Money Grubbing Ideas
Since the new V is need of another shot of green, how about some money making ideas in case advertising doesn't fully foot the bill?
1) Trademark "V is for Voltage", from the new site sell t-shirts, hats and such emblazed with the name, and cool designs of some kind.
2) Use donations to raise initial capital necessary to purchase said cool products.
One is the server rental. The other is my time and opportunity cost for doing other activities. I suppose there are potential legal expenses in case a legal turmoil pops up as well.
Server rental is gonna be $150 / month to move to the next higher server. It would be shared with my other sites. It would be an increase of almost $100 / month in server rental cost.
Paying for my time swamps that, which is why I'm being insistent the community help out.
- David Herron, http://www.7gen.com/
The other is my time and opportunity cost for doing other activities....Paying for my time swamps that, which is why I'm being insistent the community help out.
David, how much do you propose paying those who help out for their opportunity cost of time lost?
-- Sitting on this many batteries is a sex crime in some states.
My rides
Yeah this is going to go south fast.
Server costs money. Then use your own machine. It doesn't take a top of the line machine. Just one with a second hard drive to back up the data on the first. I'm sure there are members here with a machine or two to spare.
http://www.thefreecountry.com/webmaster/freedns.shtml
http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/hostmyown.html
Volunteering to host a forum then demanding to be paid for your time means you're trying to run a business, not volunteering.
Do me a fav, use referral # 2724 If you order anything from e-ride (Greenwit). I want to see if they actually honour their referral program. Let me know as well please.
Okay, yeah, I have a machine that I already own that I could host the site on. I have a speedy DSL line. My DSL provider specifically allows their users to host web sites. I could use that instead of renting a server.
BUT that's a bad idea.
The DSL line doesn't have gauranteed uptime .. the DSL line has much less bandwidth availability than my rented server does .. if/when I move again, the DSL line would have to be redone, which will mean several days of downtime .. my house doesn't have gauranteed power ..
- David Herron, http://www.7gen.com/
I have no idea if his site would have saved us money or time in the long run or not. How long will his biz be in business? 95% of all small business fail within the first five years. A decision had to be made quickly so we could move on and get the info transferred. Through a bit of miscommunication, David and Gman both got us domain names (.net and .org). With it's blog functions, this looks like at least as good a forum as the V. Pic attachment could be simpler, but I understand that's coming with an upgrade. David is obviously very competent. People, including myself, seem to have their heads on straighter today after clearing a few misunderstandings. I believe we're all best served by staying here, bringing at least the text info over until bandwidth issues get worked out; putting together the admin & moderator teams; and writing basic disclaimers and a clear, simple, code of conduct to limit the chance of more misunderstandings or confusion with regard to dealing with spam and bans. I've volunteered to write and submit the disclaimer and code for the group's consideration.
-- Sitting on this many batteries is a sex crime in some states.
My rides
If it's free for now, take it. If it ever becomes a problem we can move over to a distributed home based system running off several machines at several geographic locations, or move to a commercial platform free or pay.
Do me a fav, use referral # 2724 If you order anything from e-ride (Greenwit). I want to see if they actually honour their referral program. Let me know as well please.
I like the endless sphere idea. If they're willing to do it for free, and the V forum traffic doesn't crash the server or anything, it looks like a hopeful replacement. I'm sure we can get volunteers to moderate or even cough up donations if necessary.
Then the question is how long to wait to see if Ken re-surfaces.
Fetcher,
Do you know anyone who might know Ken personally who could find out what his plans, if any are?
No, I don't have anything more than his e-mail address. He's up in Washington. I wonder if Roy LeMur(sp?) knows where he lives?
http://www.visforvoltage.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=22&t=5278&s=9256767e2b2fee50cc22dbae18de6cd5
In your "Time to bail, new forum available post," you wrote:
"Then do it asap? We (I sure am) are ready to clear out of here Please append your notice to the other threads I just peppered around the place?
Thanks David!"
That wasn't the only thread where you advocated keeping the visforvoltage name and domain and moving over here. It's exactly this kind of waffling and second guessing that fragments a transistion and prevents it from moving fast enough to save the precious info. I'm aware David et al have downloaded from V all the info. But extracting it back to a format that'll work with a new forum will take either a good programmer, or a hurculean effort by individual members. It's precisely because David and others have worked so hard to put this together, also buying two domain names, that we owe it to them to continue here. It is, after all, a transistion, not necessarily the permanent home for the V.
I was going to do some writing for this site today, but since the consensus now seems to be shifting to the other site, I'll wait. I'm going to step back for a while and let the flip-floppers bicker this into the ground.
-- Sitting on this many batteries is a sex crime in some states.
My rides
Do you think it might be worth contacting him? Do you have an email or his voltage forum ID. I tried posting a message to EV discussion in list owner in the hope that someone might be able to contact him on there.
Several have tried to contact him in different ways. For example the visforvoltage.com domain registration lists a phone number and email address and some have tried them. I've tried both email addresses I have for him. Some have reported trying people they know to be colleagues of Ken. There have been postings on various yahoo groups that Ken is known to frequent.
- David Herron, http://www.7gen.com/
Just curious, what forum software is this running? Its not familiar to me. Just don't want a good effort to end in a similar mess.
This is running Drupal - http://drupal.org/
Drupal has many more features beyond "forums". They call it a "content management system" and also use the moniker of "Community Plumbing". A couple years ago I did an extensive review of all the software systems I could find which support developing online community. I installed and kicked the tires of probably two dozen systems. The two top contenders were Mambo and Drupal, and something didn't seem right with Mambo so I chose Drupal. I use Drupal to drive several web sites.
One of the critical features to me was/is the software be supported by a strong community who are actively improving it. This is true for Drupal, and you can see for yourself by going to the above site. Drupal is used for many sites including some high visibility sites such as The Onion and MTV UK.
- David Herron, http://www.7gen.com/
Last week I called Ken, leaving a message on his business voicemail advising him of the situation, and requesting he contact somebody from the forums, or post a message on the forum as a new member from a different IP .
-- Sitting on this many batteries is a sex crime in some states.
My rides
Well, any software has bugs. There's a computer science theorem I learned about that back in college. That means Drupal surely has its fair share of bugs. And it means that Drupal probably has a security hole or two.
This is true of all software.
My experience with nearly 2 yrs of using Drupal is I've not had my sites hacked or broken into, nor have I seen any discussion on the Drupal forums of sites being broken into.
The other experience is that the Drupal community regularly sends out security patches for holes they find in reviewing the software or otherwise discovered. This tells me they're very proactive in fixing holes. And I do watch the Drupal site and apply patches as they come out.
That doesn't gaurantee there will never be a problem. It does make it unlikely.
- David Herron, http://www.7gen.com/
At the very least you could post a paypal account to give those of us who want to a way to contribute.
Thanks for stepping up guys and reincarnating the forum. This is an amazing and valuable resource.
--
Full time ebiker
BionX and Wilderness Energy
xyster on Fri, 11/17/2006 -
Since the new V is need of another shot of green, how about some money making ideas in case advertising doesn't fully foot the bill?
1) Trademark "V is for Voltage", from the new site sell t-shirts, hats and such emblazed with the name, and cool designs of some kind.
2) Use donations to raise initial capital necessary to purchase said cool products.
This was a very good suggestion, we've already got some quotes. Now everything is on hold for some strange reason.
I had no idea that a forum was something that was expensive to run, just how much does it cost to get something like this up and running? If we get the whole family from the old site im sure a hat a peace will get us going, if not then we might be in trouble. Well only time will tell.
Joe