Notice Where do your contributions go?

Brogan

Legend
Staff Member
First of all, I'd like to thank all of you who have generously contributed to the site by way of the Account Upgrades system.
Your contributions are greatly appreciated and will help to improve the site further.
I appreciate that currently there isn't a lot of return for the money but hopefully that will improve as more features and functionality are added.

In case you were wondering, the money doesn't go into my pocket, as much as I would like that to be the case :D
It does in fact go towards maintaining, and more importantly, improving the site.

The general running costs currently are around £100 per year - that is for hosting fees and the domain.
We may be forced to upgrade our hosting from a shared server to a VPS soon, which is approximately 10 times as expensive per year. That will only be required once the traffic exceeds a certain level and fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view), we haven't yet reached that point.

The first major update we have planned is to completely rework the F1 Database we had on the old site.
I have been in contact with the developer who wrote the Chat system we use (Darkimmortal) to look at it and provide a quote for redoing it to fit the new site.

The price he has given is very reasonable and I would really like to try and reinstate what would be a great resource for the site.
It would be done differently this time though, with more emphasis on being able to search for specific content and return results in graphical format which could be linked to, etc.
There's also the option of building in permissions so only certain groups could access it for example, making it a resource for members only.

We're about 20% of the way towards the target required and although I'd like to go ahead and commission the work anyway,
Mrs B won't be happy at me spending our daughter's inheritance in this way ;)

The next add-on we have planned is to create a custom Fantasy F1 application which will be linked in to the database.
This will be totally automated and players will be able to click and select to update their choices, etc. and once the database is updated, it will propogate through to the FF1 application.

So that's just a brief summary with regards to costs and what we have planned.
We will of course be updating and improving the other parts of the site over the coming weeks and months.

Adverts
Pay-per-click adverts have been introduced in an attempt to raise more funds, more quickly.
It was a decision which wasn't taken lightly, and one which we have resisted for the past 3 years, but to be able to grow the site we will need regular income.

There are 4 advert locations and they are shown to the various user groups as follows:
  • Sidebar - Everyone except Premium Contributors and Premium Members
  • Above upper breadcrumb - Everyone except Premium Contributors and Premium Members
  • Below lower breadcrumb - Everyone except Premium Contributors
  • After the 1st post in threads - Guests only
So in summary: Premium Contributors will see no adverts, Premium Members will see some adverts, all other members will see all adverts, except those after the 1st post in threads which are only ever shown to guests.

The screenshot below is how the main forum page appears to guests.

adverts.png

Edit: Google saw fit to disable the AdSense account for reasons known only to themselves, so the adverts are no longer present.

Edit: We now have a new AdSense account but only guests see adverts now.
 
It allows you to make multiple posts one after the other without having to wait a set time, currently 30 seconds.
Good job I am a fairly slow typist then and at my age there's not much I can do in 30 seconds :snigger:
 
Due to the great job Darkimmortal did with chat, I have made a contribution to him for that.
Chat is used quite heavily on the site during race weekends so without it we wouldn't have been able to switch software.
 
I've also made a donation to the person who created the code which enables us to use custom BB Code.

Again, without that ability, we would have lost an awful lot of content as tables, preserved formatting text, etc. are heavily used throughout the site.
 
I've added ribbons to the avatar holders for those who have upgraded.
Not sure if this is a good idea or not. Does anyone have any comments or opinion either way?
 
With the introduction of adverts to the site, Premium Contributors will be pleased to know that all adverts are blocked for them.
Premium Members will see some adverts.
Regular members see all adverts.

Edit: Thanks to Google cancelling the AdSense account, there are no longer any adverts on the site.
 
I'll throw my ten'er down soon(bugger pay-day).............as long as it buys milk and cookies I am peaches.

The bar you have with regards to targets or whatever it may be is looking very sad, we may have to go drastic on pulling in the contributions..............
 
I'll throw my ten'er down soon(bugger pay-day).............as long as it buys milk and cookies I am peaches.

The bar you have with regards to targets or whatever it may be is looking very sad, we may have to go drastic on pulling in the contributions..............

I'll lend it to you - obviously at a very reasonable interest rate. To me, that is... ;)
 
I'm pleased to say that we are 23% of the way towards this year's total - yes the bar has moved slightly ;)

So a big thank you to all those who have purchased an upgrade :)
 
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