"What's that red and blue thing?"

Tom Clayton

Tom Clayton

Administrator
Staff member
Long-time members know it well. If you're new to this forum, allow me to explain. This site has never charged a membership fee. This site has also never had ads on any page. That means that throughout the year, there is no incoming revenue to support the cost of hosting and maintenance of this site. All staff, all the way up to the top admins, are volunteers. So without the support of our members, this site would cease to exist. We currently have 49,284 members on our roster. Granted, there are probably more than half that have left for whatever reason. But if we could get just 5% of our members to donate only $5, that would put us way over our goal. Sadly, that won't happen. There are usually a small core of members that donate every year. Will you be join that group this year? You'll get two things in return - your username will have a Charter Member title, and you'll get the satisfaction of knowing that you were willing to help keep this site going. All you have to do is click the Contribute Now link on the right end of that bar and follow the prompts. Payment is through PayPal.

If you don't like PayPal, there is a link right above the card logos to a thread with alternate payment methods.
 
Last edited:
Donated in Ickie's memory. Glad to still have this place around.

Y'all are my people.

328138754_875202930434697_6226657916947936448_n.jpg
 
Done! This is an awesome site and I really enjoy coming here. The members are very helpful and the atmosphere is non-toxic.
 
@Tom Clayton: what's the deadline, i.e. the last day donations can be made?

Cheers,

Priller
 
I haven't been on SOH as much the past couple of years, since getting into MSFS, but I will ALWAYS contribute to support of this site. Over the years, I have made a few friends (hopefully no enemies!), and the amount of knowledge gained from fellow members has been extremely helpful.NC
 
Just curious... It's not an expense (it's a free program), but it definitely would require a time investment from admins here. Has there been any consideration of moving to a more modern forum app from vBulletin, such as Discourse?

I'm not sure how tied in the library is to VBulletin -- if it's powering downloads, it might not be viable due to how much would be involved in migration.

I'll stick around either way. vBulletin is old, cranky, hard to deal with, and looks out of date, but that also describes most of us forum denizens, so maybe it's appropriate. :)
 
One of the things that always impressed me with our site is we never had to worry about raising the funds for the year. For a number of years we seemed to break records on how fast the goal could be achieved.


Those days seemed to have died. We could probably point the finger at Covid or a poor economy, but the bottom line is our donating community is shrinking. A few years ago within a month we would have had over 300 individual donators. This year 2 months into the drive and we only have had 174 donations with a couple of members donating twice (myself included).


Our yearly costs


Server Lease $6,200


cPanel account $772


Domain name renewals $500 estimate
• Sim-outhouse.com 4 years @ $25 /year
• Sim-outhouse.net paid until 2028
• Ronnylarson.com 5 years @ $25 /year
• Hall18.com 5 years @ $25 / year
• Hall-18.com 5 years @ $25 / year
• ford-tri-motor.net (.com, .org) TBD


Total $7,472


For those of you who have donated Thank You.


For those who have not, your help is needed.
 
In post #16 it is mentionned that total costs are $7,472, we're at $7,640, so we got there!! :jump:

Priller
 
Tom - is there an annual subscription mechanism for SOH so that we can just sign up and the annual (or quarterly) subscription fee gets debited automatically or is it just the ad hoc donations.

I wonder also if, given the time & effort now required of you guys in raising funds to cover costs, there is a case for allowing some limited and very entirely relevant advertisements on the site?
 
collensr said:
Tom - is there an annual subscription mechanism for SOH so that we can just sign up and the annual (or quarterly) subscription fee gets debited automatically or is it just the ad hoc donations.

I wonder also if, given the time & effort now required of you guys in raising funds to cover costs, there is a case for allowing some limited and very entirely relevant advertisements on the site?
Click to expand...

I like the subscription idea.

And in stead of allowing even limited ads, I would support limiting the rights/downloads and what not of people who don't contribute. If only because it saves in bandwidth. Just a thought.

Priller
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top