Fyrestryke
Explorer
I wanted to post this here in case you guys haven't checked (or don't check) the main enworld.org page. I'm not by any means saying us "Inzeladun guys" HAVE to donate, you do what you want. 
Just remember, we have this nice message board and hosting for the Inzeladun site and it doesn't cost us ANYTHING.
You can read this message in color (other than blue) on the main page.
=====
Site News
*
A short public announcement from Kevin "Piratecat" Kulp, who is in charge of EN World's "Server Committee":
It’s a surprise to no one that our 3 year old server is ready to be retired. It was more than adequate when we had a fraction of the traffic that we do now, but things have been slower than ever lately. We want the site up and fast 24/7, whether in the middle of the night or at 2pm on a week day with 1100 people online. We need a server which can support not only the traffic that we have now, but the traffic we’ll have a year from now – and two years. We need something that’s reliable and powerful, and which has built in backups so that we don’t lose data if something goes wrong. We need a new server. And we can’t do it without your help.
What do we want to buy? Frankly, it depends on how much money people donate. Our minimum needed server has an Athlon 64 fx 53 processor, 2 Gig of high speed RAM and two serial ATA high-speed hard drives that we’ll mirror for easy backups and restores. If we get the funds, we’ll instead go with two separate servers instead for even more speed; to do so we'll upgrade our current machine to manage the background software and then use the new powerful server detailed above to handle the databases. That will cost up to $2200 more than the one server solution, though (it involves an increase of $50-100 per month in our co-location fees for extra rack space in addition to upgrading our current machine), and despite the speed boost we may be better off using those donations for hosting.
How much money do we need? As a bare minimum we need $3000 in donations to buy a new server. Donations over that amount go directly towards hosting and improving our minimum configuration with faster components. See our handy countdown “pledgeometer” (which we'll link in as soon as we have it ready!) to see how we’re doing and what level we’ve hit. We’ll detail how much money we receive and how it is spent. None of that stuff will be secret; if you're kind enough to donate money to make the site faster, we'd like you to know what we're spending it on.
Our donation levels are:
o Silver: $3,000 for a new single server.
o Electrum: $5,200 for a dual server system with incremental hosting fees paid for.
o Gold: $8,100 for a dual server system with six months of hosting.
o Platinum: $11,000 for a dual server system with an entire year of hosting.
These numbers include expected taxes and paypal fees; if actual taxes are less than expected, we need less money (or get more for the donations that we receive.)
Didn’t you ask for money a year ago to save EN World? We sure did – we didn’t have enough cash flow to continue hosting, and you folks pulled together and saved the site. Without you, we wouldn’t be here now. There’s a summary here of how that money was used, paying off our debts and ensuring hosting over the last year. With taxes and unfilled pledges, though, there wasn’t enough money to pay for a new server. It’s time to fix that, and to fund our bandwidth fees for the upcoming year.
Where is the money going to go to? Other than the mandatory amount for PayPal fees (roughly 2.5%) and taxes, every dollar you donate is going to go directly to the server and hosting. Everyone handling the mass data migration is donating their time, and none of the money will be used for the ENnies or other EN World projects; everything you donate will have a direct impact on the speed and ongoing health of the site. Guaranteed.
What do we get for donating? Well, the first thing you’ll get is a stable server that’s fast – about 7x more powerful than the machine we’re currently using. You’ll get the joy or reading news or posting threads without having to wait for 30 seconds for a screen refresh. That’s something we haven’t regularly had in almost two years.
More than that, though. Donate money and get a chance at a variety of prizes, including donations from some fantastically generous artists and Game Publishers. For instance, Expeditious Retreat Press has already donated 180 of their books, one to go to the first 180 people to donate $20 or more. We have more great prizes coming in for you, and we'll detail all of them in this donation thread while publicly thanking the generous companies who are helping. Publishers and authors, we'd be honored if you can help EN World out; please drop our prize coordinator Alsih2o an email if you'd like to donate books and pdfs. We'd love to have you take part.
Note that in the past we've included a Community Supporter membership with donations. We're not doing that this year; if you want to be a Community Supporter (a new server means fast searches!), please set aside a little less server donation money and purchase this separately.
