The future of OTF

[sw2borshch]

I check my emails about once a month if I am expecting something.

[Sits]

Perhaps it will be possible to set up direct debits, so we don’t have to remember. For those who chose to do so. That’s what I find easiest (Spotify, Netflix, Graun, Wiki).

[Snake Plissken]

The other place that I'm using a model has a separate subforum for members that is mainly used for paperwork in running the Co-op behind it - posting of yearly accounts, notification of committee positions/elections etc. People who give money are given the choice of becoming a member and having access or simply donating the money and not.

I can, if people want, use custom titles to identify those who donate/subscribe. I do wonder if it should be opt-in though.

[Sits]

I think so. It’s a fine and delicate line we need to tread.

[Capybara]

Perhaps it will be possible to set up direct debits, so we don’t have to remember. For those who chose to do so. That’s what I find easiest (Spotify, Netflix, Graun, Wiki).

The hoops you have to go through as an organisation to get approval for operating direct debit, coupled with the mechanism for collection probably wouldn't make it worthwhile for an organisation the size it's likely to be. Standing orders, on the other hand, while old-fashioned, might work. The problem with that, though is, they just go on and on until you stop them. When I worked in an organisation that collected by direct debit we had a very small number of standing orders coming in and there was absolutely no way of determining where they were coming from.

[ursus arctos]

All of which leads me to believe that the commission taken by Patreon and similar organisations is worth it in these circumstances

[DCI Harry Batt]

You don't need to be set up for Direct Debits directly, do you? You can use something like GoCardless or whatever. Again, it's a service that takes a cut, though.

[Capybara]

You don't need to be set up for Direct Debits directly, do you? You can use something like GoCardless or whatever. Again, it's a service that takes a cut, though.

This is true.

[San Bernardhinault]

True, and even those who did donate might prefer to remain anonymous.

Absolutely. The huge amounts I'm going to donate, I certainly don't want to announce and publicise. I don't want anyone to know that I am being incredibly generous. Certainly wouldn't mention it here, for instance.

[hobbes]

I must say, I'm pretty surprised at how few people have been contributing, given how many were definitely, definitely going to when the subject came up last time.
I feel like a bit of a chump having been banging in a fiver a month and actually feeling guilty about how low that was because I was out of work until recently.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Would WSC be willing to let us use their direct debit path or are we going to be parting ways completely?

The annual costs that Snake mentioned in the other thread seem to make it a conversation worth having.

[Snake Plissken]

That's adding another administrative overhead.

Don't bank accounts allow standing orders any more? I know mine does.

[Capybara]

Would WSC be willing to let us use their direct debit path or are we going to be parting ways completely?

The annual costs that Snake mentioned in the other thread seem to make it a conversation worth having.

I thought about this and checked their website and it looks like they don't do direct debit, only credit card and cheque payments.

[Antepli Ejderha]

OK, I'm paying monthly through PayPal and just thought it was a direct debit.

[danielmak]

It seems like every pay option is going to take a piece of the pie, so the question would be easiest for all involved and smallest piece of the pie. I have Paypal set to Autopay with The Blizzard for my sub. I don't know if there is a way to set that so the person paying pays the fee. If not, then if Paypal is used, some rounding up would have to happen to cover Paypal's fees.

[Hot Pepsi]

If you provide an actual address, I can send an actual paper check.

[superstu64]

I don't have much to add other than have you looked into something like this Snake Plissken ?

https://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=292766

The advantages as well as being a built in donate option are things like monthly goals which could show how much is needed and might encourage people to chip in a few pence, donations can be anonymous and you can set custom payment options, although it does seem to be only PayPal as the actual payment method.

Otherwise, Patreon is worth looking into as well as the Co-Op ideas, which would be cool to have proper democracy on the board and keeping it advert free.

[Sits]

At this stage, are we meant to be doing anything, or just waiting?

[Snake Plissken]

Just waiting. I’ll be putting up the technical options and their approximate costs over the weekend.

[Sporting]

Just waiting.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Thanks Snake.

[Snake Plissken]

I thought about posting in a separate thread but this is a summary of where we are at.

I am looking to move OTF away from the current setup into shared hosting. Our current hosts have quoted 280 GBP / month to continue as is. That is a lot, obviously, but we are currently sitting on a dedicated, well specified server with full support, including techies on call in case of emergency. However, it is too much for our needs - it would using a Ferrari to go to the shops.

I had a look at moving to vBulletin's cloud service. This is a fully patched and maintained version of vBulletin, upgraded to the latest version automatically. Totally hands off from an admin point of view, we would just "run" OTF. The downside is that we would lose the ability to tweak OTF, including some of the mods that I have put in place like jumping to the last unread post (see the footer for an example of some of the Add-ons that we've got installed). Very vanilla, non-customisable. This would be around 70 GBP / month.

The option I am probably going for - though feel free to chip in with your thoughts - is shared hosting. Basically, we sit on a nice big server with plenty of power - however, we are sharing that server with other websites. In the real world, this isn't usually a problem, but if one of the other websites suddenly gets hammered, it might affect us for a while. If OTF starts using all the resources, the host might increase our costs to compensate. (This shouldn't happen because I've overspeccing the size and bandwidth requirements.) I've dropped an email to Zen - who I have used for years and am happy with on a cost/quality basis - to confirm that their hosting is suitable and we can shift the underlying database and webhosting to them.

For the shared and cloud options there are various add-on costs. As an indication of where things seem to be working out, it looks like the total cost of hosting and running OTF would come in a little under 1000 GBP / year. There may be some initial costs for example for transferring everything over, including the vBulletin licence but I'm not expecting that to be more than the lowish three digits.

If we look at the various options for contributions, the sums that I am using (again, indicative not exact) are a user donating 2 GBP / month = 24 / year - Patreon/Paypal commission = 20 GBP / year. If that was 2.50/month, then 30/year, 24 of which is going into OTF coffers. We could also set up a way to donate directly to the bank account or standing order and the shared hosting would give us the ability to add pages to do so.

Timeline is to have this done by the end of April. I'll work on this bit first as it is where all the ongoing costs are and sort out the paperwork for the OTF structure as we go.

[ad hoc]

Thanks Snake. That's a clear, comprehensive and comprehensible (even for me) outline. I don't really have a strong preference either way between shared and cloud, but tend to assume that if you think shared is better for us, then it is better for us

[San Bernardhinault]

Yeah. You're a star for sorting this, Snake, and I am happy to defer to you (and others) who are way more knowledgeable about this stuff than me.

[Uncle Ethan]

Thanks Snake.