Donate THIS!
 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Over the past year a substantial amount of money has gone into making the site what it is today, including the purchase of a new server. Our services always been free, and will continue to be so for the forseeable future. But, we're always excited when people are willing to help out the site they use so much!

In order to thank these people for their continuing support and to encourage others, Airsoft Canada is now giving out webspace when you make a donation to support the site. All donations go towards past and future upgrades to the site: hardware, software (no pirated scripts here) and general maintenance.

If you donate $20 or more, you'll receive 100 megs of webspace, for storing pictures or files for sharing on the internet, with FTP access.
If you donate $40 or more, you'll get 250 megs of webspace, with a Gallery installed* (http://gallery.menalto.com/), and FTP access.
If you donate $100 or more, you'll get a choice of custom webhosting setup, as well the ultra bling Platinum Membership Status.
*Coming soon...

All supporters get new hot tags underneath their usernames. The breakdown is in the next post.

If you don't want the space, or don't want to donate that much, any donation is appreciated, every bit counts to keep a site like this running.

Donations are accepted by Paypal, EMT, direct deposit or even credit card.


Donations methods:
EMT, Paypal to: donate@airsoftcanada.com
Or click this link for Paypal, and Credit Card (via paypal): https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/...lick-but21.gif

If you want to do a direct deposit, or have other questions, just email donate@airsoftcanada.com

If you want to setup webspace with your donation, contact honestjohn@airsoftcanada.com or PM HonestJohn on ASC.

http://www.airsoftcanada.com/images/kittens.gif

The webspace I will set people up with (who want it), will be at http://members.airsoftcanada.com/nameofyourchoice

The webspace will exist for as long as this site does and I'm able to offer it without compromising ASC. Maybe forever?
It's for personal, non-commercial use. It's offered on the condition that it is not abused. I don't mind if you hotlink images on other sites, just don't put gigs of bandwidth on your account if you can help it.

Also, I thought I should list what the breakdowns are for the user tags under your name.
$20+ gets your Silver Member status http://www.airsoftcanada.com/images/...bnr_silver.jpg
$40+ gets you Gold Member status http://www.airsoftcanada.com/images/ranks/bnr_gold.jpg
and for the truly crazy, $100 or more gets you Platinum Member status. Bling Bling. http://www.airsoftcanada.com/images/ranks/bnr_plat.jpg

Pass the hat around guys. Paypal sent. :tup:

EMT sent :tup:

Thanks guys, it's much appreciated.

Donation sent :)

Support the site guys, its only for the better :salute:

Fuck, does anyone have about... $10, 332, 456, 500. 34 they can lend me. I think then I will have redeemed myself for all the kittens I've killed.

/God I'm lonely
//Or am I?
///Slashes likes its Fark or something

(I'll wire you the funds in a few days)

Donation sent :cheers:

Gota support the forum that united the airsoft players of Canada right boys?!

OMG. Money is yours!

I'll see if I can get all the people in the area to send one big donation (I don't have any way of wireing money through the internet so I'll just see if I can get someone to do it for me) If not I'll just do a direct deposite. :cheers:

Erik

Im In
 

Erik I am sure we can do some... this has been a great resource for a newbee. I can help out to send some.

Rob

Flashy and slightly tacky logos for all supporters!

When I get a job, I'll gladly donate. for now, Ill mooch forum use for free. :)

Totally broke right now. Funny though. I havn't even started playing airsoft.

(I owe my dad $315. Anyone wanna buy an X-Cellerator Nitro R/C Car? It does about 85 KM/H. Part of the money would go to ASC :))


Thanks to those who did donate and will. I would really hate to lose this site.

Paypal donate button
 

Good idea, for donations for this site. You admins here at ASC deserve some help, and well deserved I might add. :tup: :tup: 2 thumbs up to you folks :smile:

Will you guys have a PayPal Donate button?

I will be glad to support :tup:

:cheers:

So, if I donate, will it be enough for me to have my "ain't gay, but $20 is $20" tag removed?

ah hell why not. I want people to think that I still play
Greg

I will donate another $50 if you guys put that in gold on his name :D
Greg

Paypal sent :tup:

EMT sent.

