[Archived] Important - Please Read

[broadsword]

How gracious and humble Janice!

[Neil Weaver]

Jan, isn't it nice to know the feelings from so many are reciprocal?

[Uddersfelt Blue]

Jan could probably fund the site for a year from an hours pay. ;-)

Standing order on its way

[Jordan]

As above, but as soon as Natwests website starts working for standing orders again.

Sent a PM to ste about this yesterday and felt quite guilty about posting alot of crap. So now, when i post i know i'll have paid to post complete crap and it'll give me a warm feeling inside

You should have called me Tom on the Natwest online helpdesk, thats where i work now, and i could have set it up for you.

I have set up a standing order, it aint much but i hope it covers my share of messageboard use.

[Nuclearsox]

My standing order is set up. Now, when the Oxfam letter arrives asking for a small monthly donation to help the starving in Africa, I'm going to feel even more guilty than usual opening it just to get the free pen.

[Paul]

I've been trying to PM everyone who has made a donation - the mass PM thingy doesn't seem to be working so aplogies to the member who may have received a lot of PMs this morning

Anyway many thanks to all donors - by cheque, PayPal, Transfer and S/O, we seem to be heading towards the monthly target, I'll have a better idea in around 3-4 weeks when all the Standing orders show up on the bank statement. More news then.

Paul

next fund raiser is to buy this A Trialist bloke for Rovers

[USABlue]

I'll be sending something shortly. I was wondering if it might be an idea to try to show the target and how far we have to go, sort of like some of the charity drives that people have. Paul I am going to PM you with someone who may be interested in some form of sponsorship.

[roversWASmylife]

I’ll happily donate the cost of the Brfcs badge and maybe something extra. If I get chance to buy one this time.

I’ll be at all the pre-season games from Stockport to Lisbon.

[bazza]

I've been off the board for nearly two weeks and was shocked to find I could not get straight back into it. Got there eventually.I love the messageboard and ICBINF board, too; especially the word association thread ( along with Al, American, Rachrover and many others).

THIS SITE MUST NOT FOLD! It is one of the best footy supporters' sites in the country. And that spreads the good word about Blackburn Rovers in its entirity to all who visit the site ( e.g. Mickey's No1 fan from Sunderland and Jezzard of Fulham to name but two).

There seems to be a lot of confusion as to how to get regular, even donations to sustain a good site. It's no good saying "Ive set up a standing order (for £??) so that's my bit done."!!

Hows about doing something like the way badges were sold? (Paul??)

Invite members to pledge to donate, and, as they do, list them.

OK, we need £1600 per year to have a good site.

Members pledge to donate a maximum of £30 pounds per year.

Listed on a thread would be (initially) 4 members (£400)

Then 8 members (£200) and so on until maybe a maximum of 120 pledged to pay £13.33 per year.

I think we could get around 130 to do this. An annual payment would suffice instead of monthly payments of £1 or £2.

I would willingly contribute to this if there were a planned organisation like with the badges. Doesn't matter about how many visit the site, posters or readers only. What counts is those of us who do not want the site to fold.

Shamefully (he says) I haven't contributed anything to the site yet.

But I am prepared to do so if it is organised correctly rather than willy-nilly donations.

Oh I did buy four badges but I don't class that as contributing directly to the running of the site.

Edited July 17, 2004 by bazza

[Paul]

Loads of PMs from people over the weekend that I haven't time to reply to at the moment - going bike riding all day - I will be in touch over the next few days.

Thanks for all the ideas, money etc.

BTW - the badges were an important fund raiser. We made £200 - 250 profit. So thanks again to all. I have 20 badges available PM me if you'd like one. Minimum £3 plus P&P.

[Al]

I've been off the board for nearly two weeks and was shocked to find I could not get straight back into it. Got there eventually.I love the messageboard and ICBINF board, too; especially the word association thread ( along with Al, American, Rachrover and many others).

THIS SITE MUST NOT FOLD!

I fully agree with Bazza. We all had a lot of fun with the Word Association Thread and now that the board appears to have returned to the normal speed I would like to re-introduce it. What about it Mods?

