51 replies to this topic

[NickYerPesos]

Indeed, my status was no longer there - I guess it disappears after a year - which is fine.

Duplu has not asked for any donations, no, but he said he is quitting. Based on that, surely this raises the one question about these forums...

- Who is going to pay for it when he's gone as it's a substantial amount that will be needed?

...this is also based on the hope that he passes it to somebody else.

Surely it's now the case for us all as memberrs to show him as his member base that he is not expected to be doing all the leg work here. To show him that the forums do value him and the cost it takes to run this site.

If all those people who voted for him to stay payed a contribution which actually now would be only £25 this forum would be paid for up to a year.

Although it is his site and he is perfectly entitled to do what he wants with regards to advertising and VIP areas. When the current advertising deals are up - if he so decided - he would not have to renew them to avoid upsetting some of the more delicate members here who have high stress levels. But again, his choice.

To the people that may not like what I am posting, I have thing to ask to you...

What do you think will happen when or if Duplu packs his bags forever here?

Do you not thing it's worth taking a stand to try to get 100% support from a cost point of view for this forum and all that it's stood for in FME?

The 69

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Im sorry, no one has replied to my post, so ill say it again, in a shorter sentence.

How can this site cost £1700 a year... Is it Bandwith, or all the pro addons this site has, like photopost and VBSEO...

I can understand a maximum of around £500 a year MAX for a site as big as this for all the bandwith and addons.

AND as with the last posts i made, i do make these comments with respect, and gratitude towards Duplu and the team... I just cant see where you came to £1700 a year.

[exibizarep]

Its quite frustrating to see yet another thread when broken down going on about the same thing. It seems that nobody can stick to the subject and it goes off on a tangent.

If its money that is needed to keep this sight going, then instead of putting words into Duplu's mouth, let him ask.

I don't think anybody would consider it as begging or a low tactic.

My personal thoughts on this particular matter, may be selfish, but, I am reluctant to offer any kind of donation if a couple of weeks down the line its going to disappear.

Perhaps some clarification would end this continuous barrage of accusations, and self righteous statements?

[richy76]

Great site, brings back the memories of great machines i used to play when i was younger & i used to work in an arcade & all the machines we had are on here thanks to the time & effort of the layout creators, rom dumpers etc.
Thanks a lot guys.

[Mr House]

FAO: NickYerPesos

almost 6 years FE has been running I've spent over £10,000 in server and software costs and have recouped very little of it. I guess this was the last straw as I'm not prepared to pay the bills anymore

There you go, that is that is a snipit from the PM that I had from Duplu.

Do you see?

The software is piss cheap, I've run enough sites with add ons to know. It's the server costs and bandwidth for a site setup of this size and usage that cost a lot.

[duplu]

I just want to interject at this point and thank everyone for the support they have shown in both their posts, PMs and e-mails. Thank you to all the members who have both donated after Harvey's kind thread and in the past. It is people like you that make working on FE all worth while. At this point I can't leave out those who donate to the site in other ways, ie, creating and upload layouts, uploading new flyers to the gallery and posting in the forums to create a welcoming atmosphere. Everyone has their part to play.

It has been raised a few times on various threads about the financials of the site. I can confirm that in hosting costs, software licences and resources it has cost me over £10,000 for the last 6 years. Yes, I have taken advertising monies and donations over this period but I'm still thousands out of pocket. Someone said I must be stupid doing this but I don't see it this way. So long as peopled enjoyed FE and I enjoyed FME then I was happy to finance the site.

What I wasn't happy with was for people to question my motives in firstly arranging an advertising deal with UJ and then for creating a VIP layouts area. The VIP release area was something I have being thinking of for a long time in a similar vain to how we used to operate with M1Adness. The idea was to both reward contributors to the site whilst also encouraging more contributors. I don't see a problem where the layouts came from as I have no problems with anyone in the FME world. Yes, I agree I should have discussed it with the moderators and maybe they would have told me it was a bad idea or maybe not. Hindsight is a wonderful thing!

For those of you who were interested in the UJ deal. It was a 6 month deal for £200. Not thousands, not £200 a month, just a flat £200 for the whole 6 months. Was it really worth the witch-hunt? I guess not. I also actually felt embarrassed for the way Peter Clayton was hounded from the site. He was setting up a new company and was prepared to commit to a 6 month investment in our site. Yes, it was a case of drawing on our membership but if people didn't feel comfortable with his site then they just don't visit it. I can tell you now that I had extensive discussions with Peter with regards to increasing the membership of FE through his PR sources. Those discussions died shortly after he agreed to no longer post on the site - our loss I think.

In answer to Nick's question regarding the costs for the site. It needs to be hosted on a dedicated server due to both the amount of bandwidth it consumes and also the processing power it uses. If you hosted it on any shared hosting platform they would terminate it in a nano second, do people remember all the MySQL errors when I tried a couple of years ago. The site is many more times that size now and some months can consume in excess of 1 Terabyte in bandwidth.

