Fundraiser before the fundraiser...
Offline We will have a fundraiser sometime this winter to help raise costs associated with the purchase and set up of a new server along with a site upgrade. This will position us for where we need to be to have a speedy site for 5 or more years. We'll hope to raise about $2,000 to meet costs in that fundraiser. However for now I'd personally like to raise a little money to prepare including the purchase of learning materials and maybe even securing an expert that bills per hour to help us if needed. We also need to replace a hard drive in the current server, along with installation it'll cost near $200.
More info on the server change and specs is here: http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/30284
Raising $300 here would keep us on the right track for a server upgrade soon. If we can raise more than that we'll use it to speed up how quick we can get the new server. PLEASE DONATE VIA PAYPAL HERE
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Isn't this like the 12th time you bought a new server within four years?
Why should that shock you now that the IPOD #5,000 will be out in a month?
Although it would be nice if ANY product made would last more than two weeks.
If Brian wants to spread the joy of BBQ kittens to the heathen masses, it takes scratch. But not Eagles, I am trying desperately to make him see the light that green is not good.
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I buy a new server every time you get on my nerves, don't make it 13.
The last server was the first server and it was purchased about 4 years ago. Maybe you're thinking of the few times I asked for help paying the bill. This server will cost over $3,000... we could easily spend $5,000 if we raise the money. The bill is currently $100 per month to host, and will be $75 per month after we make upgrades. I was hoping to not have to buy a server for quite some time but the admin who works on the server has made a strong case for the fact that we need to upgrade sooner than later. Worst case scenario we could head into our 5th year on this server knowing that it could fail at anytime and it could be a week or two of no site until we can get back up and running.
The fact that you would make a snarky comment like that baffles me. You came to this site as a theist, it's led you to atheism. You've made 5,000 posts here and never contributed a penny. All of those posts today remain online as an archive for you to refer to should you want at any given point. Those posts costs money to keep on the internet. Not only that, but we've let you drunk dial us almost every Saturday for I don't know how long now. So if you would... could you please not make snarky comments in threads where people are going to support your habit... or maybe just maybe help cover some of the costs associated with the site for once.
We are not making a profit, I have to cover RRS costs all the time. Subscriber donations equal about $60 per month right now, and our server bill alone is $100.
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Thanks Jeffrick for the $60 contribution.
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The $60 from Jeffrick has been allocated towards a replacement drive for the existing server.
Shipping Method: Two-Day Shipping Shipping Preference: Group my items into as few shipments as possible Subtotal of Items: $54.99 Shipping & Handling: $11.67 ------ Total for this Order: $66.66
Delivery estimate: Oct. 20, 2011
In Stock
Sold by: Amazon.com LLC
Check out that $66.66 total.
We're still upgrading our current server. We hope to be able to purchase the new server by summer of 2012. We will be working on upgrading the site over the next year from an archaic version of our software to the cutting edge stuff. This has always been a problem in part because it could mess up our subscription system. Since we don't have many subscribers right now, we're more willing to take the risk. This is long overdue. Any drupal, php, css, programmers out there wanting to donate time? Let me know. There's a fork in the road, one ends with the server dying in a year to redo the site in a smaller state, the other leads to an up to date set of sites with high quality content spanning many years. Thankfully I've got someone in the car with me helping me find the right path... no not God... Mr XC.
The next $40 worth of donations will go to these:
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Sapient, I'm not necessarily going to apologize for my snark, however during the times you asked for donations in the past, I offered some ideas to cut costs. Ergo my snark when you keep asking for money.
For example, the free thinking teens forum hasn't had a post in 8 weeks. Plus there's rational tube which is basically a collection of Youtube videos. All you would need is create a channel on Youtube and put said videos on a playlist, or upload them if they weren't from Youtube, and you're using their servers, not yours. The majority of those 5000 posts of mine you keep on the site (at a cost to you) are years old, plus all the other posts from the past 5 years and 38 weeks. Not to mention all the shows you have clogging up your server space. Why not simply upload those to Youtube or some other file sharing site? You could even put them on an external HDD, and then email them in exchange for a donation.
In other words you can save space [and money] by re-arranging the site a little. Get rid of unused features [when was the last time somebody paid to download a show? Is the revenue higher than the cost?] When was the last time somebody read a 5 year old post?[that wasn't a spambot?]
I prefer to help with my mouth and not my wallet. If you haven't noticed, I have a big mouth.
