Site Funding

[taylortbb]

Whoah, I rarely visit the front page, and I just noticed that too - that's a big red flag.

Also +1 on the fundraising goal thingie - I just make a donation every now and then but have no idea how much I'm helping.  I don't know if it costs $50 or $1000 a month to operate...

Mybb doesn't have any plugins for an ongoing goal. So it would just have to be updated manually.  Which I'm happy to do, I just worry about what happens when it doesn't get updated for a couple weeks.  Is that an issue, do you guys think?

Also, do I just keep the goal at the bare minimum for operating costs?  I mean I'd like to eventually raise more so that a) there's a buffer if we're ever short and b) so things could eventually be upgraded (aka server, software, etc)

Thoughts?

I think some info on what the costs are would go a long way to helping people size donations. I've always donated $10 in the past as that's been the suggestion, but I'd happily donate $20 or more if it was clear that's what the site costs. I don't think you need to go crazy with audited financial statements or anything like that, but something saying:

• Raised: $200 this year
  
• Target: $500 this year
  
• Costs:
  
• Hosting $240
  
• Software $200
  
• Reserve $60
  

If I saw that I'd probably donate $50 rather than $10, but right now I just have no idea how close you are to covering costs or what the costs are, so I end up donating the default amount. The target doesn't have to be bare minimum operating costs, I'd just want to know what it is and why. And if you said hosting costs were $50/month or something, there's lots of technical people here that could help you move to something lower cost, rather than leaving you to get ripped off by a bad hosting company.