As mentioned in the site news thread I posted last week, I've setup a donate page for the web site and forums. A few members over the past months have wanted to help out and I've always turned them away but as things have grown it's better to accept donations than put up ads, spam, and other nonsense. So yeah, it's all written out on the page there and like I said there I hate to force this upon people but if you'd like to help out, there is now an option for you to be able do so.

I've put a donate link in the upper right hand corner here in the forums where the other key links are (Gallery, Help, Search, etc...) and on the bottom of each page in the footer with the other site links.

URL: http://www.e60.net/donate/

For those curious ... initial startup costs of the site included two key items. First was securing the E60.NET domain name which cost $625 from the previous owner. I had to get a short and "good" domain to use without "BMW" in the URL to avoid legal problems from BMW like the bmwm5 board and others have had. The other key item was licensing this board software and gallery since it was unlicensed before which was nearly $250. So there you go.. some may think doing all this was crazy but now we've got an awesome community which has really exploded since we switched to the e60.net domain. Many new members have no idea what I'm talking about probably, but you older folks know. Thanks for sticking around!

And finally, in other news, I'm waiting on IPB 2.1 but I think we won't be beta testers of this new version because it will break the gallery. Once that's fixed we'll upgrade, probably after the versions are finalized which won't be for another several months.

 

Lomag,
What about your hardware and hosting costs? Can you tell us what that is costing you or how you are doing this.

Never mind, I read about it on the donate page.

 

it mentions it on the donation page....

 

I think google adsense wouldn't be too offending to include.........

 

Thanks for everything Mark!

If you end up making a profit, maybe we you can purchase an online TIS subscription!

 

Better yet if he could buy das an E60.

 

I just skipped a fuel station and paypalled the money to you. My car will be in the garage for the next couple of days then. Gives me some time on this fantastic board instead.

Many thanks lomag!

 

Not trying to make a profit -- it was my idea though to eventually build a server dedicated for the web site and forums only. That's the ideal solution to eliminate all random delays and all we get now although I have dramatically improved the response time by fixing software issues. I'll probably build that dedicated server by the end of this year the way things are growing are here. Depends on how things go.

I haven't chatted with Dave in a while nor have I seen him active in the forum too much. I'll try to get ahold of him this comming week to see what's up unless he reads and replies here first (hint, hint). Remember, we agreed back then that the forums would probably be better run under my administration because he's a busy fellow and I'm a techie geek with too much time to spend on these things, not to mention a bmw nut now.

 

...with compliments and thanks for a good job.

 

Thanks and thanks!! I have posted a list of donors so far on the donate page. One member brought up creating a special "Contributors" member group which I have acctually done. I saw some other forums with a similiar setup and it seemed to work fairly well. Donors certaintly deserve to be recognized in my book (but only if they want to be).

Thanks Guys!!