Well, as you know, I am not a good cash source right now. Even so, the next time that you see Mr. XC, would you tell him that I suggest that he drop by whatever your local book store is and thumb through this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Web-Design-Nutshell-Desktop-Reference/dp/0596009879/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318997218&sr=1-1
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You got it Gene. He'll see this thread. I was looking to get him a book but I think he already knows it all.
As for the donations, I've conferred with XC and am looking to purchase an additional domain name. We'll make another kind of site for the new server in addition to this one to help with atheism awareness (for lack of a better term). I like the domain name I have picked out and plan to buy the .org and .net as well. The $30 after the money for the books will go to those new domain names. This site will serve a different purpose than RRS but be another cog in the battle against theism.
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Pineapple, no offense but your help isn't exactly help. You don't really understand how things are stored here, what takes the most processing power, what is and isn't on my server, how many man hours your ideas take, my goals and aims, past promises I made to others, and more.
I appreciate you trying to help. I'll note all your suggestions and maybe come up with some extra ideas to trim fat, that was already part of the plan though. I'm always reluctant to explain specifics about how we use our server so I keep it safe.
P.S. I read dozens of 5 yr old posts last week. I migrated at least one into a book page, and deleted about 20 threads that had no responses. I do this from time to time.
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All good.
The “In a Nutshell” books are great quick reference books that just say what to type and all of the context which is relevant.
@ Mr. XC: Also check out the SAMS publishing series [topic] Unleashed. They tend to be better than the other thick books that cost a good deal more.
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LOL wut?
I made three new books and started adding pages. I hope to migrate more posts as I have time. These books make it easy for people to find content of a specific type.
http://www.rationalresponders.com/history_rational_response_squad
http://www.rationalresponders.com/book_sapient (check out the poem from 2006 that I looked at 6 days ago)
http://www.rationalresponders.com/stories_about_overcoming_religion
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Trust me on this: We have noticed.
The thing is that you are suggesting back end changes that do not affect the actual cash flow around here.
We are talking about hardware changes. That basically requires the nerds to get their game on. Seriously, I build my own computers. I would never recommend a server to be built the way that I build computers normally. Even so, I offer my nerdy insight on the matter.
If all that I ever manage to do is hook up Mr. XC with some new books, then my job is done. If I manage to save Sapient some cash, then I get bonus point (I guess).
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Cpt, you don't seem to have a very good sense as to where costs go for hosting something on the internet. Basically, if it doesn't get used/accessed, it doesn't cost much, if anything, to keep it.
If the videos/shows aren't getting downloaded much, then they are not significant costs.
Also, you don't seem to have a very good sense of where the value of things on the internet lay. Having posts from 5 years ago is good value, especially if they are information rich, as our forum posts tend to be, especially in the more thorough debates we have where people are posting links left and right.
Why do you think YouTube hosts videos for free? Because their huge collection of videos has value, because it is a huge collection of videos. Our huge collection of posts and debates has value precisely because it is a huge collection of mostly-informative posts and debates.
The signal-to-noise ratio on this site is quite high, compared to most sites on the internet. Getting a good relevance score on a search engine like Google depends on having a good signal-to-noise ratio. That itself is a valuable thing. Look at the rise of Wikipedia for a reality check in that department.
Once you buy a server, the costs of upkeep for that server are mostly the costs of the human time it takes to maintain a healthy and relevant collection of information (i.e. the forums, articles, etc.). Plus occasional upgrades and repairs. An upfront hardware cost of a few thousand dollars, plus occasional upgrades, over the course of 4-5 years is on the order of $1000/yr, which is a quite manageable. A few dollars per day. The human costs are much much higher than that. Fortunately, we are willing to donate our time to help maintain the forums and other site content for our community, so we are able to bypass that human cost.
The main cost of keeping something on the internet (aside from human costs) is bandwidth. The server itself doesn't get more expensive as more people visit (up to a certain point, when the server becomes maxed out). But the bandwidth costs do grow like that.
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I'd love to donate, but I am down to bare bones on my end. I promise when things pick up again I will shoot you some sawbucks.
But for those who can, please do. Brian provides us an oasis and provides us a way to combat superstition. He has helped me feel liberated and unafraid, and I know there are countless others this site has helped.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Brian,
I sent you a couple of PMs.
Religion Kills !!!