Hey some of you know I'm computer stupid and I wont know how to use this space I want it to upload pics to share with family and what not. so if someone anyone could PM me some help and I'll donate 40bucks yes thats right I dont think I'll need that much space but it gives me something to do and helps out the website:) Thanks I'm sending EMT as we speak

Well, technically you can access it with IE or even windows explorer, and just drag and drop files onto the webspace.
It's not perfect, but it should work. When I setup your space, I'll PM you the info on how to use it.


Thanks for the donations guys!

Added a paypal donate button.

All my moneys are belong to you!

EMT sent.

I get a nice sized paycheque in a week or so. I'll send some cash to ya guys. Hell If I support my habits via ASC, I might as well give something back to it eh.

You evil, evil man. Add another level after I already got my gold status.

Just curious, What benifets do the Platinum members get? Other then being known for helping out a LOT?

I got these nifty email receipts from PayPal for things like bandwidth and software.

ASC was a critical launchpad for my product just over a year ago. I got that too.

Well, I'll set you up with a custom webhosting package, even domain hosting on a limited size account, if you wanted it. For a donation of that size, nice toys can be worked out.

So lets say someone donated X amout and wants to donate more out of the goodness in their hearts does it addup or does it have to be in 1 shot?

Of course, I'm not looking to short anyone out of anything. We run this site for everyone's benefit, and every donation is appreciated big time, so I'm happy to accomodate anyone that wants to support the site.

Ok, not fair! you guys caught me on a good day I put more in.. I hope a total of $101 is a decent amout comming from a poor minor. I just want to give back to you guys for this website*tear*:P

Good God! I don't want anyone to bankrupt themselves over ASC. Trust me, I've been there (for the last few months actually). But thanks, dude. I will definitely see to it that you get a return on that.

Heh no worries i got lots more of where that came from. I'm just teasing

Just Silver ?? :(

EMT sent, i gave you my last 10 bucks for food and medicine because i live on the streets.

shit i need a job.

I guess us Gold guys can look down on you now. ;)

Now now ace, be nice to the other people. Not every one has to pitch in that much. Every LITTLE bit helps

$101.... Good god....

Hojo will pay off the server within weeks if we keep this up! :-)

It wasn't really my intention to turn this into a competition, hmmm...

Meh, I am sure its going to be good for donations. I just noticed, I lost my cool green name thingy saying I'm an evil supermod.

i am going to try and send some money but i got fired this week and i need to get somethings for a game. i will donate what ever i can to ASC. so if i do send u money dont give me webspace i wouldn't now how to use it and i already have one to many thing to keep running so no webspace for me.

Yes, I have to correct that, it should be fixed shortly. VB stock only permits one primary usergroup, so I had to choose between your donation group, and your mod one, to show up.

Don't hurt yourself doing it, I can certainly live without a green name, so long as I can still be evil, and moderate and the like. ;)

if ppl don't want like reconition can they just send like 5-10 buxx...and still be a silent supporter...i'm still kinda broke from my last Airsoft purchase...but i do love this site...i mean one McDeal is worth all the fun i have reading ppl's threads rite..

If I read it right, if you donate $5-$20 you get "asc supporter" as your little avatar thingie. Every bit of money helps weather it's 5 bucks or in some people's case's 100 bucks. It's still going to a good cause.....saving orphan kittens :lol:


Erik

So how many Kittens did i save with 10 bucks?
If their are more kittens in need of help, ill be glad to donate 500 dollars. :P

Well, with the price of gas and all, it really only pays for one kitten. But fortunately there aren't too many orphan kittens being chased by domos, so every one we save, counts for alot.

The Kittens are attacking back. Thanks to ASC and the supporters.
http://farm.tucows.com/2005/04/last_...r_standing.jpg








Domoholocaust
SHit more is coming. WE NEED MORE! money jokes.
http://img78.photobucket.com/albums/...35654nso_w.jpg

http://members.airsoftcanada.com/ace...1012OTWS_w.JPG

The Kittens mobilize!!

