Is there a way to donate money to the forum?

**MadMaxAtom** · March 5, 2012, 06:25 AM

I don't see any way to donate money to help with the financial support of the forum. Maybe a "donate" button should be added?

**Steve** · March 8, 2012, 09:45 AM

Hey, Max. A very thoughtful idea. I'll figure out a way to put a PayPal link.

**MadMaxAtom** · March 8, 2012, 10:00 AM

Perfect!

**ksrimounchanh** · March 13, 2012, 07:08 PM

I agree.. not only a great place to hang out and great people, but also money saving...

Thanks to this awesome site!..

**MadMaxAtom** · March 13, 2012, 08:43 PM

Better hurry up with that button while I still have money..racing season is starting...

**Steve** · March 14, 2012, 10:55 AM

Added!

http://arielatomchat.com/forums/show...w-Added?p=8464

Thank you for the generous idea. I hope nobody feels obligated to donate, but any who do so are truly appreciated.

**MadMaxAtom** · March 14, 2012, 12:13 PM

10Q!! ..and it works...

**Payne** · March 14, 2012, 04:36 PM

Any idea what it takes to run this site in a year? I'd like to have a rough idea of cost to then gauge an appropriate donation.

Are we talking around $100, $1000, or $10,000?

**Steve** · March 14, 2012, 09:49 PM

Originally Posted by Payne

Any idea what it takes to run this site in a year? I'd like to have a rough idea of cost to then gauge an appropriate donation.

Are we talking around $100, $1000, or $10,000?

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.