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Mopar1973Man.Com LLC

  • Welcome To Mopar1973Man.Com LLC

    We are a privately owned support forum for the Dodge Ram Cummins Diesels. All information is free to read for everyone. To interact or ask questions you must have a subscription plan to enable all other features beyond reading. Please go over to the Subscription Page and pick out a plan that fits you best. At any time you wish to cancel the subscription please go back over to the Subscription Page and hit the Cancel button and your subscription will be stopped. All subscriptions are auto-renewing. 

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Mopar1973Man
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leety

leety

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I've been wanting to gift the site for all the amazing help here.  Telling you beautiful people how much I appreciate the help is nice and all, but it's is not cutting for me.  So much work has gone into this and it's a resource that is unparalleled.  I just want to give the site $, becuase the amount of $, time and hassle I save from this resource earns more than my Subscription dues alone every time I ya'll rescue me and my Dragon.

 

I'm thinking you could just put a simple "Donate" button in the sub menu under the more tab.

 

The copy could say something like:

 

A tremendous amount of work and effort go into the ongoing support that is offered here.  If you see the value in the depth and breath of useful content this site has to offer feel free to make a donation to our cause. Donations go to continuing this ongoing and developing resource which help people with their specific issues and concerns on a daily basis.

 

Please feel free to write a comment as to what moved you to donate funds to the site and it will be published on your behalf, if you choose to make it public.

 

Thank you for your ongoing support.

 

The management.

 

If you can you could make the "donation amount", "comment" and "user name" publicly viewable or not.

 

I'll go first if you decide to do it :-)  Perhaps that'll inspire others to chip in as well.

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Mason The Dev

Mason The Dev

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Suggestions eh...

I think it's a bad idea to restrict free users from posting to the website. It's fine to restrict some stuff (E.g. Storage, PMs, unlimited posting...) but basic communication is going to turn people away from the site, they'll just go somewhere else where they can post.

People like my father wont purchase a subscription to be able to post, but the man is a genius when it comes to anything mechanical, and has been a mechanic for over 30 years. People like him are great fountains of information that would be a great loss if they simply cant post on the forums.

Another thing is the cost of running the website.

Instead of trying to increase revenue streams to cover costs by raising prices and reducing functionality for free users, why not look at ways of cuttings costs. I'm not sure where the bulk costs come from, how much bandwidth gets used, or what have you, but there's a lot of free open source board software that could be used and adapted to our purpose. Why pay thousands in license fees when you can achieve the same thing for free, with a little technical know-how.

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Mopar1973Man

Mopar1973Man

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Posted (edited)
21 hours ago, Mason The Dev said:

Instead of trying to increase revenue streams to cover costs by raising prices and reducing functionality for free users, why not look at ways of cuttings costs.

 

Only thing I could do is shut down... Server are not cheap. $1,388 a year currently as the site grow more and more I need a bigger and bigger servers. I've not left the VPS (virtual Private Servers) yet. But coming soon I'm nearing the end for VPS and head to Dedicated servers those start at $2,400 a year. I cant cut cost anywhere being if I go back to smaller hosting the site won't run or even fit. Kind of like stuffing an elephant in a closet. I've got over 50 GB of data now and growing I'm handling 1,900 to 2,200 people daily around the world. Then you add in the email server, Domain name cost, SSL certificate, software cost, 3rd party software cost, hardware cost, phone, internet, etc. Currently on a 4 CPUs, 8 GB RAM and 120 GB hard drive. You won't find a VPS bigger for less. Never happens.Current server is running out being I can no longer upgrade software and stuck. All my support for this hosting company has move to the Philippines. 

 

I'm roughly 19k to 21k a year in total expenses. Current income is 14k roughly right now. (roughly $5k behind in income)

 

Leaving an open door only netted a mere $3k worth of income leaving me paying out my own pocket the rest of the expenses. If I must pay to keep it open I will just close the site down and be done. Simple as that. I will not sell to another company so they can make it into another CF. 

 

The choice... Pay to post or close the doors... No way to cut any more cost. When there was "free hole" open for people they ran in raided the site for what they wanted never donated or bought subscription and ran with the info. This does not pay the bills. So is it fair for me to pulling out my pocket and dropping fund to pay bills? That what I did with my last paycheck I dropped another $100 out of my pocket. When I've gotta pay to keep something open do you think I want to continue pay bills for people to freely raid the site?

 

How about all the hours I sit on the phone helping people? Average phone call is over 2 to 4 hours long. No income, no payment. I cant keep working for free. I've still got a cancer treatment bill of $13,xxx left to pay. Which is also posted on the site as well back in 2019. 

