Zoom Meeting / Dot.org Funding

[stainesranger]

Sorry I’ve not had a chance to write up notes from the meeting until now, it’s been a crazy couple of weeks at work.

Broadly speaking, the thing that came across from all the attendees was that this was a message board they valued for various reasons (format, history, quality of posts etc) and so everyone is keen to keep things going, if possible.

To update on the finances:

Our current balance is £400, I.e. enough to cover the next 5 months. That’s thanks to generous donations from UxbridgeR & WAHoop to add to the remainder of the money donated anonymously.

Following the Zoom meeting we’ve received a further 6 pledges, which is great news. Apologies for not having sent round the dot.org bank details before now. I have now either DM’d you or sent you an email. If I’ve missed anyone off, or if you’d like to make a contribution, please do let me know either on here or email me at qprdotorg2022@gmail.com

I’ll try to keep these financial updates as brief and infrequent as possible, as I know they’re not especially riveting. That said, I’m going to err on the side of keeping everyone informed even if it’s occasionally too much information! I hope that’s ok.

There were a few suggestions from the meeting that didn’t relate to the finances of the message board, so I don’t propose taking any action on them but thought I’d post here just as a record of what was discussed:

1. We could consider responding to any message board threads on other sites about the dot.org closing down, I.e. to let people know that it isn’t.
2. We could potentially promote the dot.org on social media groups to get a few more posters involved.
3. We could reach out to the club to see if they might promote the message board.

For balance, it’s worth noting that not everyone thought all of the PR suggestions above were a good idea, on the basis that this has been a a relatively civil place to have a chat about QPR over the years and an influx of posters from social media might upset the apple cart.

Thanks to everyone for showing an interest in supporting the message board!

[deadendjob]

Love your work. Let's keep this thing ticking along

[stainesranger]

Now the season is underway I just wanted to send a quick update. Our current balance is £420 (enough for 5 more months), thanks to the generous donations we’ve already gathered and new ones from Drew, Acton Arthur, Andy N19 and the admin for the ‘Love the Rs Hate Racism’ twitter account (sorry I don’t yet know his user name on here).

Thanks everyone for the fantastic generosity.

[Wegerle]

Now the season is underway I just wanted to send a quick update. Our current balance is £420 (enough for 5 more months), thanks to the generous donations we’ve already gathered and new ones from Drew, Acton Arthur, Andy N19 and the admin for the ‘Love the Rs Hate Racism’ twitter account (sorry I don’t yet know his user name on here).

Thanks everyone for the fantastic generosity.

Is anyone looking into the hosting fees? For a platform of this size and the amount of visitors it has I really think a much better deal can be found.
Then you could start thinking about a kind of subscription fee that could be affordable for all and not be so heavily dependent on generous donations not knowing what your financial situation will be in a few months.

To give you an idea, I'm paying 7 pounds (not 25) a year for domain registration and 8 pounds (not 80) hosting for my site which has 500 visitors per day and many pages.. For those 8 pounds a month I'm getting unlimited SSD storage, unlimited premium data traffic, 12 core CPU, 8GB RAM, premium SLA support and active DDos security. Even the biggest,most extreme hosting package is only 17 pounds per month to host in England.
The hosting company is Vimexx in Holland and they also host in England (https://www.vimexx.nl/webhosting-engeland) although there will be similair hosting companies in England with the same sort of deals. Really worth looking in to I think with the future in mind.

[Lee Gib]

1. We could consider responding to any message board threads on other sites about the dot.org closing down, I.e. to let people know that it isn’t.
2. We could potentially promote the dot.org on social media groups to get a few more posters involved.
3. We could reach out to the club to see if they might promote the message board.

For balance, it’s worth noting that not everyone thought all of the PR suggestions above were a good idea, on the basis that this has been a a relatively civil place to have a chat about QPR over the years and an influx of posters from social media might upset the apple cart.

I think this is a little bit sort sighted if I'm honest. We currently have just under 5k board members, the last member joining on 26th of January and that person was last active on the 2nd of February. This isn't sustainable and unless we get more engagement we're only going to see decline and we'll all end up paying for a morgue.

[deadendjob]

1. We could consider responding to any message board threads on other sites about the dot.org closing down, I.e. to let people know that it isn’t.
2. We could potentially promote the dot.org on social media groups to get a few more posters involved.
3. We could reach out to the club to see if they might promote the message board.

For balance, it’s worth noting that not everyone thought all of the PR suggestions above were a good idea, on the basis that this has been a a relatively civil place to have a chat about QPR over the years and an influx of posters from social media might upset the apple cart.

I think this is a little bit sort sighted if I'm honest. We currently have just under 5k board members, the last member joining on 26th of January and that person was last active on the 2nd of February. This isn't sustainable and unless we get more engagement we're only going to see decline and we'll all end up paying for a morgue.

Super constructive

[stainesranger]

Thanks for the info about hosting costs, Wegerle.

Some people volunteered to help with techie stuff, so I’ll ask Drew where we got to with that and find out its feasible to bring costs down through changing provider.

Regarding marketing the site to new users- it may or may not be a good idea, but it’s definitely beyond my remit!

[stainesranger]

Apologies for the lack of an update until now- it’s been a busy time with work and Xmas etc.

The donations we pulled together last year have now just about run out I’m afraid. Thank you to everyone who donated last time.

I’ve just put in another £80 for next month and we had £55.21 left over from before, which means we now have a balance of £135.21.

I haven’t yet heard back from DG about how we’d go about changing the hosting provider. Once I do, we can look at cheaper options. If anyone has any specific suggestions, then please let me know and we can look at them. You can send to me at qprdotorg2022@gmail.com or post them here, whatever is easiest.

In the meantime, if we want to keep the site going until the end of the season we’ll need to rustle up another three months’ money which is £185 (I.e £240 minus the £55 we had left over).

Hope that all makes sense.

[UxbridgeR]

Thanks for the update, Sam.

I must admit that it's starting to feel as if Lee's comments above were pretty on the nose. The original announcement that this board was closing resulted in another exodus of posters, and although some do still visit, by and large they seem to have adopted LFW as their default option.

That said, I will send you another donation to help keep it going in the short-term.

[Nw6ranger]

Sent ya mail

[stainesranger]

Thanks very much to everyone who’s responded… I’ll send the bank details across on email.

The amount pledged should get us through to the end of the season and then I’ll arrange another zoom for anyone interested and we can make a plan for next steps.

[StevenageRanger]

I am going to be honest here! I do post here (but not regular) however the volume of content/discussion on LFW is far greater than here and due to that I do spend most of my time there.

This was the first QPR board I joined but also starting to think what Lee has said may be the case.

Send me some details and I am happy to chuck a tenner in the kitty to keep it moving for a while.

[bigbobb]

Send me some details and I am happy to chuck a tenner in the kitty to keep it moving for a while

me too

[WA Hoop]

Likewise

[Nw6ranger]

Lfw is busy but it's just not my cup of tea. If this place sinks I will just read up on Wls or the official site.