I'm sure you've all seen the sudden appearance of that donate box in posts.

I've also seen that most of you have noticed alterations to the site like some things beig crippled or altered and some of you have even complained about it.

One thing people tend to misunderstand is that running a site is littered with multiple problems, You can have bugs because of your OS, what servers you are running and then of course the software. Which means constantly tinkering to keep things running.

You then have a vast number of youth's that scower the internet looking for their next "Defacement" project which is a constant battle to stay ahead of.
On top of that is Virus, Spam bots that cross post and then Malformed robots that spider websites and get themselves stuck in an infinite loop on an anchor, which chews up your site bandwidth.

Once you've got past all that, you've then got the members of your online community grabbing pitch forks at any small mishaps or changes which can be quite demoralising for a site owner (So much so that people can lose heart. I know this because I've killed a site previously for exactly the same reason because I didn't need a userbase of hassle and personal attacks.)

Now I've mentioned all that so you get a little idea of what running a site entails, however that's not my explaination of why you should donate...

Admittedly if sciforums was a flurry of Starving African children pictures, you would already be emptying your wallet at the donate button right now.

Fortunately it doesn't misrepresent itself to the outside world however that does mean people don't see it as a worthy cause in comparison to "the needy", Although I'm sure this forum has done many indirect things. (Given joy to thousands, allowed people to have a voice when they feel their world doesn't allow them to have one, Given hope in a persons despair to find they are not alone and even allowed some to realise that Suicide was never an answer)

I can't say that paying a $5 donation will feed a starving child (although I'm sure we could arrange to starve children to get a donation... thats a joke btw)

Paying $5 will however make sciforums future look bright and cheerful, it will secure more functionality to the site and potentially increase this sites offerings.

It's time for some of you to put your money were your mouth is and actually donate.

"Pay what ever you can or the Teddybear gets it."

Will do, but first I have to wire some money into paypal, unless the remaining 3 cents can be put to good use :D

hummm, 3 maybe not, but 2 will give a new meaning to the phrase: just my two cents. ;)

Paying $5 will however make sciforums future look bright and cheerful, it will secure more functionality to the site and potentially increase this sites offerings.
I would've donated a few dollars already but I do not have a paypal account. I wouldn't mind paying $5 a month for some extra features. A couple of things I would like are, to be able to export my posts to a text file and to have a public\private journal attached to my profile. I'm not sure if those ideas are feasible or not but I would pay for them.

That post thing is not realistic. In theory you could order the software to fetch all posts made by you, but that would cause a huge cpu load and stress on the database. You could do it if the server was just for one you.

Public/private journal is possible to implement, but I think that Dave has more important things to worry about now.
However if signatures are re-enabled, then you would be able to put a link to your journal in it.
There are loads of free journal services available on the net.

Well that's not very encouraging...

What's the difference (journal thing)?
The result would be the same.

I'm sure things will be looked into, in fact I suggest posting what you would like to see implimented in the Feedback forum. Since if Porfiry secures enough to rehouse the site then the likelihood is that new things can be added or at least looked into.

I'll kick in a 20 sometime this week, though I am one of the few who has actually paid Dave before. Not that much, but I think I've kicked in prolly 50 bucks or so over a year when he was asking for money for avatars. Happy to help the cause though once again.

I would've donated a few dollars already but I do not have a paypal account. I wouldn't mind paying $5 a month for some extra features. A couple of things I would like are, to be able to export my posts to a text file and to have a public\private journal attached to my profile. I'm not sure if those ideas are feasible or not but I would pay for them.
I can already see.... "Sciforum Premium"... :p

In any case... I might be donating. I will probably use some of the money that I got as wedding present....

I'll donate something, just have to put some money into my paypal account.

EBAYY! OH, EEEBAAAY! Come here boy!

Well done all on reaching the $600 figure, although the figures been reached if you still are up for a donation then do so as it will be the difference between getting the forums backup and making it better than it ever was.

I knew this would work.... :)

I think it's admirable to run a forum. That's why I donate... to the one I run. Best of luck though.

Start another donate thing.