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Sorry mate, since I changed the PayPal donation to use the Chip In box on the homepage it no longer notifies me via email of PayPal donations. Thanks for your contribution, I've updated your status now.

 

For that matter if I've missed anyone else feel free to chime in here and I'll do the same for you.

 

The chip in feature is good from a-this-is-how-much-we-need perspective but it makes it harder to keep track of who donated.

i was wondering why my status had not changed, That explanins i donated $30 back late August by Chip in and i thought you might have had to donate more to become a Donating Member. The site is great and when i feel i can i like to help out. 

 

Cheers

Dave

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i was wondering why my status had not changed, That explanins i donated $30 back late August by Chip in and i thought you might have had to donate more to become a Donating Member. The site is great and when i feel i can i like to help out. 

 

Cheers

Dave

 

Hi Dave,

Thanks I'm a little behind in updating new donating member stats. I have to do this manually for a couple of reasons. Will do my best to update all recent donating member stats soon.

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I 'chipped in' $10 for September but it seems we were

still short. Come on people this sites cheap entertainment

and an invaluable source of Z info.

I will try and donate as often as I can, thanks Gav and

everyone else for the effort made to run this forum

cheers

Oldzguy

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  • 3 weeks later...
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I 'chipped in' $10 for September but it seems we were

still short. Come on people this sites cheap entertainment

and an invaluable source of Z info.

I will try and donate as often as I can, thanks Gav and

everyone else for the effort made to run this forum

cheers

Oldzguy

 

Thanks mate, yeah we have been a little short the last 2 months. In other months advertising has helped, but it's hard to predict what we get from advertising every month. Some months it's good other months it's next to nothing.

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What's happening with donation facility Gav, did you win lotto ? went to donate, all closed up

 

Slightly less glamorous actually I am stuck in Botswana at the moment with very slow internet and I have to pay for it in MB (100MB is like 7 euro :(). So I'll sort it all out when I get back to Dublin in a couple of days and update this thread.

 

I schedule donations on a monthly basis so people can keep track of monthly donation progress but it means it expires at the end of each month and I have to keep resetting it.

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Ok, I gunna have my little speil as i found these things are better out than in so Here goes.

 

1. I realize i am a low effective contributer to the site in actually factual abilty in strip down repair of bodys or engines as this is not my stongest area.

 

2. I am not the largest or most regular donator ( or good speller)

 

3. But i frakin love this site, Like really i come on to check what is happening most days ( seriously i do). I love my Zed and love sharing the experience with the completly random and often blacksheepish community that is us.

 

But Really what is going on with only 3 donations this MONTH! the target is only a couple hundred dollars  per month! we have three?

 

I know if this site died i would not be the only person thinking ....... umm i should have donated more, I miss what this site gave me the opportunity to express and share and most important for me ( LEARN)... oh yeah and meet people.

 

Now I have no Idea of the finicial status, or are no way impying that the site is in finicial doom, however, Like seriously only three donation so far this month! talk about taking things for granted!

 

I honestly am not targeting anybody in particalar, if people that live in glass houses should not throw stones well let me live in a glass house i have not donated for over two months. So this is just as much as dig at myself as anyone else.

 

I guess i was just appreciating tonight how actually awesome this site has become and is to many members, for so many different reasons, and quite uniquely i imgaine would be up there exceeding the traffic of so many other hobbiest sites ( let alone a specific car) and the envy of many many more........   

 

What we have here is truely a huge effort by those that started it and i am sure would be unimaginable if you where to plan it from the start.....  I am pretty sure it would have exceeded the expectations of the orginal devolpers and equally has grown to become what would be what any enthusasist hope could be available to them....

 

 

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^ partially my fault. Each month I have to update the donation widget to allow donations again. The widget is a visual indicator of donations so far for everyone to see. I could set it longer like 12 months, but I think month by month seems like a more management amount of money.

 

The site does make a little bit of cash from advertising and sometimes this helps cover the deficit. Although I have to be 100% honest when I say I've been slack with the site for the past couple of months. New featured rides and news on the homepage. These are really important as they drive new memberships and attract people to the site.

 

If people are interested in helping out please feel free to reach out.

 

FWIW It's been great to watch the site grow and the community around it. The biggest motivator for me was building a network of contacts I can hopefully call on when it comes time to professionally restore my own 240z. I also think the early Z was under appreciated and ignored for a very long time. This has changed a lot recently though and hopefully will continue to.

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Gavin

I know it has been 12 months since the QLD reps Steve and Shaun came to visit the ZCCQ. At the time it was decided we would make some kind of donation to the cause . There are a lot of ZCCQ members who use this site and would not wish to see it finish. To this although the club caters for all Z's and then some most members own S30 cars . There was a joint event held in December and some funds were raised  for the forum . Perhaps a friendly PM to Dat24 may help the cause also . 

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Gavin

I know it has been 12 months since the QLD reps Steve and Shaun came to visit the ZCCQ. At the time it was decided we would make some kind of donation to the cause . There are a lot of ZCCQ members who use this site and would not wish to see it finish. To this although the club caters for all Z's and then some most members own S30 cars . There was a joint event held in December and some funds were raised  for the forum . Perhaps a friendly PM to Dat24 may help the cause also .

