First of all, the server the forums were on originally had the OS reinstalled, and not everything was put back on. And it's being a pain to get things back the way they were, so I just gave up. Currently, the forums are hosted on my home DSL connection, which has a dynamic IP and occasional (or often, recently) connectivity problems. This has also affected anybody with a marpirc.net subdomain or email (don't worry, none of the files have been lost). I just don't think I'll be able to host those on my DSL connection as well, my bandwidth is limited. And my server is a lot slower than the previous one.
Now, the part that I really don't like to have to do.
After a recommendation by Tech Knight, I've been looking at hosting plans with Dreamhost. They have good prices, and apparently really good service. The Level 1 package (Crazy Domain Insane) would be plenty for hosting the forums. Plus, it would enable me to have better options for users like a subdomain of their own, and instead of just an email forward some of you could have POP/IMAP/Web access to an @marpirc.net email.
Before I set up any kind of donation accepting thing, I wanted to mention it here first. I'd want to be able to sign up for a year of hosting with Dreamhost, which would be about $120 USD. Since I'd also be using this for some of my own pages as well, I'd be more than willing to pay some yet-to-be-determined part of that. Anybody that donated would definitely get a username.marpirc.net web space, as long as bandwidth/diskspace wasn't abused, although I'd trust you guys - and being limited to 15 subdomains, I'd probably have to limit that to 10 or so users with a subdomain, but marpirc.net/username would also be simple to set up. And a username@marpirc.net email address. With better features than what you had before.
I know there are a large number of active users on the forums here, so if even 10-20 of you donated $5-10, that would be enough for a year of good web hosting. I really dislike even having to bring up this subject, but I simply can't afford to pay for it all myself, and I hate to see the forums go down so often, or be slow. And of course, you would be mentioned on the site somewhere as being a valued contributer to the MARP Forums
Feel free to leave any comments about this, or discuss it, or bitch, or whatever. It's why I mentioned it here.
Like Al though I'll try to do my bit as well if you let me know the details to send funds. It will all help for the future.