How much should we donate? Whatever you can, based on the use you get out of EN World’s news and forums. Believe me, we’ll appreciate it whether you can donate $10 or $500.
How should we donate? If you wish to use a credit card, you can PayPal the money to us at "kevin AT kulp DOT org" (using an "@" and ".", of course.) If you’d rather pay with a check, you can mail your donation to:
EN World Server Fund
c/o Kevin Kulp
723 Beacon St
Newton, MA 02459
Make the check out to Kevin Kulp, and write “EN World server donation” on the memo line. Include your EN World user name (if any), email address and contact information, and we’ll email you a receipt.
Who’s handling the purchase and installation? Under Russ "Morrus" Morrissey’s direction, we have set up a seven person Server Committee to manage the fund raising, installation and customization of the new server. That team consists of:
- Brian “Adlon” Friedman, technical admin handling hardware purchase and installation
- Deathe "Thomas Heretic" Davis, technical admin handling databases and software
- Michael Morris, technical admin handling interface customization
- Henry Link, message board admin handling fund raising
- Mark "Alsih20" Davis, prize and donation coordinator
- Kevin "Piratecat" Kulp, site admin handling fund raising and project oversight
- Eric Noah, Administrator Emeritus
Adlon will be constructing and installing the server himself based on top-end components; it’s what he does professionally. This is how we can get the power we’re planning for a much lower price than someone like Dell could give us.
What happens if we don’t get enough money? We set aside what we raise towards monthly hosting and a new server, and limp along with our current machine until we raise the needed funds. We’re hoping this isn’t something that we have to worry about, though; with server capacity at almost 100% during peak hours, a new server will be helpful for everyone who visits our site.
How quickly do we need the money? The sooner the better; ideally, we’d like to wrap this fund drive up in two weeks. If we can meet or exceed our fundraising goals by then, we should have the new server up and running before the new year.
How long will the new server last for? We’ll plan to replace this server in another two to three years, as you’d probably expect. We’re putting together a box that should more than support our growth during that time. Frankly, buying a machine now that would last longer than three years is prohibitively expensive.
How much does hosting cost a month? Our server is co-located at Cyberstreet in Florida, the same people who host Adlon’s Mortality.net. We pay $400 a month for hosting, and are hooked up to a 10 MB fiberoptic data pipe. We don’t expect this to change appreciably over the next year.
Why don’t you use a host other than our current provider? We evaluate our position on a yearly basis, and we love Cyberstreet (in Ft. Myers, Florida) because they provide us with some significant advantages. In addition to competitive hosting rates, this is the host where our technical admin Adlon keeps his own server for mortality.net. Cyberstreet co-locates our server; we own it and we’re responsible for servicing it, and they just give us bandwidth and a place for the server to sit. This saves us quite a bit of money. In truth, though, Adlon and Cyberstreet’s owner Walter Peterson have gone out of their way to keep our box up and running. We appreciate their help, and we’re pleased to work with them.
Why’d you wait so long? We’ve been really hesitant to ask members and visitors for more money, especially after the generosity of last year. It’s now clear that ongoing funds from Community Supporter memberships can pay for month-to-month operations but not new hardware. This is the best solution.
What happens to the current threads? Our top priority is porting everything over to the new machine. We expect to have some problems with this because numerous crashes have caused corruption in our databases, but we're going to try and work around that. If it proves unmanageable for stability reasons, our fallback position is to archive the current databases as read-only. We don't expect it to come to that, though.
Will we have to re-register on the new server? We expect to transfer over our existing member database, so unless something serious crops up you won't have to re-register.
What can I do to help? Please donate for a new server! Ask your friends to donate. Contribute prizes for folks who have generously donated. Play a heck of a lot of D&D. And keep coming to EN World; this site would be a lot less fun without the members who have kept it strong throughout the years since 3e was first announced.
Where can we ask questions? This thread in General Discussion is the place to ask questions, announce your donation, and discuss the server drive. We'll keep track of donation figures there and in the "pledgeometer" as soon as we put it up.
Thanks for taking part in the server drive, folks. The difference in speed, and in the overall quality of the site, is going to be astounding.