Good call, I have given some members parts  and as payment have asked donations be given to this site but have no way of knowing if this has been done on my behalf or not. I have just put my trust in the people concerned and hope they do the right thing. Not an IT person but maybe some sort of register could be set up for this purpose so members can see if in fact the donations have been made.

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I have suggested ways to help keep the costs of hosting the site down, rather than just wait for more donations to keep it running.

 

Hosting your pictures on a website and posting links here is a good one, rather than just attaching pictures but it seemed to go un-noticed.

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Well I for one have been getting extremely horny everytime I log onto the site recently. Not sure why. Well....... It might have something to do the the seemingly new adverting banners for Cougar life and I think another grab a granny site. Ha ha keep them coming Gav. Newly single my self I just wish they worked.  ;).

If we ever get real desperate we can pull some cash out of the Viczcar bank account.

Cheers

PS I to am a big fan of the sight although some of the main contributors have gone quiet. Swings & round abouts and life's changes for us all.

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I have suggested ways to help keep the costs of hosting the site down, rather than just wait for more donations to keep it running.

 

Hosting your pictures on a website and posting links here is a good one, rather than just attaching pictures but it seemed to go un-noticed.

 

Hi mate,

Actually it's not so much disk space that is the issue as it is processing power for the end server. i'm not sure if the forum software is just incredibly inefficient or if it's just how forums are, but I tried several things to bring processing consumption down a couple of years ago and it didn't work.

 

Also remotely hosted images is a good idea, although this in itself has issues such as:

- Bandwidth exceeded for images

- Hotlinking causes them to be blocked

- The image is removed and then you get the missing images

 

I've been to many forums with threads that are a couple of years old have missing images (when I could have really used those images also!) so there is a flip side to this approach.

 

If I ever get time I plan to make some updates to the site and perhaps consolidate the site into the 1 software package this may help make it more manageable and feature rich along with giving more flexibility to others to help manage the site.

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Well I for one have been getting extremely horny everytime I log onto the site recently. Not sure why. Well....... It might have something to do the the seemingly new adverting banners for Cougar life and I think another grab a granny site. Ha ha keep them coming Gav. Newly single my self I just wish they worked.  ;).

If we ever get real desperate we can pull some cash out of the Viczcar bank account.

Cheers

PS I to am a big fan of the sight although some of the main contributors have gone quiet. Swings & round abouts and life's changes for us all.

 

If your getting that kind of advertising it might be because of the kind of websites you visit ;).

 

I get friggin car insurance banners lol... yet I don't need any more insurance.

 

Honestly many of the banner systems target advertising based on previous interests :P

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As RB30X mentioned a way to reduce site costs it got me thinking about other alternatives to hosting and ways to make our online community easier to manage.

 

Google App engine allows you to leverage a hosting environment and run your software using the processing power and scalability of Google Data Center's etc..

 

So anyway I got a bit distracted while looking into this and came across this long post...

 

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCommunitieswithSo.html

 

I thought it was very interesting and it got me thinking about our own forum software and some of the assumptions these tools make and how they affect the way conversation flows online and how new members discover a site, sign up and become part of a community.

 

Anyway if you have some time give it a read, I would like to improve my programming skills this year and perhaps a project like converting Auszcar.com to a python based framework is what I need?

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Do the large number of one postets, ie those that sign up just to tell us about one thing, or sell one thing, and never to be heard from again,, occupy site space, which may cause an overload of data stored?

 

Is there a way to purge the one post only sign ups out?

 

I got a pm couple days ago re the ARCRally Calder forum challenge, from a newbie sign up, that, lets face it, after that event is done and dusted, we will not hear from again.

 

BTW i looked at a forum banner advert a couple weeks back, and have now booked a holiday in Vanuatu, at end of March, see, it does work!

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Do the large number of one postets, ie those that sign up just to tell us about one thing, or sell one thing, and never to be heard from again,, occupy site space, which may cause an overload of data stored?

 

Is there a way to purge the one post only sign ups out?

 

I got a pm couple days ago re the ARCRally Calder forum challenge, from a newbie sign up, that, lets face it, after that event is done and dusted, we will not hear from again.

 

BTW i looked at a forum banner advert a couple weeks back, and have now booked a holiday in Vanuatu, at end of March, see, it does work!

 

No 1 time posters take up very little space. In fact their impact on site costs is negligible. It's almost non-existent. The forum itself is CPU intensive. The usage of the CPU is what forced us off shared hosting (Cheap Hosting) - not disk space.

 

That's why I'm looking at Google App Engine - it's free for the most part, but if you start using a lot of CPU resources you start to pay based on your usage, which is still very cheap compared with most web-hosting costs.

 

The problem is this requires porting to a new platform. I'm not a great programmer - I'm thinking it's something I need to improve on for a variety of reasons so a project is what I need.

 

The problem I see with this is porting might mean we loose some forum functionality, to be honest I know some people may not like this idea and have strong opinions about why they like things the way they are, but I think most forum software is difficult to use, bloated with unnecessary features and susceptible to things like forum spam, bots etc..

 

There are many advantages of going to your own custom built software, but it is a lot of work. So it's something I'm going to look into for the future.   

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