Awesome site, definately deserves a donation!
Consider it sent!

School is my excuse for being cheap, but I'm happy to give something.

Love it or hate it I cannot deny a substantial number of sales of my rolled polarbear snot would not be possible without the promotion I get on this site...

Paypal sent...

As soon as I get some money into my paypal account it'll be going straight to ASC :salute:

I lose gooooooooooold!!

I'm just wondering after a course of a few weeks are you going to share how much money we raised? Give our self a pat on the back. Or is it a serect in the end how much we raised? I mean we as in the website not saying any money is going towards me:(

Out of curiousity, wheres all this money going. I hear everyone saying they love to support asc, but is asc really this expensive to host? Wasnt this site originally made or intended to be made for Tru's selling of airsoft goods and exchanging of airsoft goods? Didnt he always pay for this in the past? Just seems abit odd all of a sudden we are trying to do fund raising for asc but we dont really know where its all going, all we know is we get free web space.

Im pretty sure at this rate asc could be funded for a few years, it seems like people are trying to make this into a competition, like $101? isnt that a little excessive, maybe if your rich I dont know. Wheres the money gonna go when asc's fee's have been paid, are we gonna do fundraisers and have big get togethers and free food? like I dont know, just throwing ideas into the air here.

The money is going to Miles (HoJo) to compensate (read: not completely subsidise, it's expensive) for the purchase of the new server to host from, as well as operating costs.

how much would something like this cost? Im imagining theres gonna be roughly 600-1000 bucks there in the next week. Thats alot of money for a server is it not?

It is kind of a fund raiser so lets say everyone pitches in a little and pays off for the new server and money left over.. maybe HoJo will get something else.. I'm sure theres unlimited amout of stuff to do for a website. Think never know.
sure $101 is a little silly but I mean thats everyones money since I'm paid from all the tax payers ;-) also It's some money I don't need right now. Sure I might need it later on but think of the kittens!

I think you take post #1 at face value and decide if you agree with the premise or not and go from there. I know there are those who totally disagree (outraged would be a better word) with this and those who don't care and those who think its a good idea. Some people could be competing, but, who cares except those who compete at it? and for what they are competing for, I wouldn't know. Last time I checked, I wasn't worried what anyone spent their money on, as its none of my business (btw, if you buy Excel BBs your hair will fall out and your balls will shrink...).

As far as accountability of the funds, its a donation and nothing in post #1 is indicating there is any obligation to disclose anything to anyone, or be responsible to anyone for any of it. Again, caveat emptor. If you have expectations of something in return for the donation aside from a little graphic, don't bother donating because you will be disappointed I am sure.

As for the levels, I'm on other forums that do something similar, so from my experience, there is nothing unusual or unique about that. Does it foster competition? I suppose... to those who care about such things.

My suggestion? http://www.realdoll.com/sample12.asp

... oooohhhh Britney....

More kitten Pictures!!!

Thats something I thought I'd never read on an airsoft forum. :lol:

Are they demanding money? No. This is simply allowing users that want to pitch in some money to say thanks. Does it have to do with anyone getting a free ride? I don't think so either.

The vibe I'm getting from your post is that you want something out of your money, but you fail to see that if you do donate, your money is going towards what you're using now: ASC. If your opinion is against that, well you don't have to pay, it's as simple as that.

paypal sent, more will come as i get more $ into my paypal account :nod:

Hojo has dropped a lot of money on this server; a lot. Any one of the mods will tell you he agonized over the decision to ask for donations. In the end however, I am glad to support this site, and Hojo, who has put a lot into it. Tell me where you can get indefinite hosting of 100mb of files for as little as $20, without ads, or other crap. So in the very least, think of it in terms of buying a service, thats a great deal. If that doesn't work for you, just think about all this site has given you for free.

