Hi everyone!
Previously, we have posted announcements regarding the forum's upkeep, situation and donations. But at the least we have finally sorted out everything in the background, we'll also get you guys up to date what is the current and actual situation.
To summarize what happened in the past few months, in terms of our hosting. We have changed hosts in order to reduce the site costs (and to have less site crashes/lag), to a nice and cozy $5 per month. From the looks of it, our current host keeps us up pretty well, barring the occasional MySQL errors often on Sundays when too many people rush for the newest Arc V episodes. Thankfully Shadowfang fixes these errors fairly quickly. Granted, we also had to lock down the forum to members only since guest access still proved to be heavy for the server to take, but all things considered, keeping the forum members only is more beneficial in the long run - primarily to keep the forum space safe for everyone.
However, Shadowfang had been keeping up the forum for us out of his pocket for the past 4 years, which had been incredibly generous of him, especially back when we were in need of a SysAdmin/host and he volunteered to help us all. The idea is to slowly trickle back the money to him in terms of donations over time, as well keep the site running since he would prefer things to be publicly funded from now on, so we don't depend on him financially. (Don't fear though, he will still help maintain the site and fix errors, at least until I'm taught the necessary skills as well.)
The staff has discussed if we should do plain donate buttons or Patreon, we felt Patreon might be a nicer option and might be a better incentive to get people to donate.
You can find our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/neoarkcradle
Now, the site goals are fairly straightforward. $5 is our minimum site cost per month to keep our site running, but $10 should net us a better hosting that should result in less MySQL errors on Sundays or whenever else people have to rush to our forum for information/discussion. There are more pricier hosting options, but we left those out as Shadowfang clarified we don't really need those specs. As such, $11 is just our way of marking income beyond the $10 milestone, which will be used to pay back Shadowfang for keeping NAC alive for the past 4 years. Of course, once the debt is possibly paid off, we could implement further milestones/donation incentives, such as a seed box for torrents, or ensuring Mako can grab us a copy of Monthly Bushiroad every month.
Now, for the tiers. We decided to give people the option to donate to us either $1, $2 or $5 per month. We didn't feel anything higher than that is necessary, at least for the time being. The other reason we don't have more options is because we are at odds with what to give out as donation incentives. We have a special usergroup for Patrons set up, which any of you can receive if you donate $1, $2 or $5 of your choice, and will give you a spiffy orange, bolded username. It's the same for every tier, it's more the matter of how much you'd like to donate to the site. However, there will be a thread in the Suggestion Forum to post in if there's anything you guys would specifically like for your pay.
Also, we'll admit we're fairly new at Patreon, so please forgive us for being pretty bare bones and possibly being noobs. We want to make sure this place stays alive but also offers something back for you guys to make it a nice and fun experience for everyone involved.
If you guys have any questions, concerns or comments, please post in this thread. Let's make this project a success! ^^
Previously, we have posted announcements regarding the forum's upkeep, situation and donations. But at the least we have finally sorted out everything in the background, we'll also get you guys up to date what is the current and actual situation.
To summarize what happened in the past few months, in terms of our hosting. We have changed hosts in order to reduce the site costs (and to have less site crashes/lag), to a nice and cozy $5 per month. From the looks of it, our current host keeps us up pretty well, barring the occasional MySQL errors often on Sundays when too many people rush for the newest Arc V episodes. Thankfully Shadowfang fixes these errors fairly quickly. Granted, we also had to lock down the forum to members only since guest access still proved to be heavy for the server to take, but all things considered, keeping the forum members only is more beneficial in the long run - primarily to keep the forum space safe for everyone.
However, Shadowfang had been keeping up the forum for us out of his pocket for the past 4 years, which had been incredibly generous of him, especially back when we were in need of a SysAdmin/host and he volunteered to help us all. The idea is to slowly trickle back the money to him in terms of donations over time, as well keep the site running since he would prefer things to be publicly funded from now on, so we don't depend on him financially. (Don't fear though, he will still help maintain the site and fix errors, at least until I'm taught the necessary skills as well.)
The staff has discussed if we should do plain donate buttons or Patreon, we felt Patreon might be a nicer option and might be a better incentive to get people to donate.
You can find our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/neoarkcradle
Now, the site goals are fairly straightforward. $5 is our minimum site cost per month to keep our site running, but $10 should net us a better hosting that should result in less MySQL errors on Sundays or whenever else people have to rush to our forum for information/discussion. There are more pricier hosting options, but we left those out as Shadowfang clarified we don't really need those specs. As such, $11 is just our way of marking income beyond the $10 milestone, which will be used to pay back Shadowfang for keeping NAC alive for the past 4 years. Of course, once the debt is possibly paid off, we could implement further milestones/donation incentives, such as a seed box for torrents, or ensuring Mako can grab us a copy of Monthly Bushiroad every month.
Now, for the tiers. We decided to give people the option to donate to us either $1, $2 or $5 per month. We didn't feel anything higher than that is necessary, at least for the time being. The other reason we don't have more options is because we are at odds with what to give out as donation incentives. We have a special usergroup for Patrons set up, which any of you can receive if you donate $1, $2 or $5 of your choice, and will give you a spiffy orange, bolded username. It's the same for every tier, it's more the matter of how much you'd like to donate to the site. However, there will be a thread in the Suggestion Forum to post in if there's anything you guys would specifically like for your pay.
Also, we'll admit we're fairly new at Patreon, so please forgive us for being pretty bare bones and possibly being noobs. We want to make sure this place stays alive but also offers something back for you guys to make it a nice and fun experience for everyone involved.
If you guys have any questions, concerns or comments, please post in this thread. Let's make this project a success! ^^
![[+]](https://neoarkcradle.net/forum/images/collapse_collapsed.png)