All,
It's been about 18 months since I last posted a fundraiser for the site, but alas I feel it's best for the site to be open about server funds. The NintendoAge server fund has once again run dry so we are running another server fundraiser this year. Last year we successfully raised over $6,000 for the server fund, which is used to pay for the 2 dedicated servers and Amazon S3, more on that in a second.
This year we will be giving anyone who donates $60 or more a server icon and members who already have the server icon from 2011's fundraiser will get an additional icon with something special indicating that they've donated 2 years in a row.
This year we are setting the goal a little higher to give the site more of a cushion, $7300.
Dain did a little write up about this so please read below:
From Dain:
"
Hey gang,
I wanted to reach out and let you know it’s time again where our communities must band together and help pitch in to keep the sites alive. As many of you know, it’s not cheap keeping servers up and running and we’ve been thankful to be able to offset costs by generating affiliate income through eBay.
March, 2011 is when we held our last drive, and managed to raise over $6,000 towards new servers. At the time we had 1 server doing the work of two and needed a second one to balance things out. We were able to sustain for over 17 months with those donations, which also included some sporadic donations along the way. This time, we’re aiming for $7,300, which covers some recently-added upgrades:
1. We doubled the memory on our Web server
2. We are relying on Amazon S3 for static assets (JavaScript, CSS, and image sprites).
Both of these additions help drastically with site performance, so we feel the added costs are more than worth it.
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 - $30-$50 /mo. (based on actual usage)
That’s a total of $608 /mo. using $40 as a monthly average for S3. The total for one year is ~$7,300.00.
I hope anyone who’s been on the site the last month will agree that the performance enhancements done have made a dramatic difference in being able to use the site. But don’t take my word for it – see these stats for yourself:
On July 12, 2012, we scored a 53/100 (an F+), taking about 18 seconds to access a page in a “first load” scenario:
http://www.webpagetest.org/result...
By August 7, 2012, after taking over 100 hours to re-tune things, we returned for a score of 98/100 (an A+), taking less than a second to access a “first load”.
http://www.webpagetest.org/result...
We listened to your suggestions and made better use of our existing servers to keep things running smoothly. We also feel that our existing structure is good enough to keep us going for at least another 2+ years, so our donation goal is only slightly above last year’s, accounting for a memory upgrade and the S3 host.
At any rate, anything you can help with is greatly appreciated, but not required. The last thing we want is anyone stretching themselves too thin – we’ll catch you on the next one.
-Dain"
If you have any questions about this whole thing, please PM me, so Dain can continue to focus on keeping NintendoAge running.
Donation address is:
[email protected]
Please send all payments as regular and not gifts.
Please note: if you do not have Paypal, you can send money thru Paypal at the following address:
https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mp...
Thanks again to all for taking the time to read this, and for making NintendoAge a great place.
Current donation level:
$7,118 of $7300 raised. very close.
Once again, thank you to NA as without you, our members, there wouldn't be a site.
Also, big thanks to Dain, as the site has been much much faster as of late.
