FiatSpider.com Needs your help

[Zippy]

Donation sent. And thanks to Evan and Mark for all their hard work. I saved a lot keeping my car running with help from this fantastic forum, I have learned a lot, too. I have met people from my own neighborhood and as far away as Sweden. This is the one place on the net I check into regularly and I am happy I can help keep it going.
Al

[tartan18]

Donation has been sent. This forum is a huge benefit and I deeply appreciate the help I have already received -- and I've only been a member for a few weeks.

[meangreenspider]

Very happy to donate! I hope it helps a little

[johndemar]

Evan,

I belong to a pro-team football forum and the admin. there places a "contributor" tag on the posters avatar and user name so it's visible to all whenever someone posts. A not so subtle way of reminding us that nothing in life, including this internet site, is ever free.

[Snoopy]

Donation sent!

[leftfield6]

Glad to help out. I'll b asking lots of questions, so I'm "prepaying" so to speak!!

[Razooli]

Evan,
Help is on the way! Your efforts to keep this site going are much appreciated.

[kmead]

Honestly this site hasn't helped me a bit. I consider it a complete time suck. I haven't driven my 124 Sport Coupe in nearly 7 years and being on here just eats up my time. Who's helpin' me?

Seriously though, I definitely enjoy being able to be here and interact with everyone who frequents the various forums. I have paid my dues

Perhaps having a graphic of the ongoing costs for the year and the funds so far received during the year would be a good way to create a more immediate understanding of where we are. Sort of a dashboard of our operating condition if you will.

In any case, thanks for supporting the Fiat owner community, through thick and thin.

Karl

PS if anyone has a line on a 124 Sport Coupe driver's side door and driver's side front fender, let me know...

[baltobernie]

I'm in.

re: bandwidth
Does the site automatically time you out after a certain period of inactivity? Many sites do, and that might save some precious electrons.

ps I vote we paint the new server yellow, and don't you dare remove its bumpers!

[Site Owner]

Bernie -
Thanks. Actually just being logged into the site causes no overhead. What drove the issue really was the amount of database inquiries and active hits on the server. Mostly database inquiries. I just looked at March stats: 1,611,000 hits from 3/1 to today. 14,367 unique users. That's huge traffic by any measure. We had 107 users active on the board at once on March 4th and this kind of consecutive user number ( >50) is becoming commonplace. The site has just grown dramatically.
The hosting company forced me into an industrial strength serving environment that has a lot more headroom, of course with a lot more costs to go with it.

All the folks that have pitched in with donations are making it feasible for me to consider this expensive (but necessary) solution. Thanks to most of the folks on this thread and others in the past 24 hours I've received enough donations to get the site turned back on (yes, they actually shut it down briefly). I was pretty worried, but you all stepped up to the plate and I am now feeling very confident that we'll be fine. I've already paid for and secured the new hosting environment for the next six months. I'll have another big hosting bill due in September so I still need folks to pitch in! - I'd like to have our costs covered for the next year and then do an annual fund raising like we're doing right now - target March every year for that.

I really appreciate all the help. I should say, we ALL appreciate the help!

Thanks!
Evan

[baltobernie]

You're welcome. This is a quality site, offering a lot of helpful ideas to owners of maybe the least-expensive classic sports car presently available in the USA.

But really, you shouldn't have to fund any part of this by yourself. If anything, the site ought to pay you, Mark, etc. at least minimum wage for the expert help you've given me and everybody else. With the visitor numbers you're getting, you shouldn't have any difficulty selling a tiny amount of unobjectionable advertising. Not the screaming, animated REFINANCE NOW! crap, but $100/month each to a couple of vendors should be the easiest sale in the history of online advertising.

Another suggestion would be to charge an admission fee to those owners without bumpers on their cars

[mdrburchette]

Another suggestion would be to charge an admission fee to those owners without bumpers on their cars

Or with big tube bumpers....

[Adam]

...Definitely those with big bumpers!

[Zippy]

...Definitely those with big bumpers!

Hey! What's the deal here? What did I do? Why not charge by the number of Fiats... And anyone with a NEW Fiat has to pay extra...

[mdrburchette]

Oh, that would hurt.