I AM SORRY

[Rob Couteau]

Hi Sandy, I was thinking of things such as when users embed an entire video in a message rather than merely the link. I was wondering if changing that sort of thing would help.

Edited May 8, 2019 by Rob Couteau

[Ron Ecker]

2 hours ago, James R Gordon said:

2) While this conversation has been going on there have been donations - including one donation last week. Our reserve is now at $176. That means we have funds until ( and including ) September's payment.

So how does this sound. Assuming there are no further donations - though as some members have suggested - I do encourage continued donations- I do the following:-

i. I make payments from our reserved fund.

ii. When that fund gets too low I inform the membership we are out of funds.

iii. If our bandwith changes I also inform the membership what our new charge is.

iv. I will try and find a way to show the level of our reserve funds somewhere on the Forum.

Is that acceptable?

James.

Sounds good to me. I'll donate now, then donate again post-September as needed.

 

 

 

 

[Kirk Gallaway]

9 hours ago, Mark Knight said:

I just donated, and I'd like to put a CHALLENGE out to the other FORUM members:

If we could all donate a minimum of $10 by Friday, we could go a long way toward paying the bill that's due on Saturday the 11th.

If your circumstances allow you to donate more than $10---say, on the order of a $35 "subscription"--I would encourage you all to do so. Only YOU know what your current means will allow.  But we can NOT let this FORUM go down without a fight.

$130 a month equals $1,560 a year. Surely we can round up enough donations to ensure the next 12 months of operation, can't we? If 45 members would donate $35 a year for a subscription, that would cover 12 months of operation.

I've imbeded videos rather than just providing a link. I didn't realize that could be a factor. I'll stop that if necessary.

It should be open to all as a means of exposure for new potential posters or would be subscribers..

I'll put in $35...

But for a longer term solution. We could do the standard old  pledge drive right now to secure the next 2 years, and deal with it again then. Give weekly totals until the number is achieved.

[Andrej Stancak]

I donated $20 soon after James first mentioned problems with our subscription to Invision, and am ready to donate again. Will the Forum be all right if we donate around $40/year per member?

[Ron Ecker]

22 minutes ago, Andrej Stancak said:

Will the Forum be all right if we donate around $40/year per member?

That's 11 cents a day, or 77 cents a week, or $3.33 a month. As lone nutters would say, that should be as easy as a shot from the sniper's nest.

 

 

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Rob Couteau said:

Hi Sandy, I was thinking of things such as when users embed an entire video in a message rather than merely the link. I was wondering if changing that sort of thing would help.

 

Hi Rob,

If high bandwidth were really the problem, then eliminating images and videos from the Invision server would help.

However,  according to Invision's website, customers (like the Education Forum) are charged not according to bandwidth served, but rather according to the average number of site users and visitors simultaneously viewing the site. The price is $130 monthly if that number is between 100 and 200.

However, there is one caveat posted on their pricing page that might make a difference... but that I don't understand.  It is easiest describe with an example:

Let's say the forum has an average of 150 simultaneous visitors. According the Invision's Price Table the price would be $130 per month for the service. If the average number of simultaneous visitors goes above 200, the price would automatically be bumped the next higher tier ($330 for up to 450 viewers). Now here's the part I don't understand: For our $130 per month, we are allotted 20 GB of data storage. My question is, what happens if we are using over our allotted amount? I see no answer to that question in the table.

BTW I'd be surprised if we aren't already using far more than our 20 GB. After all, every member is allowed to store 1 GB worth of media on the Invision server. I'm using that much with only 30 images. If twenty of us have posted that much, there goes our 20 GB allotment. And that doesn't even count out text. (Though admittedly text doesn't take much disk space compared to media. A single photo takes up the same amount of disk space as one to five books worth of text, depending upon the resolution of the photo.)

 

[Sandy Larsen]

57 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

I've imbeded videos rather than just providing a link. I didn't realize that could be a factor. I'll stop that if necessary.

Kirk,

Are you certain that you embedded the videos themselves? Or did you embed links to the videos?

Just because you see the video (or image) right there on a forum page -- as opposed to seeing just the link -- doesn't mean the video (or image) is being stored on the forum's server.

If all you did was paste a link  into the editor, the media file remains on the original server and it doesn't consume any forum resources.

The only way you can post a media file that consumes forum resources is to upload it from your computer. But even then, as I said  earlier, it seems that doing this will not increase the price the forum has to pay Invision.

 

[James R Gordon]

In answer to Andrej is the system now proposed then the likelihood is that the forum is safe.

I will ask Invision about bandwidth. They certainly want the forum to survive.

To date eight members have donated £207.22. Hopefully other members will also contribute.

[Sandy Larsen]

It might be wise to keep donation amounts confidential if possible. If James were to raise enough money right away to fund the forum for, say, 5 years, Invision might decide that the forum can afford the $230 per month after all! LOL

(Though my example is probably possible only on an annual subscription model with everybody making their first payment at the same time.)

Edited May 8, 2019 by Sandy Larsen

[Lewis Reynolds]

I've donated. Perhaps going on from here we can have an annual subscription for members, rather than donating every now and then.

[Bob Ness]

I've chipped in a few bucks. Thanks for your efforts.

[Michael Clark]

I donated $75. 

[James R Gordon]

Thanks Michael, your donation takes the Reserved fund to £411.76

[John Kowalski]

Subscription is a good or an annual fundraiser to raise enough money for a whole year.

[David Josephs]

Yeah - completely missed that thread about donating....  Thanks James...

Donation complete....says we're almost to $1000 

To Rob's point... I think it's the massive reposting in replies that's the problem...  If a poster only has a few things to say against a LOOOONG post like one of mine,

they needn't "quote" the entire post... but just that part the reply poster is addressing...

I'd have to believe that is the worst culprit of unnecessary bandwidth use

What would it take to get an accessible back-up Archive of the posts from this forum so that even if worse case does happen there is a searchable resource that should be much less per month...  how much space does the forum take up...?  Maybe someplace like MFF could host it...just a thought

DJ