Author Topic: Donation Pooling - Community Drive (Read 1097 times)

orth · « **on:** October 05, 2008, 05:59:00 pm »

Alright as you may noticed there's a thermometer for donations on the front page and the Donate page now has a report of the last donors. This is all maintained through a site who operates this sort of thing called Donations Tracker.

What I've tried to do is set this system up so I don't have to do anything. Yes, programmers are lazy. As much as I love Chongo, I don't want him nagging me to get some details on things when I'm busy.

Secondly, I don't have access to Leanthar's PayPal account nor do I want it. Never have, hopefully never will. When dealing with private financial affairs the last thing I want is communication of passwords from my system risking others.

What this system does, and it must be used for your donation to be tracked, is collect payment information from PayPal and form it into a report for me. THEY DO NOT COLLECT CREDIT CARD INFORMATION. They basically collect your username (or you can remain anonymous) and then they generate a neat image or report of the campaign's current numbers when PayPal reports back to them whether you did indeed go all the way through with a payment and for how much.

The report you now see on the Donate page will indicate a surplus for the month, so if you exceed the payments I will roll it forward. Please try to keep it to shorter periods for recurring payments. I don't want people paying for 6 months and us not being here in 6 months for whatever reason, try to keep everything to 3 months or less. You will also be able to account for it easily.

I thank you all for your exuberance, and I hope the tracker system will help you determine where you stand. I know its a bit askew for this month, but I expect when it resets next month, things will start getting into a nice system. We will work through any issues as they arise.

Cheers,
orth

Chongo · « **Reply #1 on:** October 05, 2008, 06:10:50 pm »

Quote from: orth

As much as I love Chongo, I don't want him nagging me to get some details on things when I'm busy.
orth

Humbug.

Quote from: orth

The report you now see on the Donate page will indicate a surplus for the month, so if you exceed the payments I will roll it forward.

This is great bud, I think it's going to really going to help on the donations.

Serissa · « **Reply #2 on:** October 05, 2008, 06:20:55 pm »

If we've been donating thru PayPal, is there a place now to put our username? How do you do it?

orth · « **Reply #3 on:** October 05, 2008, 06:25:41 pm »

All previous donations were aggregated for the month and only new ones will start to be reported on the Donate page. If you have a recurring payment set up, then I don't think this tracker works for such a thing, so if you wish to make sure you are recorded, you would have to cancel your current PayPal recurring transaction and manually use this one once a month. Sorry about that, but hopefully the thermometer will be a reminder to help out that month if you haven't yet.

Does that answer your question?

jrizz · « **Reply #4 on:** October 05, 2008, 06:36:29 pm »

Thanks Orth this is great.

Chongo · « **Reply #5 on:** October 05, 2008, 06:51:43 pm »

Folks, this is our chance to drive the server forward to the release date of the MMO. It rids us of uncertainty and should be a huge motivation booster to control the server's fate.

Right now we have 386 USD commited for this month.

With advance donations, we should reach 521 USD this month.

Let's show that we can come through so that there's no question that we can drive this server forward.

After this month, we can see where we stand and start talking about donation numbers for folks who are spread a bit thin, or perhaps speak with Orth about the notion of having a quest server again.

If anyone needs to change their monthly commitments and don't want to do it publically, PM me and I'll alter that number in blue above. Additionally, post up if you want to join in on the monthly commitments, or PM me if you want to be anonymous.

The important thing is being reliable and honest about your donations so that we can effectively forecast.

orth · « **Reply #6 on:** October 05, 2008, 07:31:39 pm »

I just realized I've not come clear nor had it even occured to me about your current situation for costs, Chongo just reminded me of it when he mentioned the luxury of Quest. We are currently only using just the 1 server for the whole setup. This might change and we'll move the db server to one of our linux ones if the community starts reporting large issues during high traffic. Everything to do with the NWN end of the game is only on the one server aside from the forums and LORE which serve Layonara in means beyond the video game entity.