Numbers 31:17-18 - Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.
http://jesus-needs-money.blogspot.com/
Thanks for the suggestions, but I would like to limit my work to the hardware, operating system, services (web server, e-mail, monitoring, database), backups, disaster recovery, security, and module upgrades. I have been doing this for many years now, and I would like to continue doing this for many more. I would like to prevent burnout by not taking on more responsibilities than I am comfortable with. I would like for someone else to handle the CSS and other theme stuff.
"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. ..." -- Thomas Jefferson
I'm trying to learn CSS myself. Experienced PHP and CSS folks can step forward if they wish to volunteer hours or accept extremely low pay for work.
(XC, we need to hit the sack)
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I really could use a little boost in this paypal account. Can we get 5 $5 donations in the next 24 hours? I'm about $160 behind where I need to be.
I never did buy that domain, or that programming book. I raised my advertising expense a few dollars to show off the faster site (which is a result of multiple factors). The home page loads in 3.6 seconds now versus 5.9 seconds last week.
Next big idea coming with our server upgrade: Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail login access to post on our site.
Also: Mobile friendly version of this site coming very soon. (for now you'll have to choose it, when we upgrade it will auto-detect you're mobile browser)
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Fair enough. For what you do though, I have found that those two series have been quite good for every nerdy project that I have ever embarked upon.
The “In a Nutshell” series is a great quick reference. If there is a specific bit of code that you rarely use, it will give you the correct syntax right away. It tells you what works.
The “Unleashed” series is rather more like taking a couple of semesters in a specific area of study. It tells you why something works.
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Facebook, Twitter, Gmail - oh my. Resistance is futile. I recently got screwed up by Google's march on taking over the world & implicit connection to Facebook. One sign on is easy but not when you have different sign-ons became quite unpleasant and a pain. I fully understand the benefits of doing such a thing. Will I lose my local sign on here and need to use a facebook signon or will anything magically take place? Will staying separate from that world be an option? Some sites I go to you must use such an account.
I do use my droid to view this site as well as a Mac & a PC. I didn't know I could choose a mobile option. Is that set at the account level in that I would need to swap back and forth as I swap devices?
An issue I am seeing now is on the droid when I try to make the screen zoom in the page is not adjusting to fit. That was working before. It is working on the front page but I don't see it working on the posts.
Religion Kills !!!
Numbers 31:17-18 - Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.
http://jesus-needs-money.blogspot.com/
I've just contributed USD$20.
I promise that if my work syndicate wins the $14 million lotto this week, I'll buy the new servers for you....
I don't want add facebook and google sign on unless we can keep our accounts just the way they are. I hope to have a new site project as well, to build a different type of community. Maybe the single sign-on will be good there.
Try it. I just installed it last night, I'm going to post more formal info on it soon. You change your theme back and forth in your account/edit screen: http://www.rationalresponders.com/user/ (then click edit tab on top)
Choose theme "mobile" that doesn't have a screenshot.
I don't think that will happen with the mobile theme.
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Still looking to get those important domain names and some training books.
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Got the domains with RRS money could use specific earmark money for the training books. Anyone want to get me started with 2 $20 donations?
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Done.
"Very funny Scotty; now beam down our clothes."
VEGETARIAN: Ancient Hindu word for "lousy hunter"
If man was formed from dirt, why is there still dirt?
It's not supposed to be the same guy people!!
Jeffrick... thank you very much. I will buy the training manuals now.
Please someone else chip in to help get ahead on raising money for a new server. I'll earmark the last $180 for the new server. The server fundraiser starts by Thanksgiving and seeks to raise up to $4,000. We have money earmarked, and I have a party agreeing to pay up to half of the server. But I must try to raise all the money on my own. And $4,000 is still a baby for what these things can go up to.
I'll end up sending out a newsletter or two to draw attention to the fundraiser but I was really hoping to see I could raise $300 here without have to send a newsletter.
We're talking about this.... (we have to buy ours first, then pay $100 per month)
I'm not CFI bringing $100,000 a year with a website nobody goes to. Help me out folks.
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I'm about to consider this fundraiser closed and just start the big one for the server to end by Jan 1st. I'll start that in the next few days. Feel free to be the last one to close this one out. A $55 donation completes this goal.
Please make sure your 5 favorite atheist sites are listed on the big list of atheist sites.
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Thanks very much to everyone for donating in this fund raiser. A big server fundraiser is coming in a few minutes. I am closing this thread.
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