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Donations 2026/27

I've got the domain name renewal cost reduced down to about £22 by ditching an apparently unnecessary upgrade on it. It was supposed to be a domain protection to ensure you don't lose it if you don't renew on time, but have just found that there are already inbuilt protections for that by law so the upgrade is just an upselling thing! So that helps reduce the target needed a bit. I also decided to only renew the .com domain name and that has reduced the bill by £82 ish a year which helps!. So the target is now £564.

Donations are currently at £282 :-)

Domain name has just been renewed early (still lasts a year from the original renewal date) and email paid up for the year. Email for forums is different to standard email as there are so many go out daily and so on so it's not really possible to get that reduced.
 
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Well - all change regarding the server. I am not going to upgrade with the same server for the next four years and will be cancelling for a refund (which is possible within 30 days), after all the problems with glitches this week just from uploading a few smilies! While I have fixed the issue, it seems there are hidden "limits" within the plan that caused the issue and I'm not happy about that and don't want to risk it happening again. So decided to switch to another server that is highly recommended by the forum software people. It's a Uk based server, also has plenty of storage, and doesn't have hidden limits. So I'm in the process of switching that over in the next few days. You shouldn't notice anything - the site will still be live as it's set up to be a smooth transition.

I am so annoyed that the server action messed up the forum for a few days! Not very friendly and took up a lot of my time this week. So the renewal is being cancelled.

As a result of this I've changed the numbers in the first post! The new server costs slightly more annually at £132 instead of £116, but can have annual renewals instead of four yearly ones, so less to raise this year :-) And it makes it easier to budget the forum costs.

So having edited the costs (I reduced the domain renewal cost too) and total needed to be raised, our new target is much less at £335.16 :-) And we already have £280 in donations. The annual costs are now £563.97 but minus the affiliate links from the past year of £228.81 that leaves a target of £335.16 to raise - which is an easier target!

Hope all that makes sense!

Donations so far - £280.
 
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I made a contribution; I know it’s not much, but hopefully it helps you to your goal faster!
 
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Contributions so far are £326.84 - thank you. So we're not far off! Anything over the £335.16 target will go towards paying for the advent calendar this year, which I haven't counted in the costs as it's not essential - but nice to have! We get a hugely discounted rate for the advent calendar software and it costs about £63 each year to use it.
 
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Maz said:
I've just removed the paypal option above and just left Stripe. Apart from the fact the fee paypal deduct is unreasonable, I've been having a lot of bureaucracy to deal with regarding the forum paypal account as they want a business registration document and a constitution signed by the trustees for the account to continue! I explained it is a small forum (and have never had issues before but their regulations have changed). They said I could change the account to sole trader, but then I wouldn't be allowed to accept donations! Bureaucracy gone mad! I think really they don't want small places that only use the account once a year for donations. I could use my personal paypal account but would prefer not too or that gets complicated keeping forum finances separate.

Thankfully there are easier options now - I've edited the post above. So Stripe is there for bank card payments or Apple Pay direct from a phone, or even paying via an Amazon account.

Hope that explains it.

@Vanessa1 don't worry, your payment has gone through and been received - if I do nothing with the paypal account, it will get frozen in a few months time, hence I've removed it as a payment option now.
Click to expand...
It’s still there for me ?
 
Maz said:
Contributions so far are £326.84 - thank you. So we're not far off! Anything over the £335.16 target will go towards paying for the advent calendar this year, which I haven't counted in the costs as it's not essential - but nice to have! We get a hugely discounted rate for the advent calendar software and it costs about £63 each year to use it.
Click to expand...
What’s the advent calendar
 
We usually have an advent calendar embedded on the forum each year. With windows to open from 1st December to 24th December. This is a photo of one of the previous ones :-) It's just a photo of it so it's not live and clickable. They are only live and clickable throughout December.

Advent calendar tinified.webp
 
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 :-)
 
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 🩷
 
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Fantastic work Maz :hamsterthumbs::hamstercool: 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.
 
I've update the contributions total after refunding someone who is no longer a member.

As such the total contributions received is now £291.36. Which is still higher than our target figure of £279.09 :-)

The extra £12.27 over target will go towards the Advent calendar cost and I will pay the balance of the advent calendar cost.

Thank you to all members.
 
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Thank you Maz, you work tirelessly to keep us and our hammies safe 🙏♥️
 
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