So far as Tru goes, well I already give him my money, so I don't feel bad. ;)

The server, which is OURS aka ASCs.. dedicated.. was purchased for ~$1000 if I'm not mistaken. Miles forked out his OWN money for that.

Where's your money going? Well at the very least it's going to pay for some of that personal expenditure. Already that money has put in to more RAM and theres plans to expand the storage with a backup system as well. Money still comes from other sources (NOT DONATIONS) to host this site, and pay monthly fees and upkeep. All of the mods and admins STILL work for free and all of the effort they put in to the site is volunteer.

I think very few people have ever dumped a thousand dollars on the COMMUNITY here. Some game hosts and such do, but usually there is a bit of recouperation of funds through fees. So if anyone is going to complain about the TOTALLY VOLUNTARY donations, they should probably check to see the last time they gave out a grand for all of us.

Again, these are completely voluntary donations. This is not a pay site, this is not a scam, and your money goes towards improving the boards. I don't give money to the cancer society and expect them to take me out for dinner, but I appreciate the work they do so I help out. If you enjoy using ASC and want to contribute, please do. Many have and we appreciate it. If not? Then who cares? No one is twisting your arm here. We could in theory offer nothing in exchange, but we have the extra webspace and bandwidth so why not give a little something back?

And Don, I recommend that if you are so in doubt of the money involved.. you go do some research about how much it costs to get a dedicated server and tons of bandwidth. Let me know what you find.

Just wanted to say thanks to HoJo and the other admins who have been supporting ASC, in the year I've been a member of this community I've seen nothing but continuous upgrades and added levels of security to prevent hackers from destroying the information stored on here, the added benefits of the site also being updated with new features to make it easier to navigate, search (which were still trying to get most people to do), and most importantly to find information is great. HoJo alone has put countless hours keying in data and code to make these updates happen, if he needs help to buy the hardware to be able to do so, and to help keep this server running as smoothly as possible, then yeah asking for donations is the right thing to do. I was surprised there wasnt a donation or membership fee already in place considering the amount of work already when I first joined last year before the new server upgrade and the change to this vBulletin version.

So to keep this simple, keep up the great work guys!

I was kind of lonely only being 2 platinum members so since I've seen a few more people have it I'm REALLY happy. I bet it would bring a tear to HoJo's eye if even more people showed they cared that much

I agree somewhat with what Future_Sniper said... and he has the right to express his opinion. So relax.

On another note if you paid over a grand for a server, you are mis-managing your money. A dual drive backup rack server on a linux platform will run you less than $700 shipped with PSU and you can get a battery backup for under $100. You're co-lo should provide most of this for you, so the server should be all you need (provided you have a co-lo). For that price, you are running just shy of a half a terrabyte on a 10mbit line.

Doesn't it seem kind of interesting to charge $40 for 250mb of webhosting with ftp access... espsecially if this site does run on a fast line (10mbit +)... with the amount of people that are contributing... you could see your hosting bills go through the roof.

For the person that said go reasearch, dedicated hosting is not that expensive. Burstable WiLan has come down alot over the past 24 months and is available at 5mb and 10mb burstable in your home for much less than t1 or greater. Most people that host via dedicated lines are running hundreds of other hosting contracts to make up for the costs, so its not a huge deal. It would be financial suicide and completely stupid to pay for a dedicated fiber line to run one single website. Instead, a more appropriate application of resources would be in the form of purchasing either dedicated or virtual rackspace from a someone like servermatrix. Your money is better spent there considering you have more than 14 mainframe connections routing your server.

Myself, I run 6 rack servers at q9 in calgary, so unfortunatly I actually know what I'm talking about. I do routing for 4,700 hotels all with 10mbit+ fiber connections worldwide.

Now I'm not saying I have anything against the donations... I feel they are great. I know the actual CODING of the site takes quite a bit of man hours. Hopefully enough gets raised that some really cool new features can be released, and we can start seing some forward moving development very soon.

I myself will probably contribute to the fund as I use this site quite a bit. Miles, you have done some great work on this site. Should you need any assistance in administration or coding the website, I would be glad to sponsor some of my time to your cause.

