Relying on random donations is never going to be a safe way to guarantee service. I was going to start a thread myself about this. 

What is needed is a hosting package with a professional company using a dedicated server /virtual server. This doesn't come cheap so a core set of users paying a premium subscription has to be found first. 

I'd be happy paying 100 USD annual payment. I'm sure some others would to. 100 x users paying 50 would get 5000 a year which would pay for a decent low end hosting package. 

You get the commitment, then tender out the hosting. Avsim being a fairly established NAME site there would also be motivation for smaller hosts to provide the bandwidth in return for a banner logo /partnership deal. 

It's not the fault of the site or admins that the market has exploded in recent years. We absolutely need voluntary subscriptions to get a better quality host though. 

I'm finding it's fine now. No issues.

On 8/27/2024 at 6:59 PM, charliearon said:

Just tuning up! 🙃

Since English is not my native tongue...
What do you mean with that remark?

On 8/27/2024 at 7:59 PM, dave2013 said:

Anyone complaining should donate at least $5.

It would be nice if there was a statement by AVSIM first about having technical or maybe financial difficulties.
I have donated in the past and are willing to do so again, but not 'out of the blue'

On 8/31/2024 at 5:35 AM, sloppysmusic said:

What is needed is a hosting package with a professional company using a dedicated server /virtual server. This doesn't come cheap

You'd be surprised.

On 8/31/2024 at 5:35 AM, sloppysmusic said:

Avsim being a fairly established NAME site there would also be motivation for smaller hosts to provide the bandwidth in return for a banner logo /partnership deal.

No one knows about AVSIM outside this niche, and that proposal is a recipe for disaster. As a professional, any client that says "I won't pay you, but you'll get 'exposure'" (as a banner logo? c'mon!) is cheap and isn't worth it. Any host that gives you free bandwidth for a banner ad is desperate and is going to fail soon. Hosting is a commodity business with very low margins.

I did hear rumblings that AVSIM owned its own hardware. There I completely agree with you - that makes absolutely no sense.

Cheers

5 hours ago, Luke said:

I won't pay you, but you'll get 'exposure'" (as a banner logo? c'mon!) is cheap and isn't worth it. Any host that gives you free bandwidth for a banner ad is desperate and is going to fail soon

I mentioned deal not freebie lol! A startup keen to impress /get a foothold with busy forum is not necessarily guaranteed to fail. The site is already ad supported, the banner would be INSTEAD of ads. I can't see an issue with 'hosted by xxxx' in one discreet forum header. People pay to remove ads all the time why would this be different? Obviously NO ads or banners would be great but who's paying for that lol? 

By 'owning the hardware' do you mean a Pentium Pro in someone's work shed or an actual rack somewhere managed? 

I'd be happy if it stayed as is for the next decade I'm just getting fairly seriously worried with regular daily timeouts. I'd rest more easily if I knew there were secure offline backups with some staff member 😉

On 8/31/2024 at 11:50 AM, martin-w said:

I'm finding it's fine now. No issues.

LOL, someone mentioned the word "donation", and suddenly Martin's connection has fixed itself

Edited September 2, 20241 yr by Christopher Low

2 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

LOL, someone mentioned the word "donation", and suddenly Martin's connection has fixed itself

 

😵 I fully support Avsim donations Mr. Chris. Cheeky boy. 

Minus Cat Point for you my boy.

😾 -

 

 

Edited September 2, 20241 yr by martin-w

21 hours ago, sloppysmusic said:

A startup keen to impress /get a foothold with busy forum is not necessarily guaranteed to fail.

Do you understand the hosting business? It's fundamentally a commodity business, with next to zero margins and entirely around volume. The days when a small startup could get into the business and complete have been gone for over a decade. You're talking prices of .02/GB/mo for storage and a little more for bandwidth. And there's no way that any sane tech investor would throw capital into such a low margin business.

21 hours ago, sloppysmusic said:

The site is already ad supported, the banner would be INSTEAD of ads. I can't see an issue with 'hosted by xxxx' in one discreet forum header. People pay to remove ads all the time why would this be different?

Why would any hosting business want to advertise to a group of people completely outside of their target audience?

There's an awful lot of wishful thinking in your proposal. I'd be curious as to what it would could AVSIM to host in public cloud somewhere.

Cheers

Avsim is home to me. Just like sitting down in a comfy chair with an adult beverage  CHEERS!!!!!

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Why would any hosting business want to advertise to a group of people completely outside of their target audience?

Well 

1..In business surely the target audience is the one willing and able to pay you. 

2..There must be a large enough market over all the sim users around the world to have a crowd funded sim host? 

1 hour ago, sloppysmusic said:

1.In business surely the target audience is the one willing and able to pay you.

That's my point. The number of AVSIM users willing and able to pay a no-name startup (or any hosting provider) for hosting is vanishingly small.

Let's make two assumptions (which are almost certainly wrong, but we can adjust them as we go). Let's assume that AVSIM requires around $1000 every month in compute, storage and bandwidth (too low), and that profit margins for hosting are around 5% (which I expect is way too high). If a startup donates that to AVSIM, they'll need to generate $20,000 in revenue each month to make up for the losses they're incurring by giving away services to AVSIM. Given our most enthusiastic demographic seems to be older men reposting Youtube videos, I'll suggest that this is unlikely to happen.

1 hour ago, sloppysmusic said:

2..There must be a large enough market over all the sim users around the world to have a crowd funded sim host? 

Most sim users don't need hosting. Simple as that. The ones that do don't need a crowd funded host, or a startup. We just use someone reputable like AWS and call it a day.

Cheers

If all the recent problems with the site have been due to updating to this new look and improving the reliability and speed on the back-end, then it will have been worthwhile.

Please tell us this was the cause of the site's issues...

Edited September 2, 20241 yr by F737MAX

4 minutes ago, F737MAX said:

If all the recent problems with the site have been due to updating this new look and improving the reliability on the back-end, then it would have been worthwhile.

(Please tell us this was the cause of the site's issues...)

I think the system had a fart caught crosswise!  Let's see how everything goes from this point forward!

So I get a Notification today that I received the "One Year In" Badge, meaning it's been a Year since I 'joined'. Schweet!

Only thing is, I 'joined' in 2010... 🙄