Obviously all us users are smaller groups that make up the entire whole. In that sense I guess that instead of waiting on some other group to rally themselves up to the plate, maybe we should all gather here and all go in on it together if we want to keep Commie around.

So are there any journal, or leaders of groups (Rp or otherwise) out there who can rally their communities to purchase accounts? I suspect mine will be discussing it with our community shortly.

I like Commie. I want it to stay around, and I'm willing to pay if others will be there to chip in and keep it around with me.

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Thanks!

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I love Commie and don't want to see it die, but I'm just as broke as the owners are.

And I have to say that many people were burned by the folks at GreatestJournal, who claimed to need money for hosting, but just took the cash and used it for other shit. I honestly can't see people forking over cash to an unknown entity. Not that I doubt the good folks at CJ, but none of us users have any proof that our money will actually go to the CJ hosting bill. Claims can be made by anyone, know what I mean, Vern?

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While I can understand your trepidation, those who have been with CJ for awhile know that when we say we'll do something, we do it. That's all I can say.

I had to use a credit card to pay April's hosting bill. Considering that the two of us (myself and nebris are providing this site) are on fixed incomes (we're both disabled), we simply cannot keep doing this.

How will you know? The site will continue to function, that's how you will know. If we fail to raise at least most of the hosting bill by May 1, we will have no choice but to let the server it resides on, go - and we have not got anywhere else we can host this.

That is the bottom line. Period.

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This is very personal for me. I felt profoundly betrayed by what SixApart did with Live Journal and losing CJ would deeply, deeply upset me, so you can be absolutely sure the money will go for hosting.

If we had the fat to spring for the server, hell, y'all wouldn't hear a peep out of us until maybe we needed more server space. We're perfectly happy to break even.

~M~

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Okay, here's the deal: I wear a few hats for a small but growing ISP in Northeast Ohio called Config.com, Inc.. I'm also (thanks to Leesa here) on the CJ admin team. Up until now, I just haven't had the space on our network racks to spare for Leesa to colocate CJ with our web servers, meaning Leesa has had to stay with her Southern California pipe for $169/month... which, if you know anything at all about dedicated servers, you'll know that's a pretty good deal. (This isn't just some quickie Go Daddy 3 page website here, folks. To bring you a site like CommieJournal requires a dedicated server.)

That's changing. My upstream network partner is moving his servers off our rack in Akron, Ohio, giving us (i.e. Config.com) the full rack to play with. But our shit costs money, too: The absolute minimum I can charge CommieJournal to have their servers on our rack is $99 a month. And unfortunately, there's no way in hell I can get that ready by May. The partner still has to vacate the rack; to do that, he's going to have to move data to his other servers in places like Philadelphia.

And then we (Config) need to upgrade our existing servers, install a new server or two, and move our data from our colocated site in Houston. And then, since it would be prohibitively expensive to ship CommieJournal's servers from California to my rack here in Akron (not to mention the fact that to do so would mean taking CJ down for at least a week), I still have to buy a server for CJ, install the OS, install the software, put it online in Akron, and move CJ's data here... all the while praying to Whatever Gods May Be that I have enough time to do so while still doing work for my clients in order to pay my bills.

If I seem a bit short, I apologize... but maybe you can see why I'm getting a little offended at the notion that "the good folks at CJ" are looking to just take the money and run. There are a lot of people working behind the scenes to try to keep CommieJournal up and running. It's like a public television station: You may not like that it resorts to "begging" (pledge drives), but it costs money to keep the equipment running to keep it on the air/web, and the alternative would be advertising.

I know money's tight right now thanks to the reces... er, I mean The Bush Boys' Good Times Economy™. But we really are doing everything we can to maximize your donations. Please help.

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No reason to get snippy, I was merely making a statement. I never implied that CJ wasn't being honest, just stating that GJ was not. That's it.

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Sorry, that should be in quotes: "If I seem a bit short, I apologize..." I wasn't meaning to be snippy, nor was my comment directed specifically at you. I'm simply laying all my cards on the table, as others have.

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Jeff, you have no idea how much I appreciate your efforts!

Just a couple of corrections. We have a dedicated server with an outfit out of Chicago, IL - so right now I don't have a box, per se. We'll have to work something out on that one, and again, I have no clue where the money will come from! Oy how I hate the economy right now!

Hugs,
L

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My big problem with all of this is how broke I've been lately. It's frustrating, when I really want to do my part. I think I can spare the $5 for a paid account this month (I really hope I haven't miscalculated) but for the past two months I couldn't even spare a buck. (Come to think of it, if I'd made it to the last two rehearsals that I missed because of migraines, the $5 I just spent would've had to go for gasoline instead.) I too have felt burned by 6A (and to a lesser extent but more recently, SUP), and want alternatives such as CJ to thrive.

As I said, it's frustrating. If CJ disappears, it'll be even more frustrating.

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I know that feeling! While I'm not comfortable discussing my financial situation on a public forum like this, let me just say that I'm hoping things are much better for me later this summer than they are now. Like you, I'm frustrated that I can't do more right now.

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thrown a little over. hope it helps :) good luck.

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Every dollar helps. Thanx.

~M~

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I purchased a year for my community. But it hasn't shown up on the accumulator on the main page. I hope it went through. I don't want my purchase to have been a waste, considering it hasn't even gotten up and running yet.

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What about advertising? Is that out of the question?

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Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: If that's what the CommieJournal community wants, then it's not out of the question. We could make that happen. But look at what happened with LiveJournal: What started out as a free website went down the road of capitalism, until it got to the point that virtually no one could participate on that site without putting money into the pockets of multinational corporations.