Memory
 

Depending on what chassis you are running I may be able to help out in the memory area...I can get Compaq memory in various flavour at low low prices (READ: FREE)

Well, to give you an idea, if Tru dropped dead tomorrow, I could run the site for about 3-4 months with the current donations, and then I'd have to bust out my Visa again. That's still alot, because it's expensive to host a site this size.

I'm really amazed with how things have turned out, I had 0 expectations about these donations. Right now we've almost cleared the capital cost of starting the server (which was entirely out of my pocket), and now some will go towards upgrades (another 512MB of ram being added soon), as well as running costs, and there are more software upgrades I'd love to do (hawt auction mebbe?).

Sean and I and all the other mods have been doing this for almost 5 years, and we've never asked for anything. Websites don't run themselves, and everything you see when you log on is the result of so many hours I don't even want to think about it.

And I don't want to think about the money either. I'm not going to ask for subscription fees, or user fees. Whatever people can give, they give. You can donate a fat bag of nothing and the site will continue to run and be maintained for your use, for all I know for another 5 years.



To all the guys that have already donated, I can't thank you enough. You guys care about ASC as much as we do! I guarantee Sean is as pleased as I am. He didn't put any money in, but he's logged hundreds of hours over the years as well, and while we've had plenty of arguments over how to run things, we've both put alot of our time, blood, sweat and tears (he cries like a little girl) into ASC over the years. I get pretty blaze about it sometimes, but seeing guys come out to support what we do for you guys really helps.

So again, thank you guys.

-Miles

:xmas:

Infernal, the server is not at someones home, it's a some server farm somewhere. Having stuff like that installed into one of our basements isn't feasible for what we're doing here. :)

This site runs only 2 websites that support its existence financially. AirsoftCanada and Airsoft-Innovations.

I purchased dedicated hosting, meaning they buy and install the hardware, because I don't have time to go shopping for servers. Would I like to setup a colo? Yes. But I'm not a network administrator, this is just a hobby, I'm not going to change my life just to run this site. The server is located at Ezzi in NY, I don't know why anyone thinks I'm running fiber to my house. I've had to pay for some tech time at the DC, too, because things go wrong now and then.

I don't resell the webspace and I really don't intend to. I consider it a major undertaking to handle someone else's data, and I will not do it unless I feel 100% capable of maintaining the services at a level I would expect from a host (and I have pretty high expectations).

I don't pirate any software on this website. The cost of running ASC includes the cost of purchasing legal software over the last 4 years. That alone has been a fair sum, and even there people have donated licenses (Zeus helped us get started on Vbulletin).

I'm not going to value my time over the last 4 years, but we've gone through 4 complete revisions of the site, as well as dealing with all the community related issues. That's alot of typing and late nights. Coding time over 4 years? I don't even want to think about what it adds up to. I don't care either, it's what we donated towards the airsoft community in Canada. And I didn't do it alone, dozens of people have helped over the years, from the previous admins, to people helping out with all sorts of work, never mind the whole mod staff that spends amazing amount of hours cleaning things up around here.

I purchased a setup that would give me enough bandwidth to keep ASC going for quite awhile. For 4 years we bounced from shared hosting to shared hosting as we got bigger and bigger. I made a long term investment in the site, so the hosting has alot of growth potential. Ideally this server will keep ASC happy for another 2 years, at least, but I won't cross my fingers.

In a perfect world, I would be a professional site admin, and I would value shop all my hosting decisions. But that isn't the case, I'm just an airsofter with a hobbyist approach to computers. Thank Midgetspy for helping get me moving on the Linux server. I know more than when I started, but still basically 0, but somehow ASC manages to keep chugging along, with no ads, no user fees, no subscriptions.

Unfortunately, with my setup, I don't have hardware control over the box, so I buy at their prices (which are actually very reasonable).