The cost to keep the game world up financially is only $145 ($110 for the server and $35 for the Windows 2k3 license), and since I'm spelling it out completely, that's CDN. With that said it cost me $50 for setup, so if you want to help with that, then we'll call it just about even for the month. If the community seriously wants to consider the added windows server for quest, we would do better to put central on a new (and not as powerful) server and run quest on west. We could probably also get a better deal for less of a machine, but I can't guarantee either the price or my availability to get another machine set up.

It honestly didn't even dawn on me over the past couple days, that I am not using any of the other servers like I thought I might need to, so I apologize for mistakenly setting up the donation amount at that for $245 this month, I hope my adjustment fixed it.

Thank you.
orth

Chongo · « **Reply #7 on:** October 05, 2008, 09:48:31 pm »

What's the price estimate on a smaller server for central?

orth · « **Reply #8 on:** October 05, 2008, 10:01:39 pm »

Not a significant difference, save about $20-30 a month. And since its another Windows license, the price would be about $120ish.

ShiffDrgnhrt · « **Reply #9 on:** October 05, 2008, 10:05:42 pm »

Could you explain the whole "license" thing? Why would you need "another" license for windows?

Stephen_Zuckerman · « **Reply #10 on:** October 05, 2008, 10:09:15 pm »

Quote from: ShiffDrgnhrt

Could you explain the whole "license" thing? Why would you need "another" license for windows?

As I understand it, you have to have a license for each computer you're using commercially.

Lynn1020 · « **Reply #11 on:** October 05, 2008, 10:20:59 pm »

Great idea!!!

orth · « **Reply #12 on:** October 05, 2008, 11:07:01 pm »

Quote from: ShiffDrgnhrt

Could you explain the whole "license" thing? Why would you need "another" license for windows?

If we were to get another server to run Central it has to be Windows, we can't run the Linux version of the nwn server due to some custom libraries we use that are Windows only. Since its another machine altogether, we have to pay for another license.

Chazzler · « **Reply #13 on:** October 06, 2008, 12:15:36 am »

Neat-o! The only thing that strook me from this thread is that the DonationTracker.com -page seems to be down for the current moment.

But in other words... Neat-o! Thank you very much Orth for setting this thing up for us.

EdTheKet · « **Reply #14 on:** October 06, 2008, 02:27:44 am »

Are existing monthly donation schedules automaticaly captured by this neat tracker?

Hellblazer · « **Reply #15 on:** October 06, 2008, 11:00:48 am »

Hum.. i dont seem to se the thermometer myself...

ShiffDrgnhrt · « **Reply #16 on:** October 06, 2008, 11:02:24 am »

Quote from: EdTheKet

Are existing monthly donation schedules automaticaly captured by this neat tracker?

Quote from: orth

All previous donations were aggregated for the month and only new ones will start to be reported on the Donate page. If you have a recurring payment set up, then I don't think this tracker works for such a thing, so if you wish to make sure you are recorded, you would have to cancel your current PayPal recurring transaction and manually use this one once a month. Sorry about that, but hopefully the thermometer will be a reminder to help out that month if you haven't yet.

Does that answer your question?

Well, does it?

Chazzler · « **Reply #17 on:** October 06, 2008, 11:39:01 am »

Quote from: Hellblazer

Hum.. i dont seem to se the thermometer myself...

Must be because http://www.donationstracker.com is down, so the picture is unavailable.

EdTheKet · « **Reply #18 on:** October 07, 2008, 02:11:07 am »

Quote from: ShiffDrgnhrt

Well, does it?

Oh right missed that one. That'd mean I need to cancel several...

Chazzler · « **Reply #19 on:** October 09, 2008, 07:10:30 am »

http://www.donationstracker.com is still down, for days on end now... Perhaps it would be suitable to check out some of those other donation tracker sites for paypal that can be googled out with "donation tracker"?

Edit: I sent a message to the service provider via their homepage about the matter. I hope they will fix it soon

Edit of an edit: Seems like that site is the only one, at least by the googling I did with the aforementioned prefix.