Paying for Sigs

[Maximvs]

Originally Posted by Chris

I can back that up these sites have a 99.999999999999999999999999999999% chance of closing anytime soon unless like some crazy pirate crashed his ship into the room where they have the servers these sites arent going anywhere.

And yea it might be $5 a year for a site but forums are much different and TONS more bandwidth gets used and it has to be reliable so it cant just be a $5 a month server. And holy geeze max i knew nicks bill must have been high but not that high O_o i honestly would donate to the site but my parents wont let me .

Hey - no worries Chris Nick's sites understand not eveyone has the money - as Bat mentions thats why contests wil be opening up options like winning accounts and the like

AS fot the 20,000 - its a big number which I'm just drawing rough conclusions... if Nick purchases his hosting sites (I doubt he'd use some $5 a month hosting service - so lets say $500) even then your looking up to about 5-10 k... still not cheap

[icemage]

Yeah that is still expensive. I'm still sad..

[Dr. Zeppers]

Originally Posted by icemage

yeah my point is my parent's wouldn't let me so now I can't get a sig forever unless I win a contest which is unlikely... and why didn't you just go on freewebs or something? or ipbfree.com those are free forums

Ok, your situation is understood. I'm sure there are many members under similar circumstances.

Most compare running a series of forums such at Nick does to a typical website that we all can get somewhat inexpensively. This is not a fair comparison.

First lets review "free" sites.
Free sites generally do not offer any sort of forum software adequate to run a forum anywhere near this scale. Those that do offer forums restrict modifications, security tracking, and usually force THIER advertising content on you. Nick is adamant about maintaining appropriate content for a family safe environment, not having enough control over content eliminates this option.

Inexpensive hosts (typical that we general users all may get)
These sites may seem to have all that would be necessary, but often lack the ability to load a forum package such as vBulletin in the form necessary to run a set of fansite forums of this magnitude (AND PERFORMANCE). Most sites that recieve this volume of traffic will likely be getting cancelled by hosts, or getting addition bills for resources they did not anticipate you using. Implementing forum software would still require licensing for an adequate forum package (ie vBulletin). There are still limitations on what one can do, because these are also usually in a 'shared' environment, sharing hosting resources with the webhosts other customers.

Professional hosts (high end, full server/web boxes, multiple site management).
Full access, do everything you need to do, modify, secure, manage to your hearts content (THIS COST $$$ BTW). This would be the solution necessary to run sites of this nature, traffic, and magnitude. Licensing of the forum software, etc not being included runs up costs. Inclusive bandwidth, and possibility of costs for bandwidth over alloted amounts may come in to play. The can install/configure/modify as the owner/operator wishs.



Simply put, the free/inexpensive options adequate enough to run almost everyones personal pages or guild site, are just not adequate enough to run sites of this size and magnitude. Thier features, and access/abilities to manage them are simply not a grand enough scope to maintain forums in the manner Nick's forums sites have been known for, and will continue to strive for.

[icemage]

well I give up on this then i'm not getting it any time soon

[Mr.LoveLocket]

Originally Posted by Jack Garrett

so Disney isnt even monitoring this site? and none of our requests for bug fixes are gonna be answered?

Of course this is not a disney site ( like not made from the disney creators) But i'm sure if you send in a request they may reply

[Swash]

Nick Makes a lot of money for the site with the advertising fee 100$ a month I believe.

[icemage]

He doesn't make money? Advertising saves him a little money but not a lot

[Swash]

Actually he probably makes some money from this site if he spends 10k to 12k each year then he probably makes 13k to 15k each year per site.

[icemage]

How would he make that money? He can't get it all by advertising?

[Swash]

Yes but people donate and they pay for advertising then they subscribe for a sig option this site has what 20000 members if half of them subcribed to even the lowest option that be 3.3k
then another 500 subscribe to the highest option thats 6.5k then another 500 donate 5 dollars thats another 2.5k then 250 people are fealing generous and they donate 10 dollars thats another 2.5k then 25 people want to advertise their site another 2.5k all together that equals $17,300 he made that year subtract 12k he made 5.3k per site that year.

[Batleth]

Originally Posted by Swash

Yes but people donate and they pay for advertising then they subscribe for a sig option this site has what 20000 members if half of them subcribed to even the lowest option that be 3.3k
then another 500 subscribe to the highest option thats 6.5k then another 500 donate 5 dollars thats another 2.5k then 250 people are fealing generous and they donate 10 dollars thats another 2.5k then 25 people want to advertise their site another 2.5k all together that equals $17,300 he made that year subtract 12k he made 5.3k per site that year.

But we don't have that many that donate to this site. We have closer to 23 users that have so far. We make just about $1 a day off the ads. The bills are roughly $200+ a month to keep the site running. So if you figure that up, we're coming up REALLY short on funds each month.

Donate if you want. If not, don't worry about it.

[Evil Kid Bugs]

Actually these sites don't cost anything cuz we run them on Kid Bugs' old PS2 and the bandwidth we pirate off of the wi-fi at $tarbux and what we really need the $$$ for is to pay for Pepto Bismol for Batleth after he ate all the ghaa anything left over goes to my carrot fund oh and Nick doesn't live in a "flat/house/appartment/cardboard box" cuz he's auusie so the proper term for where he lives is "pouch".

-ekb-

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Swash

Nick Makes a lot of money for the site with the advertising fee 100$ a month I believe.

Currently we have 0 people signed up for advertising on all our sites.

So the $100 a month we charge we are not getting anyway.


We get a few donations here and there but those mainly are on ToonTownCentral.

Google ads bring in a few dollars a day and do help.

P.S. our server costs a few hundred a month plus other fees.

The reason we pay so much is because we are paying for the speed of the server eg. how much ram, the CPU etc...

Forums use alot of computer resources and therefore any forum that has over 30 users on at any time will struggle to load the pages quickly on a free or shared server.

Our current server has Dual Opteron processors with 8gb ram and two 32gb scsi drives in raid config.