- Kevin Kulp (Piratecat)
On behalf of the Server Committee
Just remember, we have this nice message board and hosting for the Inzeladun site and it doesn't cost us ANYTHING.
You can read this message in color (other than blue) on the main page.
=====
Site News
*
A short public announcement from Kevin "Piratecat" Kulp, who is in charge of EN World's "Server Committee":
It’s a surprise to no one that our 3 year old server is ready to be retired. It was more than adequate when we had a fraction of the traffic that we do now, but things have been slower than ever lately. We want the site up and fast 24/7, whether in the middle of the night or at 2pm on a week day with 1100 people online. We need a server which can support not only the traffic that we have now, but the traffic we’ll have a year from now – and two years. We need something that’s reliable and powerful, and which has built in backups so that we don’t lose data if something goes wrong. We need a new server. And we can’t do it without your help.
What do we want to buy? Frankly, it depends on how much money people donate. Our minimum needed server has an Athlon 64 fx 53 processor, 2 Gig of high speed RAM and two serial ATA high-speed hard drives that we’ll mirror for easy backups and restores. If we get the funds, we’ll instead go with two separate servers instead for even more speed; to do so we'll upgrade our current machine to manage the background software and then use the new powerful server detailed above to handle the databases. That will cost up to $2200 more than the one server solution, though (it involves an increase of $50-100 per month in our co-location fees for extra rack space in addition to upgrading our current machine), and despite the speed boost we may be better off using those donations for hosting.
How much money do we need? As a bare minimum we need $3000 in donations to buy a new server. Donations over that amount go directly towards hosting and improving our minimum configuration with faster components. See our handy countdown “pledgeometer” (which we'll link in as soon as we have it ready!) to see how we’re doing and what level we’ve hit. We’ll detail how much money we receive and how it is spent. None of that stuff will be secret; if you're kind enough to donate money to make the site faster, we'd like you to know what we're spending it on.
Our donation levels are:
o Silver: $3,000 for a new single server.
o Electrum: $5,200 for a dual server system with incremental hosting fees paid for.
o Gold: $8,100 for a dual server system with six months of hosting.
o Platinum: $11,000 for a dual server system with an entire year of hosting.
These numbers include expected taxes and paypal fees; if actual taxes are less than expected, we need less money (or get more for the donations that we receive.)
Didn’t you ask for money a year ago to save EN World? We sure did – we didn’t have enough cash flow to continue hosting, and you folks pulled together and saved the site. Without you, we wouldn’t be here now. There’s a summary here of how that money was used, paying off our debts and ensuring hosting over the last year. With taxes and unfilled pledges, though, there wasn’t enough money to pay for a new server. It’s time to fix that, and to fund our bandwidth fees for the upcoming year.
Where is the money going to go to? Other than the mandatory amount for PayPal fees (roughly 2.5%) and taxes, every dollar you donate is going to go directly to the server and hosting. Everyone handling the mass data migration is donating their time, and none of the money will be used for the ENnies or other EN World projects; everything you donate will have a direct impact on the speed and ongoing health of the site. Guaranteed.
What do we get for donating? Well, the first thing you’ll get is a stable server that’s fast – about 7x more powerful than the machine we’re currently using. You’ll get the joy or reading news or posting threads without having to wait for 30 seconds for a screen refresh. That’s something we haven’t regularly had in almost two years.
More than that, though. Donate money and get a chance at a variety of prizes, including donations from some fantastically generous artists and Game Publishers. For instance, Expeditious Retreat Press has already donated 180 of their books, one to go to the first 180 people to donate $20 or more. We have more great prizes coming in for you, and we'll detail all of them in this donation thread while publicly thanking the generous companies who are helping. Publishers and authors, we'd be honored if you can help EN World out; please drop our prize coordinator Alsih2o an email if you'd like to donate books and pdfs. We'd love to have you take part.
Note that in the past we've included a Community Supporter membership with donations. We're not doing that this year; if you want to be a Community Supporter (a new server means fast searches!), please set aside a little less server donation money and purchase this separately.