[QUOTE=HonestJohn] and now some will go towards upgrades (another 512MB of ram being added soon), as well as running costs, and there are more software upgrades I'd love to do (hawt auction mebbe?).[QUOTE=HonestJohn]

Told ya after he would get extra stuff once its paid for... He did'nt tell me but I mean its commin sence ;-)
Edit: My quote thingy aint working to well, but you know what I mean.

I've got enough bandwidth to cover it, in theory. Honestly I have to hope people go a little gentle on it, I don't mind hot linking, as long as it's not on FARK or SA or something. But donations are not purchasing a contract, I'll provide the space as long as I possibly can. Based on my resources and projections, that should be for the life of this site, which we have no plans of dropping after helping it grow for 5 years.

HoJo, you're a good man and I have absolutely no problem supporting such a project. I know how hard it is to find quality resources for certain communities such as this and I don't want to ever think about having to go without it.
Keep up the great work!

Well that was something I didn't know. I didnt think this site would cost over $1000 to host, which in that case I dont see any problem with donating money myself. I just kinda like to know the facts about everything that goes on at this site before I donate. Sure Im not entilled to it, but no ones entilled to my money either.

Wow infernal, if your group is that cheap and has the services we should talk, as I am looking for a good Canadian co-loc who is reasonable. So far, I have not found a good one at a reasonable $ and co-loc in the States. My experience shows there are usually 'gotchas' somewhere because everyone has to make money in a co-loc or they don't work and go belly up.

I pay a little more for mine for services like hotswapability, nightly backup, UPS (controllable via webpanel) and 24 pageable technician on call on 2 1U card accessable service racks each with 100mbit/s burstable and no bandwidth cap for about $79 USD/mon per 1U. Oh yeah, its a HIPPA compliant data center as well and I need that certification. I own my own hardware (about $5000 worth). So far on problems I've never had to wait longer than 10 minutes for a return of my calls at any time of day. They've also swapped out bad drives for me on my mirrors with my own drives I keep handy there for failures. They also have complete duplicates of my entire hardware setup they can swap into at a moments' notice.

:tup: Thanks, I can not deny the hand that feeds, and I like the occasional spanking too!
No grand schpeechs, just a thansck, from a dutchman schelling pantsch.
Cheersch
Army Issue

Scarecrow, if you want to talk more you can pm me whenever you like. I'm more than happy to help anyone out here.

Miles, if you want some assistance with some adminsitration and design... I can help you with whatever you need. sql admin, posgress integration, html / php coding, skin design.... whatever you want.

:shock:

thanks to everyone who made ASC happen, you guys made airsoft in canada for most of us and made the sport what it is.

alright I'll up the ante!
I'll donate another 100 to what I've already put in if you leave treadstones avatar text thing the exact for as long as he plays :D
Greg

Hahaha! Dont spend money you dont have on ASC, Greg. We want people to buy airsoft too, otherwise there's be no point being here, you've already supported the site and that's cool.

Honestly I don't think Tread is ever going to lose that title, it's just too good.

dah it's all good then.
I'm just letting you guys think I still play, go ask the incountry boys haha.
Greg

New blinging tags courtesy of Phrozen.


Thanks again to everyone who has donated, myself and all the other people that spend time on this site really appreciate it.

My donation is still comming I just got pick up my pay check.

Hojo, you need to make some kind of thermometer thing that show's us how much money you guys have raised and how much you guys need to raise for you goal.

Erik

Donate now you sons of bitches, HoJo hasn't had a crack fix in weeks

Nice work on the tags Phrozen.

this has nothing to do with it, but i also like the new ASC logo, looks much better then the old one.

I like kittens...kittens and mittens

So the guys with the "Gold Member" titles are officially with Dr. Evil?

http://www.austinpowers.com/objects/...bersoffice.jpg

That has been bugging me since I started this. I can't stop thinking about Gold Member...

Money sent

$$ sent

works for me!

Once again HoJo, great idea, and thanks for the hard work.

Lmao! :lol:

oooooh... kitties!
my monies are yours now!

Once I get my credit card in the mail some time this week, I'll send money :) Sweet Credit card. It makes internet shopping/donating so much easier...