Tay

Hey everybody, Update + Donation System This post is a follow-up to the spring funding plan I posted ~2 months ago (link). It's pretty late, so to prevent myself from being overly verbose, I'll write this thread in bullet points: The google ads were not very effective and, despite a lot of effort, only made the site look trashy. They've since been taken down on all our various sites (forums, blog, reviews hub, etc.) The affiliate links, on the other hand, have been performing well and if we can continue to expand the way we're using them on the upcoming front site, I think we'll make serious strides towards self-sustainability During the move I emphasized several times that I'm dedicated and determined to keep Fuwanovel alive for the long-haul and budget accordingly. That hasn't changed. I have, however, reconsidered the popular suggestion from back in March to open the site up to user donations. This is uncomfortable territory for everyone, I realize, so I will continue to do my best to be open with you As of today, a donation system has gone online to help cover some of the cost of hosting. I divided it up into small, recurring donations (a few dollars a month), or custom one-time donations of any amount. Recurring monthly donations are especially useful to us, as it allows for some long-term (albeit loose) financial planning, but any and all donations are very, very much appreciated. I wanted to offer some "goodies" as a thanks for those who do chip in (they aren't meant as a reward or incentive, necessarily, just a token of gratitude), so you can read about those below I realize that not everyone is in a position to contribute to the development fund. That's absolutely okay. A lot of thought and discussion went into making sure these "goodies" weren't granting some users exclusive site features while denying them to others. Forums “goodies” for monthly donations/comparable single donations: You can now give twice as much rep per day (twice as many “Likes”) PM allowance increased to 200 300 You can now customize your profile page! When enough people sign up we’ll make a user “badge” (think the “Board Mod” or “Global Mod” images in the user sidebar) which can be re-designed as often as once per month to maximize festive-ness and/or fabulousness After 6 continuous months of support, you will be contacted by a member of The Order and vetted. Should you prove worthy, you will be inducted into The Great Secret. Which doesn’t exist. Just ask Flutterz. He’ll tell you. Totally doesn’t exist... well, that's a strong word. "Probably" doesn't exist is better. Or "maybe". Hm. "It could exist." We'll leave it at that. Donated funds go first towards hosting and a hosting “rainy day” fund, then towards expenses like forums software renewal (or forums themes renewal), and then other site development per our site financial plan. Feedback is welcome, as always. EDIT: Thank you *so much* to everyone who has donated. It means a lot and it's definitely going to lessen my wallet's tears each month. That said, please don't feel obligated to contribute big sums (double digits or more), especially on a regular basis -- there's a reason why I set the standard as $2.75ish a month: many of you already give a lot to the site, and my goal isn't to run the site on donations. Ultimately I hope we can even do away with donations and live comfortably off the millions we bring in from affiliates.

Unfortunately not. Appreciate the interest, tho!

It had its ups and downs (as it does now), so don't be persuaded too much by the doom and gloom you're hearing. Aaeru was/is an exceptionally nice person and she was pretty remarkable in her own right. Even though we don't see eye to eye on piracy, for example, I admired her vision of a friendly VN community built on respect. Back in those days it was (rightly) called "revolutionary", as it stood in pretty stark contrast to the other VN communities. Most of my memories of her are very positive. Piracy and her departure were very difficult and taken as a whole, bad for the site, but don't confuse that with Aaeru herself. There's a lot to respect, there. : )

Yeah, lots of big changes. It's fun to see you again, tho : ). Welcome back!

Hm. Nay'd know better than me (tho if you're reading this tonight, Nay, stop! Go to bed!), but Chatango may be useable if we input the code into the ad modules programmed into IPB itself. That's way above my IT paygrade tho, so I'm just throwing that out there. ... Also, I hate this topic. Did I ever mention that? I don't know why, but I do.

Well, we gave it a solid try, but turns out it actually does break the site. Sorry, folks. A better chat client may someday be in the cards (it'd need to integrate easily into IPB) if somebody finds it, but for now FuwaChat's not a viable addition to the index page.

