OUR GOAL HAS BEEN MET, THANK YOU EVERYONE!

Based on the PayPal and Patreon donations combined, we have met our 2-year goal, so thank you everyone that contributed. I will leave the drive open through April 1st in case anyone else wishes to contribute. Because Patreon is a new thing, I'm still a bit leary (but hopeful) about how many patrons will remain with us, month after month. My hope is that over time, as people leave Patreon, that others will step up to fill the gaps. For PayPal donations, anything over our goal will go toward software upgrades that are much-needed at this point. I'm also going to make the move to getting our assets offloaded into a more stable cloud structure, and hopefully that will lower our overall costs in the long-run. This will take time, but we will begin the process now and hope to have it completed before our next donation drive.

--
 
Hey everyone,

I wanted to take a moment to reach out to our 3 "Age" communities and ask for your help in keeping the sites alive. The last donation drive we did was in August of 2012, so it's been almost 4 years since our last one. Since then, we've have sporadic donations to help, but most of these costs have been out of my own pocket.

There are two ways you can help:

1. You can subscribe to our Patreon site, which is a monthly subscription to help out:

https://www.patreon.com/NintendoA...

2. If you would rather just donation directly, please send non-gift donations to:

[email protected]

My goal is to have 2 years' costs by April 1st, so we don't have to do this again for a while. I'm not quite sure yet how the Patreon system works fully, so I'm still a bit on the fence about it, and don't want to depend on that source fully yet.

For any donation over $50, you'll get a Server Donation Drive icon (if you already have one, you'll get a second; if you already have two, you'll get a third). If you've donated since March 1st, you'll get one as well, so you don't have to re-donate to get an icon. Please allow until after April 1st for the icons to appear. We'll try to keep up daily weekly, but we might get behind, so please don't PM us until April 7th, a week after we end the drive.

Thank you all for supporting the sites! I hope with your help, we can keep the sites open for a long time with ads.

-Dain

Following is a breakdown of our monthly costs:

• Server 1 (Web) – $329 /mo. (the additional $90 is the memory upgrade)
• Server 2 (Database) – $239 /mo.
• Amazon S3 - ~$50 /mo.

That’s a total of $618/mo. using $50 as a monthly average for S3. The total for one year is ~$7,416.00, so for 2 years it's $14,832.

Current Goal: $15,000 (done!)
Current Donations: $15,596.46 (111% of goal)
PayPal: $6,321.46 (42% of goal)
Patreon: $10,392 (24 months x $400/mo in subscriptions = $10,392 = 69% of goal)


A HUGE THANK YOU TO ALL OF OUR DONATORS!

If you know the NA/SA/PSC usernames of any of the users below that say "NA name unknown," please shoot me a PM. I'd really like to give proper credit.

I want to send a special thank you to the following donators for their incredible generosity:

lukiegames
MrMark0673
BeaglePuss
Paul F
superNESman
Bubbasizer
Retroscribe81


Patreon Supporters:


Chemistry (NA name unknown)
Joshua (NA username unknown)
1337bcc1991
7Eleven
8bithustler
ALTQQ
ap123
arnpoly
behemos
bigfatdrummer
Br81zad
Bronty
CAPTAIN N
CaptainMaroney
cdbblw
cgfeelit
cirellio
cjameslv
Commander Santa
ctrujil24
D-pad Danny
daillest
dd0ck
Doc.Stalk
earlyworm
Faxanadude
Ferris Bueller
Fleck586
Foochie776
futureman
GBC Collector
GhostNinja
Hogie1418
JamesRobot
JauneyStudios
KAMIKAWA
killacam74
killerkobra
Little Nemo
M-Tee
magus90
MAIL_BAG
mattbep
milesp1
Milwaukee_Nintendo
Monkersville
MrWunderful
neodolphino
NintendoTwizer
Nostalgic_Machine
ookii_risu
oops
Ozzy_98
Paul
Paul F
pokey2400
Prime2099
Proveaux
Retro man
rokubungi
Ryder4864
salparadise1
Scerena4
senorchocotaco
Shino
Silent Hill
smick
spawn
SpotAnime
Stryphos
The Hero
thesubcon3
TotalRadNES
ToxieRules
USFLegend
Vaosu
wattswc
ZavierKonz
zeppelin03
zfleming54
zi

Donators:

