Glip the Gnome
12-20-03, 02:00 PM
Hey all,
The time has come for The Safehouse to once again renew its gold subscription with Ezboard. Our 6-month bandwidth bill this time around is $2000. You may have noticed though, that we have not yet activated the community chest – and that is for a reason.
The Safehouse Staff have always been staunch supporters of Ezboard, and we remain so still, but we have also always told you that if we found a cheaper way to host our forums, we’d let you know about it. Well, we’ve found a cheaper way – a significantly cheaper way.
During the past 6 months, Aidden bought a big shiny new server to prepare for when the Safehouse will soon begin to offer hosting plans. The monthly bill for it is $249, and we’ve basically got all the bandwidth we could ever need.
$249/month comes out to $1494/6months – a full 500 dollars cheaper than our current Ezboard cost. Not to mention we’re already paying for it anyway (and by we I mean Aidden – we all owe him a very big thank you) and some of that cost will be offset by what subscriptions to the Safehouse hosting packages there are which will in turn, make us rely less on your donations to keep going.
We’ve already created test forums on the website that, while not EzBoard software is nearly identical to our current look and we will be able to import every current thread on the Safehouse to the new forums without too much trouble.
The Pro’s of leaving Ezboard:
- Lower costs
- The Safehouse becomes self-sufficient
- We will have a higher degree of customization available on the forums
- We will not have the 20 page limit for old threads
- There will never be any form of non-Safehouse advertisement on our forums
The Con’s of leaving Ezboard:
- You will have to recreate your account on the new forums – which means you will lose your post count
- We will not have access to Ezboard’s help forums and tech support anymore.
As of right now, no concrete decision has been made – and one will not be made until you guys have all had the chance to voice your opinion on the matter
There’s one other thing I want to be very clear on as well – While we remain supporters of the EZboard network, they have recently made some changes in their business model with regards to advertising and support that we feel is in direct conflict with the direction of the Safehouse. EZboard has always been accommodating to us and delivered on the majority of the request we have asked of them, in short they've been an absolute dream to work with for the past 5 years. With the planned changes to the Safehouse though, the time may have come to simply move on.
And dont feel we're just asking for you vote and thats it, please feel free to bring up and discuss any issues you may have.
Please voice your opinion and vote in THIS thread
-The Safehouse Staff
The time has come for The Safehouse to once again renew its gold subscription with Ezboard. Our 6-month bandwidth bill this time around is $2000. You may have noticed though, that we have not yet activated the community chest – and that is for a reason.
The Safehouse Staff have always been staunch supporters of Ezboard, and we remain so still, but we have also always told you that if we found a cheaper way to host our forums, we’d let you know about it. Well, we’ve found a cheaper way – a significantly cheaper way.
During the past 6 months, Aidden bought a big shiny new server to prepare for when the Safehouse will soon begin to offer hosting plans. The monthly bill for it is $249, and we’ve basically got all the bandwidth we could ever need.
$249/month comes out to $1494/6months – a full 500 dollars cheaper than our current Ezboard cost. Not to mention we’re already paying for it anyway (and by we I mean Aidden – we all owe him a very big thank you) and some of that cost will be offset by what subscriptions to the Safehouse hosting packages there are which will in turn, make us rely less on your donations to keep going.
We’ve already created test forums on the website that, while not EzBoard software is nearly identical to our current look and we will be able to import every current thread on the Safehouse to the new forums without too much trouble.
The Pro’s of leaving Ezboard:
- Lower costs
- The Safehouse becomes self-sufficient
- We will have a higher degree of customization available on the forums
- We will not have the 20 page limit for old threads
- There will never be any form of non-Safehouse advertisement on our forums
The Con’s of leaving Ezboard:
- You will have to recreate your account on the new forums – which means you will lose your post count
- We will not have access to Ezboard’s help forums and tech support anymore.
As of right now, no concrete decision has been made – and one will not be made until you guys have all had the chance to voice your opinion on the matter
There’s one other thing I want to be very clear on as well – While we remain supporters of the EZboard network, they have recently made some changes in their business model with regards to advertising and support that we feel is in direct conflict with the direction of the Safehouse. EZboard has always been accommodating to us and delivered on the majority of the request we have asked of them, in short they've been an absolute dream to work with for the past 5 years. With the planned changes to the Safehouse though, the time may have come to simply move on.
And dont feel we're just asking for you vote and thats it, please feel free to bring up and discuss any issues you may have.
Please voice your opinion and vote in THIS thread
-The Safehouse Staff