This sort of took off a lot faster than I thought it would! It's quite a surprise, to say the least. I'll be responding to it in a matter of days with some thanks and a few ideas of ways to give back. I just wanted to say that the new hosting plan is just one expense of many. The myArmoury.com project is an expensive one. 2005 was a particularly expensive year. Each month brought additional charges I hadn't expected to cover. Some months were in the several hundred dollar range out of my own pocket alone. This doesn't even consider the costs out of the team member's hands with shipping charges, research costs, etc. I'm hoping this coming year will be less, but I'm not sure how that can be. I wasn't really prepared for the growth rate of the site, to say the least. Something had to change, so this outpouring from the community is certainly, certainly a welcome sight for sure. Thank you, all.

Now I have to find the 20-hour chunk of time to actually migrate the server and get everything working best I can. I don't really have anyone to help with this sort of work so please bare with me. Last evening at 1am I was trying to get some things ready and packaged up and was dealing with the server being flaky and giving repeated refused connections. I very nearly kicked my computer I was so frustrated.

More from me as soon as I get my ducks in a row, as it were.

As I said in a previous post getting to the target so fast is encouraging but from what Nathan just wrote this was a minimal goal to pay for a specific and large migration charge, but there were and may be unexpected expenses: So guys, if it is something that won't strain your budgets and were planning to give soon anyway, don't assume that more cash is no longer needed until next year.

I would think that short term viability of the site is now assured but longterm growth and " survival " of the site is going to be a year by year thing.

So, this is another friendly " BUMP ".

I wanted to quickly respond and say that the server migration is going to happen next week.

I've paid for the hosting and now need to do all the things necessary to backup the data, move the data, re-install all the software, recreate the databases, repopulate them with the data, install the various applications that the site uses, change a ton of code so that it works with the new systems, recreate accounts and subdomains, test everything, update all the other records, etc. All in all, it's a lot of work and will mean some downtime and weirdness next week.

If you experience downtime or lost data, this is the cause. I'll try to make sure I shut down the site and disallow new posts and other data from being created prior to the backup, but there may be situations where some people have made a change (added a post, an upload, a preference settings) that didn't make the backup.

I'm absolutely not looking forward to the work, but I'm looking forward to it being over and done with and enjoying the benefits of a better hosting environment.

Aaron, you can bet I'll do this as professionally as possible.

Never a doubt in my mind about that, Nathan... I was just kind of thinking out loud...

Just my own opinion, but if there were any excess donations I'd like to see myArmoury.com pay Nathan something for his time. No doubt it would hardly be a drop in the bucket, but its just not reasonable to expect someone to work for free, even if it is a labor of love (so to speak). Its not much, but donation sent. And Thanks.

Cole;

Agreed, but if Nathan takes any money out he would certainly just be reimbursing himself for expenses he covered himself and sometimes at the cost of having to sell pieces of his collection.

Now if, and a BIG IFF: Nathan found ways to make the site profitable taking a salary would be 100 % ethical in my opinion.

It's his baby and he probably has put in a great deal of money in as well as a lot of time: Well is has to be a labour of love it certainly isn't a money making proposition at this time.

Actually I'm sure that Nathan couldn't afford to hire himself to do the job he is currently doing at a loss. :eek:

( In case it isn't 100 % clear all of the above is meant as a compliment to Nathan and as thanks for the very existence of this site ! Sorry, if this sounds like sucking up. :p :lol: )

Good luck on the migration, I hope all goes well.