The server is also based in the UK as the majority of members are in the UK, which makes the site faster to respond for them. Hosting in the UK is generally more expensive than the US. The current server costs over £200 a month but in the past where server costs were higher it did get to £320. Why was I prepared to pay this? For the same reason some members pay for resources or spend their time creating layouts. I love FME and FE is what I have created (with the help of the moderators and other admins). The money was never important, although always welcome.

So what happens from here? Well, I made a decision a couple of weeks ago after the UJ fiasco that if people weren't happy with how the site was financed then I wasn't prepared to pay for a nice server to make the site speedy anymore. I therefore moved the site to a smaller server to cut costs, hence the downtime a few days ago. I didn't tell anyone because it was a sudden decision to prevent another monthly payment on the old server.

FE will carry on but I'm taking a break from posting or implementing anything new.

I apologise now if my post is a bit disjointed but I'm trying to put down how I feel emotionally about something I have helped to build over the past 6 years.

Alan

[ady]

FE will carry on but I'm taking a break from posting or implementing anything new.

RESPECT




What more can I say.

[NickYerPesos]

Im sorry Alan for questioning you mate, it was more of a "why/how was it that expensive," and why on earth you would stump up that kind of cash, but i Fully and proudly take my hat off to you sir.

Thank you ever so much for your hard work, time, dedication and the money you have put into this site.

This is the first site i ever came on in regards to Fruit machine emulation, and i thank you for introducing me to this great (if a little argumentative at times ) Community.

Thanks mate.

Nick B

[Andy2003]

Just a note to everyone who has not donated and hasn't got a paypal account.

I haven't got a paypal account but it still lets you donate money as a guest as long as you have a debit card..

So if you want to donate and have a debit card it's easy.

I've been a member of this site for years but have never realised how important donations are to keep the site running..

I do owe this site a lot for stopping me from pumping my money into real machines (No bullshit) ...

Thankyou for deciding to keep the site running Duplu..

Peace out...

[Gazeyre1966]

Thanks for deciding to keep this site running Duplu. It was the first site (and the best) I stumbled across 5 years ago. I was under the misapprehension that the site was now self-sufficient. Clearly, this was never the case so another donation coming your way next month.

I never understood the fuss made by some members over Union Jackpots and Peter. That must have been hard. To be honest I don't know what happened as I don't have the time to log in 24/7 anymore.

Take a break from it for a while. The site is in good hands with the mods you've got. It's not FF and it's good that sometimes we can have a rant but then a mod will step in (without taking sides)...and say that enough is enough and lock the thread.

I have to say though. It's good that FME can still provoke a good debate now and again. Even if it's dragging up old arguments from years past. At least we know people are still passionate about the scene and still care enough to look on this site and post....even if some of them should be locked up!!!!

[saynowt]

right we need ideas on fund raising well i will start its just an idea so dont be too hard on me this site always has been free well i think in my opinion it should change im not talking about fortunes here but if you look at all the downloads in the past from members..it could work.how about all members buy credits.ie for example £5 for 50 credits 1 credit =1download machine.this will raise funds for future bills ect.and also be a relief on the bandwith.members will be more selective with what they download.if members dont want do buy credits then they dont really deserve to have downloadable capabilities.imo.i know it wont be easy but its worth looking into.if people cant pay a fiver then this is a sad world we live in...

[Matty.N]

Just a note to everyone who has not donated and hasn't got a paypal account.

I haven't got a paypal account but it still lets you donate money as a guest as long as you have a debit card.

Don't even need a credit/debit card

get something called splash plastic from Here

great help to those who dont have banks

Edit: Duplu thanks for explaining the suituation to us

& many thanks for keeping this site alive

[cliffc]

Hi

In your first post you say that if this site went then alot of layouts would be lost forever, not true as I at the Repro have almost every layout ever created on line, you cannot see them as a guest user but for full users thay are there not that I want this site to go.

There will be more stuff as another user has sent me some DVD's with a full set of stuff on them, and allthough I am not willing to make DVD's of all the layouts I have on the repro for free I am willing to do them for a small fee. This is to put off the e-bay sellers from getting them for nothing. I am also working on adding a web based E-mail system to the repro so users can have there own e-mail one of the reasons I have not yet got round to adding the stuff from the disks.

I would donate here but as I run my own site I need funds to keep it going, allthough its all done from my own PC and the software is a lot simpler than that used here thus the costs are no where near that of this site.

And yes I would also like to see the return of our well respected and much missed member not for his cash, but for the work he did on layouts ect.

Thanks for Duplu for clearing up alot of stuff in his post which he must have done while i was typeing up this lol.


Regards

Cliff C

Edited by cliffc, 16 February 2009 - 11:50 PM.