It is time to move the imageboard to a dedicated host and other profound thoughts

[Tentacle Rape]

We have outgrown our current host so I believe that it is time to move the site to a dedicated host. If we do so, I will need for the imageboard and forums to generate enough revenue to keep me from going into my pocket to keep the site afloat. I am considering setting up a Paypal account and asking for donations to help offset my costs. If everyone would donate a few dollars a month, we could be on a dedicated server.

Another issue I would like everyone's thoughts about is the platform we are currently using for our imageboard. We currently use Shimmie2 but that software is fairly processor intensive. I am considering changing the imageboard software to the same software that 4Chan.org uses. I would keep an install of Shimmie2 to host the images we now have but all new images would go into the 4Chan-style imageboard.


Thoughts?

[Poplatino44]

I agree, but one thing, 4chan is flooded by ads and the site is hard to navigate. Are we going to be overwhelmed by ads also?

[The Shadow of Death]

i prefer something more like what we have now for galleries versus that of 4chan, for the simple fact that if you enlarge a picture you have to go back to the previous page to go to the next one, unlike ours was, where you just hit next...
thats just the way i see it...

[The Shadow of Death]

i also understand pop's concern on the ads. we had the one, 4chan has quite a lot(comparativly).

[Gelatinous]

So long as we don't adopt the 4chan community, harhar.

I agree with Ricardo though, mass ads would not be good.

[Tentacle Rape]

I have no intention of adding "mass ads" but I may have to do something to help pay for hosting so ads are not out of the question.

[Desert_Wolf]

The paypal idea seems the most ideal to set up, I know you can have it dedicated to set donation amount as well, like 1, 5, 10, 20$'s so that is probably within reason.

In regards to swapping over to the same coding that 4chan uses, there is certainly better out there, might want to do a good bit of hunting before deciding exactly on where to head with it.

[Azrael]

I don't know a whole lot about server software, and nothing about 4chan, but personally I would like to see the image board divided into categories, rather than being essentially one long list.

[The Shadow of Death]

i agree with that, it would make finding what you want to see easier than having to go on incomplete tags.

[Oreos627]

I think that ads would be alright. As long as they aren't like the ads at Lu. scio. us where they pop up at random in the middle of the image. As for the format, I liked the way it is. It's always a surprise. You can always type in the catagory in the search box.

[The Shadow of Death]

honestly i could never use the search... but thankfully there was the list of tags.

[Poplatino44]

So, what happened?

[Lilitu]

I HATE 4CHAN STYLE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS!!! :( This is so much better with tags to be able to search for specific things or even multiple ones at once and comments and the nice discussion and everything :( the "imageboard" style is just so messy and ugly and hard to look at lots of stuff at once

I would not mind ads and I think you could probably self-fund the site with ads since you have such a wellknown domain name tentaclerape.net ! If anything you should set up a www.chipin.com account to try and get tentaclerape.com then you would definitely be able to self-fund with advertising and not have to worry about people digging their pockets all the time

[Lilitu]

Just thought I'd say the fact that this place is NOT 4chan style is one of it's main attractions, the internet is full of sites like that and like I said before they are just horrible not fit for purpose really, the main reason they exist is for posting fire and forget stuff anonymously, not for collecting stuff that is actually meant to be kept and be able to be searched etc hehe

Anyway, please see my post here:
http://tentaclerapeforums.com/showthread.php?226-Missing-in-action-%28&p=17719#post17719

Seems like quite a few people got concerned with the site going down, have you thought more about the ideas I posted there ^ and you mentioned before on this thread such as donations? Could be cool to have stuff on the main site which has much more readers and not just here - and yeah, you really need to get some backup people in case anything ever happens to you, hope nothing does, but yeah should think about how the whole place could just disappear forever if you run out of money etc. Plus you shouldn't really have to pay for everyone else's fun out of your own pocket anyway, makes us feel guilty. :)
Also maybe a small wide but not tall banner advertising the forum would be good to get more people on here, it's kind of a hidden gem at the moment with no button and the link to the forum not even in a different colour etc :) It makes the site seem quieter/less used than it actually is, because the comments on the main site are ridiculooouslyy busy :)