Banner Advertisements

[Mark McLeod]

How about offering a separate price for a team donation (even if through the "Send Money" manual route) providing blanket advertiser blocking, in addition to the individual. That might generate more income as it's easier to budget donations like this through a team budget or generous benefactor.

[ahecht]

I don't mind the ads too much, but you would think that you could do better than stretched black text on a white background. Some of them are awfully hard to read.

[Jessica Boucher]

Not bad, guys. This seems to be a workable solution.

Question: Will there be availability to purchase memberships as a gift (maybe with a printable sheet so that we can put it under the tree)? There are a couple of people I would like to "give the gift of ChiefDelphi" to come Christmastime.....

hmm..."give the gift of ChiefDelphi"? "This holiday season, send some Pontiac cheer to someone you love"? "Don't forget to put The Chief under your tree!" The possibilities are endless

[Brandon Martus]

Originally Posted by Jessica Boucher

Not bad, guys. This seems to be a workable solution.

Question: Will there be availability to purchase memberships as a gift (maybe with a printable sheet so that we can put it under the tree)? There are a couple of people I would like to "give the gift of ChiefDelphi" to come Christmastime.....

hmm..."give the gift of ChiefDelphi"? "This holiday season, send some Pontiac cheer to someone you love"? "Don't forget to put The Chief under your tree!" The possibilities are endless

For now, there is no way to do this easily; you'd have to manually send $5 to paypal AT chiefdelphi DOT com and include in the message what username this would be for. We would manually apply it to their account -- if you wanted it to not be active until they received the gift (to be a surprise, or whatever), have them send us an e-mail with the PayPal transaction ID and their username, and then I can apply it to their account. The 6-month period would apply starting then, and not when you purchased the gift.

This brings up another point -- if you were to donate another $5, the 6-month ad removal would be applied the end of your current subscription -- (i.e. ending 1 year from the first donation)

[Brandon Martus]

The banners with stretched text are being fixed in the next few days. The students on our web team created most of these banners, and it's their first time doing it.

-Brandon

Originally Posted by ahecht

I don't mind the ads too much, but you would think that you could do better than stretched black text on a white background. Some of them are awfully hard to read.

[Mike Martus]

Originally Posted by ahecht

I don't mind the ads too much, but you would think that you could do better than stretched black text on a white background. Some of them are awfully hard to read.

The students are learning. These are student made banners. Most will be improved in the coming weeks ( I hope)

Considering what they are sent they are a start.

[Adam Y.]

Hmm... This really proves how observant I am. Visited chiefdelphi scrolled to the news and read their were banner ads just added. I wondered where they were so I scrolled up and down twice before I decided to read where they were.

[Mike AA]

Brandon, in reference to this, does chiefdelphi.com need some help in the processor/storage/bandwidth department? You've just gotta say the word(s) and I will gladly help, I'm upgrading my connection to dual lines by the end of the month so I will have much more bandwidth to spare.

What if we want to donate more than $5 at a shot?

-Mike Aalderink

[Brandon Martus]

If you want to donate more than $5, just use the 'Send Money' feature of PayPal and send it to donate@chiefdelphi.com

[Randy]

Wow

Surprisingly, I'm not supprised by this being done, Brandon ... a bit saddened though

[Randy]

Originally Posted by Mike AA

Brandon, in reference to this, does chiefdelphi.com need some help in the processor/storage/bandwidth department? You've just gotta say the word(s) and I will gladly help, I'm upgrading my connection to dual lines by the end of the month so I will have much more bandwidth to spare.

What if we want to donate more than $5 at a shot?

-Mike Aalderink

I unfortuantly doubt it. Brandon/CD doesn't seem to be one for accepting non-monetary donations. Both of us have offered similar services on multiple occations which seem to go unnoticed.

On another note: we're currently hosting 45 FIRST sites (teams & regional), I'd like to make it to 50 before the end of the year, so if you're reading this and our team needs hosting, look at the signature.

[Mike Martus]

Thank you for the offer to be a host, it is kind indeed.

We have made the changes with careful thought and want to keep this site as healthy as possible with all the considerations with funding.

I am please to say our goals are being met and we see a bright path to the future.

We have had many offers for "Free" hosting. The problem with free is in most cases we would lose control and service at some level. We follow the old adage "you get what you pay for". We are sure many of the offers are solid but we choose not to take any chances with the site.

Plans are in place and we are moving forward to meet the needs of the Community of FIRST.

A special thank you to the community of FIRST for understanding and support.

[Jay H 237]

If you don't mind me asking, are you planning to do any server upgrades before the kick off? More memory?

I remember last year (actually earlier this year) Brandon had to turn off some of the features of this site to lighten the load on the server. I was just wondering if we're looking good to hold up for this coming season when the traffic spikes on here.

[Elgin Clock]

I'm guessing the official FRC forums will alleviate some of those spikes in traffic.
I hope.

[Brandon Martus]

Possibly. We are still working on a possible upgrade.