Electra Posted March 2, 2013 Posted March 2, 2013 As Freedom City: Play by Post enters its sixth consecutive year of play, it's nice to look back on the years of stories, characters and adventures that have been created on this unique site. It has also come time to take a good look at the infrastructure of the site, with an eye both to maximizing current uptime and enabling future growth. Many of you have probably already noticed that the site has been going through periods of reduced stability lately, especially in areas like the chat and the wiki. A software platform that was adequate for our needs in 2008 with a handful of players is just not doing the job anymore. Sorus has done a great deal of research and come up with a new software platform that will let us port all the existing site information (characters, threads, archives) away from the current PHPBB system to a platform that is much better able to integrate all the parts of the site. The move should ultimately result in less lag, less downtime, and many fewer instances of that thing where somebody leaves chat, then comes back and leaves fifty times until a ref kicks them. The new platform is the IPS Board software from Invision Power Services. We did a small beta test on the software last year as proof of concept, and were impressed with many of the features it offers. For those of you who like to keep your threads organized, this is going to be a big improvement. Anyone who is curious can take a look at their website:http://www.invisionpower.com There are a lot of benefits to moving the game to this new platform, and Sorus is ready to get started right away. Right now the sticking point is money. There is an initial startup cost to pay for the software, the licensing for features like an expanded chat room, and the porting of all our information. There are also yearly license renewal fees, as well as the regular hosting costs just to keep this place online. Doc and Sorus have been footing the bills for hosting lo these many years now, and it would be nice for some of the rest of us to step up as well. Here's the breakdown of initial costs: Core + IP.Board $175.00 IP.Content $ 50.00 IP.Gallery $ 65.00 IP.Chat: 50 Users $ 15.00 10% Discount -$ 30.50 Total $274.50 To keep IPS chat upgraded, we will also need to pay a $30 license renewal fee each year, which will also let us access support for those times when we inevitably manage to crash something. In addition to that, we have the monthly hosting charge, which is $30, plus another $11 for database, bandwidth, and miscellaneous charges. So, toting all that up, the cost to do the entire platform move, pay for an additional year of chat licensing, and free Doc and Sorus from having to pay for this site in addition to everything else they do here for the next six months is: $550.50! Now this is definitely a solid chunk of change, but absolutely nothing that we can't pull together. Think of all the books, movies, computer and video games you've bough this past year. In all likelihood, you've spent much less time enjoying any of them than you've spent playing here! And of course not everybody is going to be able to donate, and that's understandable. Nobody's going to name-and-shame, there aren't going to be any special prizes for kicking in. But this is a great game, and it's worth any contribution you can make to it. In order to keep things moving and try to get us onto the new platform ASAP, there's going to be a six-week time limit on this donation drive. That gives you from now until April 3, 2013 to make a donation, via the PayPal link below or by whatever method you want to set up with Sorus. All the money will go through him, and he'll be making periodic updates here to report how we're doing. If we exceed our initial goal, any money beyond that will go towards further customizations for the new site, or perhaps even hiring someone to write some specialized code just for us. The donate button is right here, what are you waiting for? Freedom City needs YOU!
Electra Posted March 2, 2013 Author Posted March 2, 2013 UPDATE: March 2, 2013 Welcome to the new and improved site! The first stage of the donation drive was an awesome success, we raised $350 after Paypal fees within 24 hours of starting the drive, which was enough to pay all the fees and licenses and get us installed over here. Woo-hoo! You are all amazing, Sorus is amazing, this is an amazing site. Even so, when the drive was started, we said it would be a six-week drive, and so it will continue on until April 3, as planned. At this point, all the money that we raise will go towards general site improvements and defraying the costs that Doc and Sorus pay every month just to keep us online. Possible improvements for the future could include customized add-ons to make the site more responsive to our needs, or a commissioned logo for the front page with corresponding icons for different platforms to make us look cool wherever we go. The site costs $41 a month for hosting and database services, and there is a $30 charge every six months for the chat. We only need 200 more dollars in then next month to make our $550 goal, but I'm sure we can do even better. Thank you so much to everyone who has donated already, and thank you so much to Sorus for working your butt off during the changeover, and to Doc for keeping this place running every day! This place wouldn't be what it is without what everyone brings to the table.
TheAbsurdist Posted March 3, 2013 Posted March 3, 2013 Zee donate button is not to be found, I would like to help and all as soon as I have some monies. So either that or of the Paypal account info, as I do have a Paypal myself and will happily send money, for being a huge shut in.
Ari Posted March 3, 2013 Posted March 3, 2013 It's on the upper right side of the front page now. Right underneath View New Content.
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