Donations 2026/27
- Thread starter Maz
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Also you might notice that some of the articles have a "tip" button on them now. Please don't feel you have to leave a tip for reading an article when you've made a contribution! They are there because there are a lot of people who join up just to read the articles and never post - so the idea is to encourage them to leave a small tip/contribution, if they have found the article helpful. It's entirely optional and I'll find out over the next year if anyone has bothered or not! But any accumulating tips will mean we need to raise less next year from contributions 
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Good news - I've reduced the costs again Scrapped one of the software elements and found a cost-free alternative. But then re-added the other domain names - just to protect the site's authenticity really. But still left off the unnecessary domain protection policy. So the figures on the first post have been altered accordingly.
So the target figure is now £279.09
And contributions have already reached £326.84
So that is £47.75 over the target figure, which will mostly pay for this year's advent calendar! (Which costs about £63 plus approx £9.98 for 1 month's photo editing), and obviously I need to contribute too! So I will cover the remaining £25.23 for the advent calendar production.
So I will end this year's contributions run now and thank you to everyone.
Server and email bills already paid, domains paid for, forum software costs next month and a couple of software costs in March and July next year. So all covered now
Scrapped one of the software elements and found a cost-free alternative. But then re-added the other domain names - just to protect the site's authenticity really. But still left off the unnecessary domain protection policy. So the figures on the first post have been altered accordingly.So the target figure is now £279.09
And contributions have already reached £326.84
So that is £47.75 over the target figure, which will mostly pay for this year's advent calendar! (Which costs about £63 plus approx £9.98 for 1 month's photo editing), and obviously I need to contribute too! So I will cover the remaining £25.23 for the advent calendar production.
So I will end this year's contributions run now and thank you to everyone.
Server and email bills already paid, domains paid for, forum software costs next month and a couple of software costs in March and July next year. So all covered now
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Fantastic work Maz 
You are so clever 
You are so clever
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Well you start out using various things and then every year they get more expensive, so it took some time to start looking into alternative solutions rather than just keep paying the same bill. But it was worth it to keep our running costs as low as possible while still keeping the forum as it is. So I had a fairly major audit over the past week - which was a bit time consuming but worth it.
When the forum first started, the annual costs were only about £100! Which I paid myself. The big change was the online safety act, which necessitated additional software. That is necessary and needs keeping but other things weren't so necessary.
When the forum first started, the annual costs were only about £100! Which I paid myself. The big change was the online safety act, which necessitated additional software. That is necessary and needs keeping but other things weren't so necessary.