 

For the last 16 years I've more or less work for nothing. Very rarely I would see some fund but not a paycheck worth my time. For my skill set and ability of Linux administration I'm worth at least $40 an hour. I've been doing this for mere chicken feed... 

 

Basically when the money runs out I'll simply close the doors... Nothing else I can do...

 

Too many people like @leety that want to see this site stay up and functional. Hence why the change.

 

Edited by Mopar1973Man
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Mason The Dev

Mason The Dev

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6 minutes ago, Mopar1973Man said:

 

Currently on a 4 CPUs, 8 GB RAM and 120 GB hard drive.

 


What kind of bandwidth does the website use?

I mean a few hundred will buy you those specs (or better) for your OWN server, then it's just a matter of bandwidth, power etc.
I have 1.5 gigabit in my neck of the woods but I don't know what you're able to get.
It'd be a hell of a lot cheaper than paying that ridiculous amount of money for average specs at best.

put it on a big ups and have a generator handy and as long as your line doesn't go down the server never will either, at a fraction of the cost.

Just have to point a domain at it, set a cron up to update the dns.


I was running a portfolio on a raspberry pi, much better solution than having someone host it for me.
 

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Mopar1973Man

Mopar1973Man

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26 minutes ago, Mason The Dev said:

I mean a few hundred will buy you those specs (or better) for your OWN server, then it's just a matter of bandwidth, power etc.

 

Umm... Band width out here is a super slow. 25 Mbit down and mere 2 Mbit up. Not even close to handling. My current server is 3 TB of bandwidth on the backbone. If I move it home I could only hand maybe 10 people at a time.

 

Link Speed: 27,838 / 2,228kbps at $139 a month. (Ziply Fiber - Ex Frontier Communications)

 

26 minutes ago, Mason The Dev said:

put it on a big ups and have a generator handy and as long as your line doesn't go down the server never will either, at a fraction of the cost.

 

My entire house is solar and hydro powered. That is not an issue. But the amount of power outages where the internet is dead out here is more common that you think. I'm WAY OUT. My closest WalMart is a 125 miles drive. 

 

Solar Powered RV - Recreational Vehicle (RV) - Mopar1973Man's Dodge Cummins Forum

 

Where I'm at...

 

 

Edited by Mopar1973Man
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Mason The Dev

Mason The Dev

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I'm WAY OUT. My closest WalMart is a 125 miles drive. 

You remind me of my father, he likes it way out in the boonies too.

That's a fair bit of bandwidth but I guess that's what you get with hosting providers, but how much is actually being used at peak hours? if I can get a hold of the hardware I can always run another internet line in just for a server and run it that way.

Costs about $75 (Freedom dollars) a month for me to have one of those lines here.

If the server is only 4 cores, w/ 8gb of ram on 50gb of storage used I feel like my internet connection could handle that amount of traffic. a 4 tb hard drive isn't all that expensive either, it's a hell of a lot less than 1400 bucks a year.

Any user with the technical know-how should be able to set something like this up.  I don't want to see this website go down either, I like it. I think it's a great resource.

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Mopar1973Man

Mopar1973Man

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Internet and power out here.

 

  • Super slow. I'm running the faster speed available. 2Mbit up going out. Google ranking would drop from slow internet speeds.
  • I've already contacted Ziply Fiber for price breaks or any update info. System out her might be upgrade in about 5 YEARS. 
  • I'm already done a private server here on my Ubuntu Linux box for testing purposes. Again no upload speed 2Mbit...  
  • Every time we have wind storm or snow storms the power could be out for hours to days. (House remains powered up but internet and phones drops) Been solar powered for 25 years now. Down time would be worse. Longest down time was 21 days without power.
  • I'm not near a city or anyone that could provide internet another brand there is only the one company.

 

https://www.speedtest.net/result/10254044452

 

So this leaves me stuck with hosting plan. It's not that I don't know how to do it but I do. I've done the virtual setup many times here and ran a copy of the website locally for test purposes. Just no bandwidth out here period. No option currently above 2 Mbit  (2,000 kbits) upload speeds. 

 

As for hosting I'm getting out of the EIG umbrella. Since the COVID-19 hit EIG that owns several hosting company started switch all the tech support to the Philippines. I lost all US support. Still paying $1,188 for the current server. Which already stopped updating no longer allowing either OS updates or cPanel.  

Edited by Mopar1973Man
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Mason The Dev

Mason The Dev

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5 minutes ago, Mopar1973Man said:

So this leaves me stuck with hosting plan


What I'm saying is find a user you trust, in good locale, and have them host the server for you. Have the site pay the bills for it or whatever.

Then you remove the the need for the larger hosting company, The person just needs to be setup in a way downtime is unlikely.

Wish I had the wicked solar setup! Power isn't cheap here.

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