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Re: Forum News & Discussion
Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2020 2:00 am
by Lowgear
The company we've been using to gather donations offers the service for free for organizations who receive under a thousand dollars a month. If you go over, they take a cut of every donation received. Since we only take in around a hundred a month, it's been free for us. Well... Not any more.
I received an email from them stating they're doing away with the free tier, and starting July 1st they'll be taking a cut of every donation no matter what. They used convoluted business talk for the reason but it's obviously due to the pandemic. Since so many are out of work, people aren't being as charitable. As such, the less people donate, the less money the donation company makes. So now they're going to have to start milking money out of ALL users to compensate. PayPal already takes a cut for every donation we receive, so we can't afford to have two entities now doing it.
The good news is there's a native donation system modification for phpBB. Some of you may remember that's what we initially used for a short time. Well we're going back to it starting tomorrow. Luckily it's been updated to work with our current board version. The bad news is we're at the mercy of an independent developer doing it for fun opposed to an actual company. That's the reason we switched away from it to begin with after several unresolved issues.
Re: Forum News & Discussion
Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2020 9:01 am
by KidAgain
Lowgear wrote: ↑Tue Jun 30, 2020 2:00 am
The company we've been using to gather donations offers the service for free for organizations who receive under a thousand dollars a month. If you go over, they take a cut of every donation received. Since we only take in around a hundred a month, it's been free for us. Well... Not any more.
I received an email from them stating they're doing away with the free tier, and starting July 1st they'll be taking a cut of every donation no matter what. They used convoluted business talk for the reason but it's obviously due to the pandemic. Since so many are out of work, people aren't being as charitable. As such, the less people donate, the less money the donation company makes. So now they're going to have to start milking money out of ALL users to compensate. PayPal already takes a cut for every donation we receive, so we can't afford to have two entities now doing it.
The good news is there's a native donation system modification for phpBB. Some of you may remember that's what we initially used for a short time. Well we're going back to it starting tomorrow. Luckily it's been updated to work with our current board version. The bad news is we're at the mercy of an independent developer doing it for fun opposed to an actual company. That's the reason we switched away from it to begin with after several unresolved issues.
Good to know bud whatever it takes to keep it going....
Re: Forum News & Discussion
Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2020 6:18 pm
by Lowgear
Alright, I installed and setup the new donation system. I tested it as far as I could on my end. Hopefully it works all the way through for you guys. It's accessible either by following the 'Donations' link at the top of the board or by the 'DONATIONS' link at the bottom of the board on the index page.
Direct link:
rc10talk.com/donate
Re: Forum News & Discussion
Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 2:00 am
by Lowgear
Looks like I have some more kinks to get out as two of the features didn't automatically work as they should have. A big thanks to those who have donated so far during this test phase!
Re: Forum News & Discussion
Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2020 8:30 pm
by Lowgear
Today I registered ultrarc.net and rc10talk.net to compliment our existing .com variants. They both redirect you to here. It's always a good idea to register the other top-level domain name extensions of your main one when available.
A few of you may remember that way back in 2002 I had an R/C monster truck forum called Monster Madness for several years which used the monstermadness.net domain name. I had to go with .net at the time since the .com equivalent was already taken. Anyway, that was available as well so I registered it today too, and it redirects you to ClodTalk.
Re: Forum News & Discussion
Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2020 3:16 pm
by Lowgear
This is a quick but important note to say I’m currently without home Internet or power!
A good portion of the northeast is. It’s been out for 2 days now, and might be for a few more. The power company hasn’t even started fixing anything yet. During this time I won’t be able to respond to any emails. Updating donors will also be delayed.
Re: Forum News & Discussion
Posted: Sat Aug 08, 2020 11:48 pm
by Lowgear
It’s going on 6 days now and still no power!
This definitely goes on the list of thee worst experiences of my life. I can easily write a book About it all but this is not the place for it, and I’m posting from a pre-paid phone so I have to keep it short. Power is set to be restored by this Monday night at the latest. I’ll believe whenever it comes on when I see it.
Re: Forum News & Discussion
Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2020 2:08 am
by Lowgear
And after nearly 7 days, the power has
finally been restored so I'm back! All it took was the town getting Fox news to show up in which our mayor then lambasted the power company on TV to actually get things fixed.
Re: Forum News & Discussion
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2021 12:28 pm
by GoMachV
There are a couple members reporting they can’t log in- in fact they have a white screen with an error. Is there anything on the back end that was changed or updated that could be causing this? Any thoughts?
Re: Forum News & Discussion
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2021 1:43 pm
by TRX-1-3
I've noticed that I can't gain access to the site while using a VPN. But only recently. Last couple of days. Same message/screen, etc. I wonder if they are using a VPN setup also? I turn it off and everything loads fine.
Re: Forum News & Discussion
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2021 5:00 pm
by Lowgear
There was a DNS issue caused by the domain name being disabled by the registrar that then caused a problem with the SSL certificate. It seems to be working fine now?
Re: Forum News & Discussion
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2021 8:43 pm
by BattleTrak
Working good for me now. yesterday and early this morning had a very slow load time and time outs. But all good now!
Re: Forum News & Discussion
Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2021 4:18 am
by Lowgear
It was fixed early in the morning but then took several hours afterward for the changes to take effect due to having to propagate throughout cyberspace.
Re: Forum News & Discussion
Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2021 4:00 am
by Lowgear
As some of you may be aware due to me bringing it up several times, the forums software is long past due to be updated. I haven't been keeping up with installing the latest updates when I should have been. The reason is twofold. It's a very daunting and time-consuming process where everything can be lost with the slightest misstep due to how extensively modified the forum here is. The second reason is the forum is finally at a place where everything is perfect, and running like clockwork. After performing the update, a lot of it will need to be done over again. It will take time to get it back to that level so I've been delaying it.
Anyway, I'm finally being
forced to update the forums software to the latest version. I recently received an email from our hosting provider that they will be performing a major OS upgrade on our server. The forum has to be running the latest version for the best chance of it being fully compatible. Even then, I don't know what's going to happen.
There are several dates when the work is scheduled to be performed. They are as follows:
-April 28th is when a backup of the forum will take place.
-May 1st is when the forum update will take place.
-May 5th is when the servers OS update will take place.
The forum will be down for indefinite lengths of time on and potentially around these dates.
Re: Forum News & Discussion
Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2021 9:16 am
by jwscab
If there is anything that we can do to help out, let us know!!