[tcj_jones]

Attempted to set up a standing order but forgot my security question and my service has now been suspended

Tomorow will see a small donation for you guys, but it will be a weekly contribution.

Many thanks for a top job on this site and for 6 months of entertainment

[Al]

I've been off the board for nearly two weeks and was shocked to find I could not get straight back into it. Got there eventually.I love the messageboard and ICBINF board, too; especially the word association thread ( along with Al, American, Rachrover and many others).

THIS SITE MUST NOT FOLD!

I fully agree with Bazza. We all had a lot of fun with the Word Association Thread and now that the board appears to have returned to the normal speed I would like to re-introduce it. What about it Mods?

Any comments Mods. If not I intend to re-introduce it. ICBINF has become extremely boring without it. Who cares about what music is being listened to (875 posts) Let's have some fun!

[LeChuck]

Any comments Mods. If not I intend to re-introduce it. ICBINF has become extremely boring without it. Who cares about what music is being listened to (875 posts) Let's have some fun!

But the music topic was made in March last year...meaning that the average number of posts in there is less than 2 per day.

Edited July 19, 2004 by LeChuck

[Paul]

Any comments Mods. If not I intend to re-introduce it. ICBINF has become extremely boring without it. Who cares about what music is being listened to (875 posts) Let's have some fun!

Sorry only just seen this. Go ahead but we will probably have to delete it more frequently than in the past. Capacity problems. If we run into difficulty it will be one of the first to go.

Thanks for asking

[Paul]

I've just spent an hour or so replying to all the PMs and e-mails concerning funding the site, donations, standing orders etc. Lots of good ideas from many people.

I've tried to cover every message received. If I haven't replied to anyone apologies and old age. Please send me your message again and I'll get back to you.

The current plan is to put all the suggestions together. Glenn and Ste will be back in the coming week and we'll look at all the alternatives. Some ideas may go on the back burner, some may start immediatley, we shall look at it together.

Thanks to all

Paul

PS Al's on a £1 a word in the Word Association Thread.

[Al]

PS Al's on a £1 a word in the Word Association Thread.

You wish pal,you wish.

Would you take money out of a poor pensioner's pocket.

[Glenn]

Paul should have now responded to those people that PMed about hosting requirements, so here are the details for the rest of you.

We are getting close to using 1 Gb of bandwidth a day, this is the real problem.

A fairly humble PC is capable of runing the site, but the bandwidth it uses is considerable, certainly not the kind of thing we could consider running off an ADSL line. So we have to have it "hosted" somewhere.

The second problem with hosting it ourselves (as Paul has outlined) is management. When vulvernerabilties in software are published until whatever action is taken to fix it is a window where we could be a target for attack. Any ISP worth their salt have people constantly monitoring security mailing lists to allow them to fix these holes are they become known. Frankly we don't have the time to do this ourselves, so our server must be a "managed" one.

Paul is looking into quite a few possibilites for hosting, however if you think you can help (other than financially, which everyone can help with) then what we need is

A connection capable of sustaining 1Gb+ of traffic a day.

300Mb of disk space

40Mb of database space

Ideally Linux running Apache/PHP/MySql.

So, anyone work for a Rovers friendly ISP ?

[Paul]

Paul should have now responded to those people that PMed about hosting requirements, so here are the details for the rest of you.

He's doing it at the moment

[Glenn]

Ooops, sorry. I thought you'd gone on holiday already

[Tom Pringle]

Pay me 30k a year, 6 weeks worth of holidays, full rights to ban and unban flopsy and i'll manage the server for you.

I'll be on call 24/7...except when i'm having a poo....or a shower....or watching MotoGP...

[American]

Hey Glenn, anyone looked into my idea of getting a host in the states and taking advantage of the good exchange rate? I'd be glad to put my address down as a contact for the host, if you need a state side address....

[key76]

Don't Norway, Sweden or other Scandanavian countries have cheap internet capabilities? Just a suggestion.

[Glenn]

It's a long time since the site has been hosted in the UK. We're not ruling out any options at the moment.

[Ste B]

Hopefully you should notice everything on the site now appears normal.

You no longer need the 65. address to access the site (in fact you should delete that from your favourites asap)

We have a fairly stable host, and hopefully wont be moving again for a while.