The background
Just over 2 years ago Erwin (screen name fate12) offered to host this forum on his company's server. The hosting was brilliant and all was well.
Then Erwin found himself selling his company and we needed to migrate to a new home, so Chris (screen name mobthehop) took over the migration to a commercial hosting company, DreamHost. I paid the $220 or so for the basic package to last for two years. Not a lot, in the scheme of things.
A couple of weeks ago, we started to notice a degradation of our forum's performance. This reached such epic proportions last weekend that most of us were unable to access the site at all.
Tommaso (screen name milanese) stepped in. Tommaso has run his own forums in the past and knows a lot about handling the 'back end' of a site. After considerable investigation, he decided our forum needed to move to a dedicated server package costing not many dollars short of $1,800 US for a year.
In a breathtaking act of generosity, Tommaso stumped up for the entire year out of his own pocket. After I announced this, George (screen name cuzgeorge) sent me $1,000 US to send to Tommaso in an equally breathtaking act of generosity. You can read the thread at http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... 052#p82052 with the follow up post announcing George's contribution at http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... 097#p82097.
Read the thread guys. It will make you feel good.
Subsequent events
During Tommaso's investigations he studied the server logs and discovered that the dramatic slowdown over the weekend was caused by an attack. This is not as daft as it seems; there are any number of disgruntled/malicious dimwits who are insanely jealous of/frightened by our forum's success. He now has some suspect IP addresses for the perpetrator and will report him/her to the police in the relevant country if he can also track down an identity.
Tommaso's intervention has resulted in a dramatic improvement in the speed at which events transpire here. He has not finished.
What he wants to do next is is add a double layer of dedicated server power and a professional security package. His comment was that this will bring SHF to a level of performance and security of sites such as FF. Total annual cost c. $5,400.
Future funding for this forum
Before launching into a description of what we have set up, here are my pledges:
- this forum will remain independent of Forex brokerage firms. Yes, I champion Global Prime because they are true brokers, are honest, open, transparent and genuinely caring of their clients. I would not allow them to make payments for this forum that would tie it to them. Jem would not attempt to make any such payment under any such condition; he values SHF's independence.
- this forum will not become a receptacle for any other forms of advertising. Trust me guys, if I wanted to make cash out of advertising on this site I would already be making a fortune; the offers come in weekly. Thing is, I loathe advertising and simply will not allow it here.
So, instead we are going to rely on donations from our membership. Do the sums in your own heads and you will see that tiny individual contributions from everyone is all that is required to secure our financial future into the future.
To this end, Shelley (screen name fxozgirl of BASA fame) has set up a Paypal account to receive contributions to our fighting fund. She has kindly agreed to be the Administrator of the account. In future, when Tommaso needs to pay a bill for running the back end of this site this is what will happen:
- Tommaso will send the account to Shelley.
- Shelley will send it to me for approval
- Once approved, Shelley will pay the bill out of the Paypal account.
Every two (four?) weeks, Shelley will publish here a balance of the account listing donations and payments out - again to maintain transparency.
We are hoping to be able to print a 'Donate' button here but this is not so simple as you might imagine as Paypal only allows this for donations to special causes such as disaster relief appeals. She is going to talk to them about this.
In the meantime, the Paypal account is stevehopwoodforex@gmail.com and the account name is Shelley.
Bottom line
At the mo, I am not entirely sure if this post makes total sense. It may change dramatically once Shelly and Tommaso get their pruning shears out. In the meantime, the main point is: donate to Paypal account is stevehopwoodforex@gmail.com; account name Shelley.
Current balance
$1339.78 USD
