Payment for domain

Maybe some of you have recognized it that zeldix.net was only reachable under zeldix.forumotion.com for 2 days. This is because we have to pay for keeping that zeldix.net domain name (it was each year now it is each month).

We admins/mods and some members do a lot work eating our free-time to maintain this site - as a hobby, no one of us is gettting paid.

To keep this site running under the usual address qwerty now paid this amount, but I am a bit concerned to have this stuck to him. I think qwerty will post the exact amount he pays soon.

Then, there are other pages (e.g., romhacking) that made some crowd-funding and things started getting weird (like everywhere where money is involved). Which we want to avoid.

So I decided to let the fans of this page vote what to do with this poll.

Edit:
After the poll decision is for ground funding, here is the address to donate:
https://www.patreon.com/zeldix

Starting this year, forumotion added the requirement of moving to a paid subscription in order to even be allowed to use a custom domain, in addition to the charge for purchasing that domain, and then the SSL cert on top of that.  The current cost breakdown is roughly:

$5.50/month for the lowest subscription that allows custom domains
$15/year for the domain name
$10?/year for the SSL cert (I can't look it up at the moment because the domain renewal is still processing)
$1/month to disable ads on the site ($2 to disable them for non-members as well)

If we did open it up to crowd funding, we would likely exceed this amount with even 2 or 3 people donating, so if we did go that route, there are a couple of additional things we could put that money toward, such as increasing our storage allotment, which would allow us to enable post attachments.

The ads never bothered me so i can care less if they are up or not, but i would contribute a little to help because i like this website and i wouldn't want one person to have to pay every month for the rest of us to enjoy, even if it is not a big amount each month, if a few of us just contributed even just ten bucks a year, then we can surely cover the costs to keep the website up and then that is not $80 a year qwertmodo will feel pressured to pay.

@Qwertymodo Let us know where to contribute when a decision is made. I call this place home as well.

Oh, that's almost $100 per year. Too much to stem it alone qwerty and I'd say too much for crowd funding. May work for a while but not for long.
Did they become greedy at forumotion? It was not a monthly payment in that height last year.

I'd say we move to forumotion.zeldix.com (voted for this now seeing the amount), people get used to it and maybe make crowd funding for ssl certificate or other useful stuff, like storage or whatever they offer?

The way forumotion works, we can't just provide our own domain name or SSL cert. Otherwise I would have just done that last year when we went through it. There also isn't any option to export the site content and migrate somewhere else. As a sysadmin in my day job, I'm not ok with the idea of running the site without HTTPS, and HTTPS requires SSL, which in turn requires a domain (I don't *think* forumotion will allow using a forumotion.com cert on our site, but I'm not 100% certain on that... it's pretty unlikely though).

Would a pay pal donation for the site domain work? I was going to suggest Patreon, but I do not know if they take a cut of the money at all for using it.

Pretty much any option we choose will take a cut, just as a cost of doing business. If I do end up taking donations, I'll look into different options, including Patreon and PayPal direct links.

qwertymodo wrote:Pretty much any option we choose will take a cut, just as a cost of doing business.  If I do end up taking donations, I'll look into different options, including Patreon and PayPal direct links.

I had forgot that part. That's the bummer of it. Whatever option you pick qwertymodo is find by me.:-) I just would like to say as long you could state it for the site domain only. I only brought it up because of what @Conn had said about the hacks. I enjoy this place a lot and I would hate for it do go down because of a misunderstanding.

I'd have no problem with a transparent PayPal option. Hell, I'd pay for a full year if you want.

Looks like it's leaning toward people being in support of crowd funding. I'd probably rather go with Patreon over direct PayPal donations. Yes they take a 5% cut, but direct donations would be harder to keep track of. The transparency aspect would be easier with Patreon.

Cool, I am very happy qwertymodo with your choice. Also I do not know if any one had ever did this but, Thank You for the payments that you had covered so far. :-)

Patreon offers a perk system to reward subscribers with "exclusive benefits," now I can't fathom what a Zeldix crowd-sourced committee could all agree on, but it's still worth considering. Twitch streamers turn subscription emote perks into careers, and business grads turn free T shirts into startup companies, both without anyone being taken advantage of to do it. Could we not do the same just to keep the lights on?

If this small-but-tight community takes itself seriously, I'm sure right now it's possible to come up with a plan so we don't have to worry about money no more, (that's good! One less thing...) For instance, it's just a fact that it's easier for people to contribute more--in the end--if they do it through periodic payments, similarly to how we can afford cell phones, cars, and houses.

I only started romhacking alttp last December and so what I'm suggesting is coming from new eyes and observations, but I love the fact Conn laid it all out and brought it to a vote. Basically saying it's a matter that concerns all, but also checking that other people care, and fortunately the response was immediate and solidly positive.

You guys are in news articles for being an amazing supportive community and, other than a few tepid responses to some oddly demanding or excitable newbies, I've repeatedly watched that claim get verified again and again.

No need to become greedy pigs trying to capitalize on this hobby, but there's no reason someone couldn't earn something useless that you couldn't otherwise get without contributing. And if everyone (god help us) could settle on a debate for perks, perhaps they could keep everything transparent, be fun for subscribers, and go towards goals of the community as a whole...

I just finished working 12-16 hour night shifts for a few weeks in a row, so this has kind of been put on the back burner, but since nobody seems strongly opposed to the idea, I've set up a Patreon account separate from my own personal one, and once I figure out how to set up the payout account, I'll post a link here. Not sure what we can do in terms of rewards, but at the very least we can probably set up custom ranks here and a role on the Discord server for supporters. If anybody else has any ideas, I'm definitely open to suggestions on that front.

Donation ranks are a good idea, you could give ranks with green/blue/red rupee for 10,50, 100$ or whatever.
Question is what to do if the donator has already a title like pcm artist. I don't think we can give 2 ranks, or do it like seph did and combined some ranks, like I have a god+admin title

I do like the custom ranks, I think that would work out great. I also like the zeldix logo on the site. If I could suggest something maybe that could be a sticker for say the $5 rank. I understand the tri force would be left out because of legal issues but the rest would still look cool. Just an Idea of course:)

Along with donating myself, I'd also be happy to include a list of Patreon subscribers in the credits of my romhack -whenever it's finished. Mines way off, but creators could perhaps offer to cameo the avatar of an upper-tier subscriber in their game as part of a prize drawing or something...

The streamers are itching for the next aLttP romhack so, after the first to include mention of supporters, it shouldn't be hard to maintain a probably small but steady base of contributors larger than the 13 people who have voted on this topic so far.

Speaking of which, do you guys ever light up a romhack that's in production and help it get out of development? I'd love to see Scawful's game go through such a phase for example. How educational would it be to study the adepts and experts help guide a project from a WIP through completion? The texts and online sources get so tedious, it'd be wonderful to see live work on a hack. = )