AdamBo
Aestivalis
ALTQQ
ap123
bag
bearcat-doug
behemos
Benihana
BilltownSparty
Bla5to
Bonanza125
BouncekDeLemos
Brachabre
BriGuy82
brokenkevin
Bubbasizer
Bulldoggamer
callypige42
captmorgandrinker
cdbblw
Champ Masters
chromableedstudios
clarky_n64
clone99
Clyde The Jackal
Commander Santa
DaneNES
DarkTone
dballin
demanufacturedmario
Doc.Stalk
doner24
Eatarick
empire
ExplodedHamster
Ferris Bueller
francochan
GameboyRicky
GriffyPOP the 3rd
guillavoie
Hades Rejects
Ichinisan
ihavethatpma
JauneyStudios
JHawkZZ
Jobber8742
johnnyboy113
jonebone
jonest3
K.Thrower
KHAN Games
killerkobra
kingkoswyn
Lincoln
lukiegames
M3CHK1LLA
Mario's Right Nut
MasonSushi
mattbep
Mega Tank
Megamanfan
millerjm2
MrMark0673
MrWunderful
ne$_pimp
neodolphino
Nosmiric
NotTheCommonDose
oops
Portabello
red_sox_papi
Retroscribe81
Retrostage
roboturchin
rokubungi
Ryder4864
shortstop444
Silent Hill
Skorp
steven78
supercoupe91
superNESman
tarkusAB
tdmm
teh lurv
Tempius
The Count
The Hero
TheBiRD
thebmxeur
theinhumanwretch
theirontoupee
tkempkes
Troy_Whelan
Vectrex280996
VGD

If I missed your name, shoot me a PM and I'll be sure to add you. I tried to be very thorough, but I'm bound to make a mistake here or there.

What's a "non-gift donation"?

Just sent $100 your way in addition to my Patreon contribution.

Thanks so much for everything you do.

Cool, I've been waiting for this for a while. Thanks, Dain!

Same as you'd pay anyone else. Just rather than gifting it. I assume he'd get flack for so many gifts.

Donation sent!

I will donate $50 or more before April 1st. As others have mentioned, thank you Dain for what you've done for this great community.

I'm not in a position to donate at the moment... though I have in the past (still have some bling!) and will certainly do so in the future. Here's to hoping NA meets the goals!

Thanks Dain


Donation sent i sent as goods per your request

$50 sent. Thanks for the awesome site Dain.

I'll be sending in a donation in about a week. Long Live NintendoAge!

Vintage donation sent!
Where is my bling?

If I donate $150, do I get 3 icons?

You know, I like this site because it has a big repository of information that I can search through, but damn, $650 per month to run a website? That sounds crazy high. Is there a breakdown of where exactly this money is going? Perhaps one solution to lower costs would be to switch to a different host. Or perhaps put a tax on transactions here, considering the amount of money that flows through this site.

You may want to consult this thread to post such ideas : http://vintage.nintendoage.com/fo...

$100 sent, thanks for everything Dain. I had no idea the servers cost so much to run, otherwise i'd have donated more often.

Thanks everyone! I've updated the original post with our monthly cost break-down.

Big repositories take up big space, both disk and database. Our disk usage is 100+ GB, and our database size is also over 40+ GB. Then there's server-hits, which we float at 1.5 - 3 million a month, and then DNS hits (millions), then bandwidth used (over a TB). Paid hosting is not a feasible approach due to the nature of this site. With overage fees, we would be looking at probably double the current cost IMO.

One of the things I'm in the process of doing is offloading all binaries to Amazon S3. This takes time, because I have to re-code everything dealing with binaries (which is a lot; then I have to transfer 100 GB and make sure they're in sync). Once that's done, I can probably kill the web server and just use hosting for the primary site. Next up would be to offload the database, but that's a lot more tricky due to the size of it. I was looking at Amazon EC2 for this, but costs right now for the hourly hits and usage for SQL Server would be more than what we're paying for both servers at present, so that's not really cost-effective at this point. By doing either, I'm really afraid that speed would become a huge issue due to the hosting and database server not being in the same VPN.

So we could cut corners to save costs -- just take away features that are highly used like the PM system That wouldn't go over well I'm afraid. The point now is that we've never had trouble keeping the lights on, and the costs haven't change much in the last 8 years, so why now with double the people should we be having trouble raising funds?

 

ill donate but why non-gift seems strange to let paypal take such a large amount... sorry if I am not being helpful as I am sure you have looked into it and there is a reason, but I am asking more out of curiosity.

^^^ wow my brain just exploded trying to grasp this. Just know while i have no idea what this means i am grateful!

$500 sent from Matt and Mark Nolan.

Thank you so very much Dain for all that you have done for the both of us and for providing an incredible community. Money well spent.

Sent you $50 via paypal and signed up for Patreon. Thanks Dain.

Donation sent.

Thanks for giving us a place to geek out.

You know I'm always down to support! Patreon is a great way for this, and exactly why I'm using it myself, let me know when/if you want me to spread the word to my backers.