Milovana.com

The following is a message from our host regarding recent issues. (This is relating to the main website, not chat etc.)

We are very sorry for all the inconvenience caused by the large amount of packet loss and downtime over the past few weeks.
Our network provider has failed to resolve the issues and has not even yet given a correct explanation of the issues.
While they have promised uptime guarantees and a redundant setup it is apparent that this is completely not the case.

We've already been working on a new datacenter and network for quite some months and are in the finishing stages.
They have given us hard guarantees and have shown proof of their network resilience and redundancy.

The message goes on to say that we have the choice to switch manually (which isn't trivial for a site our size) or wait until they physically move our server. I'm still weighing our options and I'll try to keep you guys updated. However until things settle down there is a chance of unforeseen downtime as well.

Thanks as always for your patience. We're trying to make the best of a limited budget, so we appreciate your guys' support in these efforts.

This may be a stupid question, but when you say "limited budget"...can we donate to the operating budget? If so, how? I think this site is worth supporting with cash!

The downtime hasn't been too bad; and I know from experience manually moving a website to a new server is very painful.

Not that I have much standing; but I would encourage you to wait until they do it for you; for the sake of your sanity! ;)

thank you for the update *Smile*

flpanther wrote:This may be a stupid question, but when you say "limited budget"...can we donate to the operating budget? If so, how? I think this site is worth supporting with cash!

Sorry for the late reply, your post slipped past my radar.

First off, thanks for offering to help. To answer your question, no, we do not accept donations. Milovana is a company, it may be a badly run, little crummy company, but it doesn't seem right for a for-profit company to take donations. My position is that we'll go as far as we can go the way we are doing now and if we do hit a wall with our current model, we'll reevaluate.

seraph0x wrote:

flpanther wrote:This may be a stupid question, but when you say "limited budget"...can we donate to the operating budget? If so, how? I think this site is worth supporting with cash!

Sorry for the late reply, your post slipped past my radar.

First off, thanks for offering to help. To answer your question, no, we do not accept donations. Milovana is a company, it may be a badly run, little crummy company, but it doesn't seem right for a for-profit company to take donations. My position is that we'll go as far as we can go the way we are doing now and if we do hit a wall with our current model, we'll reevaluate.

We often have forum posts which refer to pay sites.
Films Dommes etc.
This is the latest

Could we raise some revenue from these and have an Advertising section in Product & Site revues that caters for these types of posts.

Thus keeping the forum free of this but available to those who wish it.
And allowing our members to give their opinions as well.

If the revenue collection is a problem,
Perhaps have this section any way to stop interference in the main forum threads.

les wrote:

seraph0x wrote:

flpanther wrote:This may be a stupid question, but when you say "limited budget"...can we donate to the operating budget? If so, how? I think this site is worth supporting with cash!

Sorry for the late reply, your post slipped past my radar.

First off, thanks for offering to help. To answer your question, no, we do not accept donations. Milovana is a company, it may be a badly run, little crummy company, but it doesn't seem right for a for-profit company to take donations. My position is that we'll go as far as we can go the way we are doing now and if we do hit a wall with our current model, we'll reevaluate.

We often have forum posts which refer to pay sites.
Films Dommes etc.
This is the latest

Could we raise some revenue from these and have an Advertising section in Product & Site revues that caters for these types of posts.

Thus keeping the forum free of this but available to those who wish it.
And allowing our members to give their opinions as well.

If the revenue collection is a problem,
Perhaps have this section any way to stop interference in the main forum threads.

Great idea Les *smiles*

On the subject of raising funds for the site, a few other forums I visit have a voluntary paid membership system by where you can pay like £10 a year and you become a supporter rather than a member, they get to have avatars, more inbox space etc. might be an idea for this place?