How much should we donate? Whatever you can, based on the use you get out of EN World’s news and forums. Believe me, we’ll appreciate it whether you can donate $10 or $500.
How should we donate? If you wish to use a credit card, you can PayPal the money to us at "kevin AT kulp DOT org" (using an "@" and ".", of course.) If you’d rather pay with a check, you can mail your donation to:
EN World Server Fund
c/o Kevin Kulp
723 Beacon St
Newton, MA 02459
Make the check out to Kevin Kulp, and write “EN World server donation” on the memo line. Include your EN World user name (if any), email address and contact information, and we’ll email you a receipt.
Who’s handling the purchase and installation? Under Russ "Morrus" Morrissey’s direction, we have set up a seven person Server Committee to manage the fund raising, installation and customization of the new server. That team consists of:
- Brian “Adlon” Friedman, technical admin handling hardware purchase and installation
- Deathe "Thomas Heretic" Davis, technical admin handling databases and software
- Michael Morris, technical admin handling interface customization
- Henry Link, message board admin handling fund raising
- Mark "Alsih20" Davis, prize and donation coordinator
- Kevin "Piratecat" Kulp, site admin handling fund raising and project oversight
- Eric Noah, Administrator Emeritus
Adlon will be constructing and installing the server himself based on top-end components; it’s what he does professionally. This is how we can get the power we’re planning for a much lower price than someone like Dell could give us.
What happens if we don’t get enough money? We set aside what we raise towards monthly hosting and a new server, and limp along with our current machine until we raise the needed funds. We’re hoping this isn’t something that we have to worry about, though; with server capacity at almost 100% during peak hours, a new server will be helpful for everyone who visits our site.
How quickly do we need the money? The sooner the better; ideally, we’d like to wrap this fund drive up in two weeks. If we can meet or exceed our fundraising goals by then, we should have the new server up and running before the new year.
How long will the new server last for? We’ll plan to replace this server in another two to three years, as you’d probably expect. We’re putting together a box that should more than support our growth during that time. Frankly, buying a machine now that would last longer than three years is prohibitively expensive.
How much does hosting cost a month? Our server is co-located at Cyberstreet in Florida, the same people who host Adlon’s Mortality.net. We pay $400 a month for hosting, and are hooked up to a 10 MB fiberoptic data pipe. We don’t expect this to change appreciably over the next year.
Why don’t you use a host other than our current provider? We evaluate our position on a yearly basis, and we love Cyberstreet (in Ft. Myers, Florida) because they provide us with some significant advantages. In addition to competitive hosting rates, this is the host where our technical admin Adlon keeps his own server for mortality.net. Cyberstreet co-locates our server; we own it and we’re responsible for servicing it, and they just give us bandwidth and a place for the server to sit. This saves us quite a bit of money. In truth, though, Adlon and Cyberstreet’s owner Walter Peterson have gone out of their way to keep our box up and running. We appreciate their help, and we’re pleased to work with them.
Why’d you wait so long? We’ve been really hesitant to ask members and visitors for more money, especially after the generosity of last year. It’s now clear that ongoing funds from Community Supporter memberships can pay for month-to-month operations but not new hardware. This is the best solution.
What happens to the current threads? Our top priority is porting everything over to the new machine. We expect to have some problems with this because numerous crashes have caused corruption in our databases, but we're going to try and work around that. If it proves unmanageable for stability reasons, our fallback position is to archive the current databases as read-only. We don't expect it to come to that, though.
Will we have to re-register on the new server? We expect to transfer over our existing member database, so unless something serious crops up you won't have to re-register.
What can I do to help? Please donate for a new server! Ask your friends to donate. Contribute prizes for folks who have generously donated. Play a heck of a lot of D&D. And keep coming to EN World; this site would be a lot less fun without the members who have kept it strong throughout the years since 3e was first announced.
Where can we ask questions? This thread in General Discussion is the place to ask questions, announce your donation, and discuss the server drive. We'll keep track of donation figures there and in the "pledgeometer" as soon as we put it up.
Thanks for taking part in the server drive, folks. The difference in speed, and in the overall quality of the site, is going to be astounding.
- Kevin Kulp (Piratecat)
On behalf of the Server Committee
