petep900]

Think Paddy is targeting the non contributors or information leeches as I call them on our Classic Car Forum

Not 100% sure you have entirely understood the concept of the free, open access internet forum.

Ten years ago I would have agreed with open access internet

Unfortunately it seems that most things these days cost hence restricted access
with the basics public access and membership for the 'good stuff'

It's a damn shame but seems the way the WWW is going
along with IP tracking by certain 'agencies' to see what you look at
...but we won't go there as that's a whole new barrel of fish

[neisel]

But surely in the case of VOD it's a part of Goat Industries & set up to attract business & traffic to his site. It's through that forum that I've found & bought Paddy's products.

I know it's only 2 quid & neither here nor there in the grand scheme of things but as an arm of a commercial enterprise it's operating costs really should be priced into Goat products.

[petep900]

Totally agree Neisel

Paddy should suck up the forum costs as it is a business add-on
that promotes Goat Industries and brings in (some) business

[Rotary-Motion]

couple 1000 £2 quids add upto alotto dosho

 

[Glycer-rides]

Totally agree Neisel

(Falls off chair...

[Rotary-Motion]

Paypal is the new google

paypal is your friend

 

[Chug]

Ho hum, Patrick wasn't in my best book atm so I aint been on the forum for a month and then when I do I see it's all gone tits up, what the feck is he playing at now?

Always said he should absorb the cost himself as a business tool, if he is charging subscription now it should go on a better hosting deal or it's gonna be the same in a few months.

Gonna get busier on here now Tony, gonna need a donate button mate!

[Tony]

Gonna get busier on here now Tony, gonna need a donate button mate!

I'd rather stab myself in the eye with a rusty fork!

In all seriousness, in the past the agreement with BE has been that anything less than 100Gb/month is not going to be a problem, so in theory we're good even if we go a way over the level of bandwidth VOD has seen.  Before hosting biopowered, this server did a fair bit of grunt work for a free open-source game community, and used to shift ~60Gb/month.  At the moment we're seeing about 3Gb/month.

In practise, BE is in the process of being absorbed by Sky, so who knows how the T&Cs will change.

If bandwidth becomes an issue, then we'll have an open discussion about choosing a web host and how to finance it.  No reason not to hop between hosts - we've already moved server machines and static IP address which is the same level of hassle, and that went well enough.

But, this place is a slim operation - everything is streamlined and there is a nice SPI firewall between the server and t'internet complete with flood and portscan protection, I think with the same number of users as VOD the bandwidth would be a fraction of VODs anyway.  I'll be very surprised if we need to consider a paid-for web host.

The only argument I can see in the favour of going for a "proper" host is responsiveness of the forum, as at the moment the server only has a 1.3mbps uplink.

[photoman290]

this sort of thing happened on the otherpower wind turbine site a couple of years ago. lots of pressure to update the software. so there asked for donations and got around 3 grand in a few days. this paid for someone to come in and migrate everything to a new system. all the archives and most of the photos got transferred. they were also using the site  as part of a business.
all was well for a while then people started to complain about the mods, so they all left and a new lot took over. took a while to settle down but its ok now. if yoy start to ask for money people tend to want to have more of a say in what goes on. be careful what you wish for.