Is there a way to donate money to the forum?

[Payne]

The domain registration is $10 per domain per year (and I have I think 3 or 4 Atom-related domains that point here). Web hosting is currently $7 a month ($84/year). However, my biggest complaint is the current speed of the site, and that's a direct factor of the cheap web hosting. So I'd really like to upgrade to the $20/month solution at our current provider, and if that's still not fast enough maybe look at the $50/month solution at URLJet.com (they specialize in VBulletin hosting). I also pay $5/month to CloudFlare, which acts kind of like a CDN to cache static web resources.

On the software side, the VBulletin version 4 "forum-only" license was $380 (just paid one time), but I'd really like to be able to upgrade to the full CMS version for an additional $165. That would allow us to host technical documentation here more easily. And when VBulletin 5 comes out, it will be a few hundred dollars to upgrade to the new version. There's also a $95 package I'm eyeing called DTO Garage Plus, which gives forum members custom "garages" where they can post their cars, detailed mods, and lots more. A few car forums use it, and it's very well received. I'd also like to buy vbSEO, which helps better optimize VBulletin sites for the search engines, which is $195. Most of those packages provide minor upgrades for free, but charge some percentage of the full purchase price for major upgrades.

So, the answer to your question is closer to the $1000/year mark than either the $100 or $10,000/year mark. But again, I hope nobody feels any pressure or obligation from me. Any amount, small or large, will be appreciated and put to good use.

So if there are ~20 active users here, and we all chip in $50, we'll cover costs. Thanks again for setting this up Steve.

Jason

[Norm]

If $50 is the going rate I was a cheapskate at $20 and will need to ante up more. I just did $20 as that is what I pay at some other forums. They are all over the place though

[MadMaxAtom]

I do believe you guys are missing the spirit of the whole thing...

There are no obligations on this site..and I like that.

I only suggested a "donate" button because this site helped me financially,and I had a desire to share my good fortune. Seemed like a good idea to help out in a simple way.

I know it takes time and money to run things,and money is easier to find than time...

...and if we do not support something...it disappears.

Sure beats giving money to the government by a shitload!!

[Steve]

There are no obligations on this site..and I like that.

+1

There's a really funny quote from the Christmas Party episode of the U.S. version of "The Office" where Michael Scott says:

Presents are the best way to show someone how much you care. It is like this tangible thing that you can point to and say "Hey man, I love you this many dollars-worth."

But that's not the case here.