FiatSpider.com Needs your help

[Site Owner]

All -
As I am sure most of our regular forum members have noticed,the amount of traffic on this site has increased with every passing year, but this year saw unprecedented growth:
- The volume has been averaging well over 1MM hits per month since March of 2010.
- 12,492 Unique visitors in January of this year alone! (and that number is steadily increasing)

I've been notified by my hosting vendor that this site is causing major bandwidth issues in its current hosting environment. We are currently on a shared server - a beefy one, but shared. I have been notified that I will have to move this site to an upgraded and dedicated server in order to stay online. I have to make this move immediately. The extra costs associated with this hosting plan are substantial and I will need to come up with the funds to do this right now out of my pocket.

From time to time I do receive donations from thoughtful members of the site, and those donations have helped offset some of the costs over the years. That being said, the total amount of donations last year is about 1/2 of what we need right now to keep this site alive.

I don't want to go to a membership fee on this site. I've managed to avoid that for 15 years now. As all of you regulars know, I've not pushed donations up here. But I need to ask for your help now. Overall total annual costs for serving this site up are approaching the $1,200 range. In 2010 I received around $600.00 in total donations for the year. That was fine then, as it just did cover the costs.

So I am asking all of you to pitch in and donate what you can to enable us to keep the site online and free for all to use. PayPal is the only practical way I have of doing this, so if you're able to, hit that button and help. The gear sales on CafePress are really there to offer you all stuff that you might like, but the financial benefit is just pennies on the dollar. Gear sales has netted a total of $25.00 commission since I started it over a year ago. So the donate button is where you'll make a difference.

I came in this evening to find the site OFFLINE. The hosting company took us down because of excessive bandwidth consumption. I freaked out, contacted customer service and cleared up the issue to get it back up again and over the next few days I'll be working with their tech support to get the entire site and all of the databases moved to a new environment. I hope we can do this without interruption. The positive side of this is once we get on the new server environment, the site should be blazing fast.

I appreciate all of you, but especially all of the "old timers" here and you know who you are. Let's keep this thing going for another 15 years.

Thanks in advance for your help,
Evan

[bakercs]

Donation sent.

This community has saved me more grief than I can ever repay.

[TulsaSpider]

Get paid tomorrow! Will support!

[aj81spider]

Donation sent also. I'm a new member who finds this an incredible resource that I've only started to tap.

[Site Owner]

Thanks Guys!
I, actually all of us, really appreciate the quick help. I'm working with the hosting company right now and hope to get us on our own NEW server this week.

Again, I really appreciate your thoughtfulness and help. I'm determined to keep this site up for another 15 years!

Evan

[kustom]

Donation sent! It won't cover the value of the advice I have received over the last couple of years, but i'm sure every bit helps. I wouldn't have my Spider on the road if it wasn't for the help of this community. Thanks Evan and Mark for all of the work required to keep this site online, and everyone who is quick to help with the issues that our cars throw at us! Lets keep this valuable resource going.

[divace73]

Donation sent: Just to be sure when I clicked on the donate button the following email address came up (address removed by admin) in pay pal, it this right???

[NSDave]

Hi Evan/Mark,
You've got my 2cents and 20 dollars worth! I do enjoy and learn from the people here on this site.
Mark, I'm looking forward to receiving my recent order
Cheers,
Dave.

[Site Owner]

David -
Yes, that is the correct e-mail address and account to donate to. I just received your donation.
Thank you very much. Response has been good, if everyone pitches in like you all have, we'll be OK.

I'm online with the hosting company as we speak - hope this migration to the new server goes well!

You all should know, that "if" anything did go wrong here (and I really don't expect it to), I just made a complete backup of everything. All 100,000 + posts, all databases. I don't expect anything to go wrong, this is actually a good hosting company. But you never know, so I am playing it super safe with all of this info here. Worse case scenario, if something did go wrong and we dropped offline for any reason, I can assure you I'm on it. I called Mark tonight as well, to give him an update on the phone of the whole situation. I tell ya, we ain't in the bush leagues with this site anymore folks! This thing has grown!

Thanks again everyone for the much needed help. Keep 'em coming, we need all the help we can get at this point.

Cheers,
Evan

[BenjamminsFiat]

Best $25 I've spent in a long time...

Viva La Fiat forum!

[maytag]

donation sent.

As we say at church: "Give 'til it hurts!"


And thanks to all who contribute to this site.

[kustom]

I just thought it was the seats at church that hurt so bad... I guess it's all the giving. Lol

[DocGraphics]

Donation sent.

I know I'm new here but must say the amount of information here is incredible.
Having just gotten my Spider I know I will be using this site alot.
Heres to a continuing relationship.

Thanks Evan & Mark for keeping this all going!

[ventura ace]

. . .You all should know, that "if" anything did go wrong here (and I really don't expect it to), I just made a complete backup of everything. All 100,000 + posts, all databases. I don't expect anything to go wrong, this is actually a good hosting company. But you never know, so I am playing it super safe with all of this info here. Worse case scenario, if something did go wrong and we dropped offline for any reason, I can assure you I'm on it. I called Mark tonight as well, to give him an update on the phone of the whole situation. I tell ya, we ain't in the bush leagues with this site anymore folks! This thing has grown!

Evan, my commendations go to you for keeping the funding and 'behind the scenes' activities going so that this site continues on. Your switch to an updated format a few years ago made this, the best Forum out there for our beloved FIATs, even better. It is good to know that you have a thorough back up of all the data bases associated with this Forum. This brings up a related topic that I'd like to inquire about. There is considerably additional data backed up from previous versions of this forum, predating the revised Forum format of a few years ago. My understanding is that you have this data, and it is protected from ever being lost. Unfortunately, however, no one has access to any of that valuable data that you have saved. There have been a few offers from folks on this site to assist you in providing this data in some form for public access, and there have been suggestions that this archived data from previous years would make a good fund raiser if it was sold as a searchable database on a set of CD's or some other format, such as multi-Gigabyte jump drives.

I would like to suggest that this might be a good time to look at such an endeavor as a timely fund raiser, that not only has the potential to raise more than enough funds to carry the costs for this site for years, but also gives all the members a tool to have better access to all the great information provided to this site over the years.

respectfully submitted,
Alvon Elrod

[launieg]

Donation made, and thanks for keeping this wonderful site running!