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irokin

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Posts posted by irokin

  3. Rt?

    in Forum Support

    Posted

    Yea it's a setting that stops people doing things like

     

    "pls halp i can't fix something" (no capitalisation)

    "HAY GUISE WHATS HAPPENING" (all capitalisation)

     

    So instead the software capitalises the first letter of each word to try and make things look neater. Unfortunately there are side effects but I think overall it's neater this way. Happy for people to convince me otherwise!

  6. Sup Rollaclub? Let's Have A Chat.

    in Rollaclub Social (Off-Topic)

    Posted

    Premium membership? Premium paid members area?

    I am more than happy to donate money.

     

    I thought about this but a bit like reddit gold, I don't really have a lot that I could offer people. I've tried to avoid hobbling or limiting the site for general members so there ain't much left to give! It's also a bit too businessy for my liking, not really a road I want to go down.

  7. Sup Rollaclub? Let's Have A Chat.

    in Rollaclub Social (Off-Topic)

    Posted

    So you might have noticed I haven't been around a whole lot lately. Or maybe you haven't and the mod team are just that ʞ©$ɟing good! (Yea it's probably that one)

     

    So uni and other ~things~ have kept me pretty busy and I just haven't had a lot of drive to be a part of the community and deal with development stuff. I've kept the server ticking over, loaded the site every now and then to make sure it still works and groaned at rollaclub related emails in my inbox. Over the summer break I might become a bit more active again, but that's likely to end as soon as uni goes back (plus work has a bunch of projects lined up for when I'm 'free'). I don't think that will really matter anyway. The site seems to be running just fine as things are (at least it looks that way?) and I can put aside a couple of hours to go through the admin email requests on weekends or something. But that's not really why I'm here.

     

     

    Over the past 12 months or so the funding available (advertising revenue) to keep running rollaclub has been shrinking. There's probably a few reasons for this. Less site traffic, bad advertising market, adblockers (which I'm perfectly OK with people using) and probably some other things I'm missing. The good advertising revenue allowed us to have some pretty sweet hosting but is unfortunately hobbled a bit by the pathetic speed of the ad providers sites. But I stuck with it because the initial outlay of time and money was significant and the funding was there to allow it to continue. But it's now got to the point where the site is back operating in the red. In the past when I was working full time I probably could have subsidised it without too much of a worry, but as a student it's too much to of a burden.

     

    Now, you're probably expecting me to ask for money at this point, but I don't feel that members should be making up the difference and putting up with advertising all over the shop as well (at least, those who aren't using adblock). Of course I could go full retard and dress the site up like a whore but I don't feel advertising should ever detract from the main goal of the site. This situation however has presented the opportunity for the site to go back to the old ad free days and survive on donations alone.

     

    Going back to donations would obviously mean a reduction in the quality of hosting and would probably mean moving it offshore (probably Japan, because ʞ©$ɟ hosting anything in the US). The site will probably be slightly slower on its own, on my internet the latency is still very good but once you remove the advertising it will probably be about the same or slightly faster.

     

    Funding wise I'm probably subsidising to the tune of around $100/mo at the moment (yea, our hosting that expensive... and then some, #'straya-problems). What I would be aiming for is something around $50/mo (or ~$600/yr) once monthly/yearly costs are taken into account. At that price level it's not so much of a burden if I absolutely HAVE to fund the odd month (but I cannot sustain it even at this level). It would be very easy at this funding level for advertising to carry the load but I feel that it's so trivially cheap compared to what we have now that we hopefully wont need to.

     

     

    So, after that wall of text here's the tl;dr and what I'd like peoples opinion on:

     

    Should we move back to an ad free, donation/crowdfunding model?

     

    If so, should we do a wikipedia style, once a year donation drive.

    Or should we go for a monthly goal with excess rolling over onto subsequent months.

    Or... some other method, I'm open to suggestions

     

    Ideally, from my perspective, the goal would be a funding method that is low maintenance and as open as possible so that everyone can see where the funding goes and what funding is available.

    10 Years Of Rollaclub

    in News

    Posted

    Will there be cake? or even better party bags?

     

    I'll have some cake for everyone...

     

     

    Both Teddy and myself would like to have a cruise to mark the occasion at some stage but we're both retarded busy at the moment. We might look to get something going for this in a month or two.

    10 Years Of Rollaclub

    in News

    Posted

    In the next week or two I'm hoping to release a few old versions of the forums so you can see how Rollaclub has changed through the years.

     

    This will probably be late next week as I've got uni exams in a few days. I've got working backups dating back to 2004, believe me it was a challenge to get some of them working again. It's astounding just how much has changed technology wise. I manage to get a very old copy of the forum software and I couldn't manage to get it working on the current PHP/MySQL servers as many assumptions about how they work and syntax had changed.

     

    Anyway I'll be making static copies of a few different forum snapshots to upload once I've got time. If you've got any particular period in time you'd like to see a snapshot of (post 2004) please let me know.

    • Upvote 1

    10 Years Of Rollaclub

    in News

    Posted

    10yfp.png

     

     

    So, Rollaclub is 10 years old today. There were actually a few dates to choose from. The domain was 10 years old sometime last year and there were a few false starts with lost forums before this one. I think our current forums start date is the most identifiable and most appropriate, and that happened 10 years ago today.

     

    In the next week or two I'm hoping to release a few old versions of the forums so you can see how Rollaclub has changed through the years. Until then you can check out old versions of Rollaclub on the Wayback Machine. I'll also be adding a special 10 year club member banner for members who have been with us that long. Once I've got it setup it'll automatically pop up on your 10 year anniversary.

     

    Thank you to everyone that has made this forum possible, some have moved on to other opportunities, some are still here making it happen. A huge thank you also to all members, past and present, you're what makes the forum what it is.

     

    If you've got any interesting stories about your time on Rollaclub, be it on an event, on the forums or how you found your way here, please share them with us in this thread!

  23. Bug Reports

    in Forum Support

    Posted

    It's possible, but I've made it as difficult as I can while avoiding editing source code. It is possible to make it absolutely mandatory but that means that every time I patch the software I have to make sure the modified code isn't overwritten (which is a pain in the arse).

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