If that's what you want, again, we can make that happen. I get the feeling, though, that people are here precisely because they don't want that to happen. I'm not speaking for the CJ admin team here, and I certainly am not speaking for the larger community. But this is my observation, anyway, for whatever it's worth.

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Yeah, I get that. I don't like advertising, either. But it doesn't seem as if the 5,000+ manned journals on this site are willing to kick down the cash to keep it running, either.

I think LJ got too big for its britches. But it's hard to hear that you can have a free journal at this site and then get told that unless some money comes in for the server, the whole site will be taken down. How is that free? CommieJournal hasn't been free to me. I have purchased a year subscription for my community, but if they don't get enough money by the 1st, then that money went down the tube and I don't have a community anymore.

Seems like ads would be a good solution. I hardly even notice them on other sites anymore. I never click on them, but they keep other sites free. I dunno. That's just me I guess.

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I have ads on my personal website ( http://www.jeffbillman.com ). I'm yet to see a great return from them... admittedly due in part to the fact that I haven't really tried to make money from it yet. Still, one of the advertising companies with whom I affiliate (that will remain nameless, but those in the field will know exactly whom I mean when I say they specialize in audio ads) is struggling right now because their model-- CPM, same as radio-- hasn't yet been proven in this medium to the satisfaction of the big-time ad agencies.

The only model that has been proven on the web is CPC: Cost per click. And you know how you make money on CPC? You weigh your website down with the gaudiest, most annoying banners, popovers, and popunders until your poor visitors have no choice but to click on an ad. Then you'll be rolling in money... for about a year, before the web audience finds other sites that offer the same content you offered. (This would also be why I haven't really tried to make money through advertising yet.)

Advertising is a nice quick fix (if you don't mind sacrificing your website, that is), and it could work long-term, but the medium has to mature a bit first.

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Advertising is utterly and totally out of the question. Once you introduce the marketing paradigm, you're fucked. This joint is called Commie Journal for a reason. =)

~M~

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We made a promise when we started this not to do advertising, and we plan to do all we can to stick to that promise :)

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It won't show up on the ticker - you have to pay through the ticker for it to show up. What I did was add a line below it detailing how much has been raised through our normal "Purchase" and "Donate" channels.

Believe me, your purchase won't be a waste. Folks ARE helping out and every bit helps! The way things are going so far, I have no doubt we'll meet our goal before the next bill.

Yours is especially helpful as it is a subscription which will self-renew. Thanks SO much!

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Asking a likely already asking question, once a paid acct has been purchased, how long does it take to "kick in"?

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As soon as I see the emails, I do the work to convert you :) You should've gotten an email from me to that effect.

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w00t. And it looks like you are very close to the full hosting bill goal. Hurrah for CJ!

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I'd pay for an account but I'm wary of online dealings. (And I'm broke.)

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Just out of curiosity, would you feel better about sending a check or money order to an actual, physical company somewhere in the US? I'm just trying to gauge what objections are out there against donating.

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We DO have an address where you can snail mail money. We don't do personal checks but you can do a money order...I don't advise sending cash through the snail mail but I suppose you could if you really wanted to...

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Question unrelated to hosting/paid accounts, I think. Is there a "friends" button for CJ? On LJ/GJ/IJ, there is code you can input (mainly as a community moderator) to create basically an "easy-add" button so your members can input their username, click it and it automatically friends everyone in the community. I know it used the admin console, but otherwise can't recall the specifics. If GJ weren't so horrible, I would log in and find an old one to show you as an example.

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I haven't heard of such a thing, but I've forwarded the idea to the two new Perl coders on staff, so we'll see what we can do :)

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I actually found an old code of mine from GJ, so I can show whoever an example of what I'm talking about! Unfortunately, I can design websites, but the whole journal site thing confuses the hell out of me, lol! But if someone on staff would like to see what I'm talking about, I've saved the code and can share it... somehow. : )

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Awesome! Leesa told me about your comment. Any chance you can e-mail it to code@commiejournal.com ?

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Sent! Hope it went through correctly. If anything looks wonky, let me know.

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I just sent $50 your way. The last time this came up I bought permanent accounts for myself and my girlfriend. Hopefully this is helping. I really don't want to see CJ go anywhere.

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Yer a doll.

xoxox
~M~

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All I can say is WOW and THANK YOU! You're great!

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i should be spending you about $60 sometime tomorrow but that still isn't the full $169. if you got to $131 or something, would you be able to find a way to provide the last $30?

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make that $70 tomorrow :-[

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Wow, thanks!

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I didn't see your contribution...

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Hey superbad, what's up? We still haven't seen anything...

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actually, and i'm so sorry about this, my paypal account was being weird because of the lack of confirming the bank account or something like that! i'll be sure to donate for next month though, no doubt about it.

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Just out of curiosity, should we all be looking to transfer our stuff to another server or is CJ not going anywhere?

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I was just going to make an announcement addressing that...we have close to enough to cover the hosting, so we're not going anywhere :)

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I've really been thinking about this, and I've got some ideas on how to make hosting work out. I really want this to work out, but more than anything, I wanted to discuss some suggestions with you. I wonder if you might be open to discussing it?

Perhaps you can email me at relamon@hotmail.com, and we'll see what we can work out?

PS. I get a lot of spam these days, so if you could just put "shamangirl from CommieJournal" (or something of the like), I'll be able to tell it's not spam and get back to you using my regular email address?

Thanks.

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