Hey guys... first off... I work 3 jobs not to keep my family out of the dumps, but to maintain my life style ;-) and it's not like they're big jobs either (other than my main one)... so it's not like running this forum is taking the food from my kids mouths. lol My wife is the Admin Manager at Lowes (12 hr days 5 days a week) so she brings in good money too...
I've been asked a few times to put up a donation button and I've yet to do it. Mainly because I don't want to be one of those "give me money because I made a decision to do something" people lol It's not like you all said "hey Andrew!! PAH-LEASE buy the forums and run them for us!!!" It was a decision I made and I'm happy to do it.
The frustrating part is when I have to explain why the rules are the way they are... and it's not just be trying to control what you do, or become rich etc.
I have some arrangements to buy some extra plants from a few members and that should be happening in the near future to help expand what I carry in store. I recently added media to the store since a member was looking for some... So things are moving, just slowly. That's how it goes when you're as busy as me
I don't have all day to work at flytrapshop so that kinda moves as I have time. although orders do go out super quick.
As a clarification, the "thank you" membership was going to be a "premium membership" Where you would pay for extra benifits (which you now get for the thank you when you buy $10 or more in product) when you donated some money... Mainly I decided to go with those features for the "thank you" membership that way people ordered the plants (even if they really didn't need them but wanted the membership) then the word could spread of the quality and such... We all know there are some big cp stores out there... and even though they cost more, they are "known" so It's hard for me to get out there so far. I think that is more important to helping me long term fund this forum over donations.
Also, I have been offered a few times discounted or free hosting services... I have used some other hosts before (for other things) and the service / speed just didn't make me happy. that's why I pay so much for the hosting of this forum instead of one of the "discount" server places. I know there have been some intermediate problems with the database being unavailable every now and again, and they're working on my server to remedy the problem. (yes, terraforums.com / flytrapshop.com / cpforums.org are on a dedicated Apache server) so again, these are choices I have made to pay more, and provide a better service to everyone here. I can't think of many things online that anger me worse than a slow forum! When I'm doing research on something... I want do do it quick. hehe click a few links on this forum:
http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx?board_id=1&SLanguage=en-us and imagine trying to play on this forum at that speed. UGH!!!
wow- that's long...
Andrew