The Clan Lord Sentinel

Hi all,
I do not usually ask for donations, but my clanlord.net’s domain registration is coming up, and if anyone felt inclined to help out with a buck or 2, I would appreciate it. Not a big deal if no one donates anything, I can swing it, but finances are pretty tight right now. (I blame someone {me} misbudgeting this years gift pool of funds!) The amount I pay per year just on CL.net isn’t a huge amount, and I spend more than that each month on things that are not essential. Again, this is completely optional — only donate if you have a decent amount of disposable income.

If people donated enough, I might even be able to get a real honest to goodness signed SSL cert (so Firefox and other browsers do not balk that the cert is self-signed) if I do not have to spend cash on the domian reg. All money collected would go toward hosting fees: first to reregistering clanlord.net for one year, then months Static IPs fees, then a SSL cert. I do not intend to put any of it toward my basic hosting fees, unless it makes sense. Dreamhost does give service fee breaks if you pay for 1 year all at once. So, I would consider it, if people donated enough to keep CL.net one time fees, and monthly Static IP fees going for another 2 years.

Here is a quick breakdown of my expenses:

My monthly account for hosting runs $10/month without any Static IPs . Monthly single static IP fees are about $4/month. Current I have 2 static IPs, so monthly fees are about $18/month. Domain registration fees are $10/year, and a static SSL ceritifcate good for one year, for one domain (no wildcards) runs $15/year.
Each year I put out just under $73 ($4/month static IP+$10/yr domain+$15/yr SSL cert) for clanlord.net alone, not counting the other domains nor my basic account which runs $120/year.

Oh course, if you are paying for a site or have a free site with ads inserted, I could give you your own unlimited sandbox for CL-related pages for free whether you donate a penny to help or not. If you wanted to put up a site that wasn’t CL related, I could just give you space if it was a simple static site or a really light-weight dynamic site assuming it did not generate a ton of traffic or violate my ToS. (The basic idea is you could put up a resume or something easy to maintain.) If you donated, I could give you a hosting space, but I cannot guaranty perpetual hosting, nor list the donation as a hosting fee. There are loopholes, such as if I built or maintained the site, and Dreamhost is pretty cool about this stuff, but I want to be perfectly clear a donation is just that, and you are not buying space. Any space given comes with absolutely no warranty against data loss, etc. But Dreamhost is pretty rocking in terms of service.

I will see about put up a donation button on http://clanlord.net/ with all money going to hosting fees, assuming I can chose how they are allocated. If not, I can give anyone who messages me, my Paypal payment address, which many of you guys probably already have to donate to me. I promise to spend any money collected to keep cl.net going. Of course you have to decide how trustworthy I am. So, use your best judgement.

FYI:
Dreamhost has been very reliable the last year, today Org contacted me about the bestiary being unreachable. It was some sort of dreamhost server glitch and came up a few hours later.

Thanks for reading peeps. Hope to see you guys in the game sometime soon!

Post when you have a button, or in the interim, if you have a way to send Paypal or something.

Eirian wrote:Post when you have a button, or in the interim, if you have a way to send Paypal or something.

I put up a button today, at https://www.clanlord.net/ in case anyone wants to donate. I cannot use any money donated this way for anything except hosting fees, domain reg, etc.

Thanks.
M

I'll throw some money in the guitar case when I get the chance.

Thanks Kinon, but only if you can afford it. You’re a student, if I am not mistaken. So, perhaps you are dipping into your beer fund? That’s not right… or is it? I read an article saying that progrmmers are more productive after having a beer. Must be the relaxating effect of the poison slowly killing your liver and numbing your senses?

I very quickly made a custom button, but decided not to use it, because Dreamhost’s default button is so elegant and actually matches cl.net’s color scheme.

if you do not want to see the ugly results of about 10 minutes of effort, do not click this link: https://www.clanlord.net/images/thoomfight-btn.png
oh and the sizing is all crunked up.

Man, I am rusty, and lack proper Adobe software now.

Oka,y well that was cool!
Someone or some people donated a chunk of change to my hosting bill, so for that, thank you. I am not sure how to tell who did it, but thanks, and if you want to take credit for your donation, please reply here.

So, I have made good on my word. I added a real cert to clanlord.net and it should be up as soon as the Certificate Authority issues it. YAY! That means no more warning in firefox and other browsers about potentially shady certificates!

App.net Invites (2)
So, THANK YOU! FYI: there is a new Social Networking site that is very similar to twitter but better: it is based on the "Freemium" model that GitHub, Evernote, Dropbox and other successful business have built from the ground up. it is called App.net. I joined the funding round last year and the service has been built up since the first alpha was released back in September October. Now that the API is solid and direct messages, file and photo upload and other parts of the service are complete, the founders have opened the doors to invite people to free subscriptions with an invite. I have 2 invites left right now, and I am offering them to anone that wants to add yet another SoNet to their list of time wasters. (but it is not a time water for me: read below the info.*)

But App.net is different: it aligns itself with user interests so:
1: there are no ads.
2: they will not sell your info. so you will never get solicitation emails. The only email I get from them I have opted into, and they send out a poll once a month to rate the third party app.net clients. Speaking of which, there are clients for all the current platforms, and last I read I think they numbered around 300!
3: you can retrieve your info and delete your account at any time and they will respect your wishes.
4: if you want a full account it is only $36/yr and well worth it. Then you can then invite your friends as you wish.
5: They align their development interests with User interests. So, their efforts are all in making app.net extremely usable and feature packed.

*Why App.net is different:
If you follow my highly successful blog (*Actual success is relative, and could be completely imaginary ego tripping, , then you have seen my posts abouyt how useful it is as a “minor league” web developer. The technical info is very valuable and I have learned a lot for very little time investment about tech and coming trends in science, health care, etc. The discourse there is better than other SoNets, in general, and has less noise than any other site because of the fee structure.

Since I have a very limited supply, if I get more than 2 takers, I will have to chose based on who I think actually use it, like it and benefit from it the most. I will leave the door for requests open for 72 hours, and then if I get more than 2 people asking, I might have to follow up with a few questions to make my choice. If you are an active developer or a curious person, I encourage you to request one. They issue one or two a month currently, so if I do not pick you for first round, you will go on the list (and I am not talking a Delta Tao list of “soon”). If you don’t want to wait, and hate competion, you can also sign up at App.net and message me (@noivad) and tell me to “I don’t need your favoratism, so, suck it!” If I could I would do an open invite to all of you, since I know CL players, for the most part are good people.

App.net’s community is the closest to Clan Lord’s community I have ever experienced. So, Michael would probably get barf at how nice a majority of people are there.