$5000 FuwaDollars for the heads of anyone who proposed this idea. RIP.

Conclusion coming tomorrow! after I double check with the guy that I remember it correctly

Oh, hay! Turns out this thread is a thing.

Nope, nope, nope. Whole project is cancelled due to this one comment: There have been exactly 11 FuwApocalypses If you want to focus on "big" or "Great" FuwApocalypses, tho, there have been 5 So.... wrong. Everything is wrong. Eclipsed is permabanned and this project is dead. Okay, so, all that aside... I think this thread is a good example of why we did away with decisions by committee. The poll was to gauge the vox populi, and, quite honestly, giving this a go isn't going to hurt anyone or anything. After all, the worst case scenario is that the site goes into meltdown, we lose all backups, and Fuwa burns slowly to the ground. That's it! Let's give it a shot. If it doesn't bring about a good change (increased use, or positive use), we'll banish it back to its obscure corner.

I've got a few hundred emails to go through so I haven't given this a careful read. I will, tho, so expect another post soonish. I'm posting b/c I don't think sanah saw that guests CAN post comments, now.

We must've posted at the same time : P. Server load is my only concern here. I messaged Nay on Skype to see what he thinks. If it's going to be processing-heavy, however, it's not going to happen. We've got current and future projects which need to be prioritized.

Don't think I ever laid out my reasoning publicly, so here were the three reasons why I took it off the index footer/index sidebar: It looks kinda crappy, imo My technical know-how is limited and I wasn't sure what effect it would have for people with crappy bandwidth (like me right now!) I wasn't sure what strain that would put on the server (remember: the shoutbox was implemented before the server move, so this was a major concern). If Nay say's it won't be a big deal, I'd be okay adding it temporarily to the index footer -- but only for users who are logged in. We get >11k users each day, and loading that shoubox every time just has to be a heavy load.... but I don't know that myself, I"m just making an assumption. Nay's call. EDIT: As computer power isn't infinite, my priority is/will probably always be keeping site features running smoothly. Changes are cool as long as they don't start impacting the larger, more important site software.

I turned it off with spam in mind. I'm not opposed to giving it a try, though. I haven't tracked your traffic, Sanah, but Clephas's blog, for example, is very popular with lurkers, so I get the appeal of opening up comments.

You are welcome. Tiago, we salute you.

On mobile so please forgive my brevity. Krill has suffered a stroke and is in the hospital. It sounds like he's okay but he will need significant therapy. His wife is willing to pass along messages to him, so please post and let him know you're thinking of him and sending best wishes, and I'll make sure she gets them.

The guy whose name I drew still hasn't messaged me to claim the prize. If I don't hear from him by midnight, I'm going to draw another name.

Confirmed: We're in for a major headache. But we'll take it little by little and we'll all make it through with most of our sanity intact.

Good luck to everyone who entered! I'll be running the random.org script in a little bit!

I'm not really sure. We're hashing out a lot of the relevant details of database entries right now in the redesign board, but if we keep the save game repository idea, then I suppose we should put together a gameplan for collecting saves. It's going to be a royal pain, tho. There's probably going to be a lot of necessary checking involved : (

Wow. This is actually pretty engrossing. ... What's happening to me? EDIT: Is that a chopstick or a specialized figure pointer-outer? EDIT 2: Wow. Cool tattoo? I think? Went in-and-out of the screen too fast. EDIT 3: I'm actually kind of stressed now. How are you going to get them home? EDIT 4: What kind of shops do you get these from? Do they carry very many copies of each figure?

Hi everybody, We're in need of some help doing the coding work around the site. You would be working with Nayleen, our webmaster, to put together the new front site and a few, possible side-projects. Skills Requirements: Solid experience/skill with HTML5 and/or CSS3 Some Javascript experience Some PHP experience Some Git experience preferred If you want to help the site and want a challenge, please speak up! The more help we get, the faster we can bring the new site to you! Nay and I will be monitoring this thread, so either reply here or send us (Tay and Nayleen) a PM if you've got questions or want to volunteer.

Y'all are monsters.