Recent changes, confusion and a sniff of controversy

[The Old Man]

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions…

This weekend, more than twenty years after creating and paying for this community site, I made a last ditch effort to keep this long dying but highly treasured community operating from a financial perspective by creating mandatory subscriptions for NEW members only, as the site and servers cost me a fortune every month and I’ve had no regular income since 2017.

Many will recall that I have previously tried Google Ads (that everyone hates and blocks anyway), Amazon DVD affiliates programs (that are a waste of time because modern websites don’t pass the referrer urls anymore by default). We’ve also tried PayPal donations and had a couple over the years. We’ve tried due to popular request bringing back Baz’s lovely episode inspired t-shirt designs which I thought would be an ideal solution, but sales are rare and practically non-existent. I couldn't even return his kindness with a free product or two and I confess I have never afforded a purchase myself.

So the intention was to introduce this to new members whilst honouring our existing members, the subscription options for them being completely optional. Guests/visitors would still see most of the site as always.

I didn’t email or post about the new subscriptions as we’ve tried them before (they were optional but failed to generate enough interest), but mainly because as it only effected new and future members, there was nobody I needed to inform, besides explaining what they are and why we have them on the registration page.

Unfortunately, despite doing a dry run and testing, I used the incorrect setting this time without realising it (purely my fault) and it meant all members past and future had to buy a plan when next signing in.

Secondly, because it’s been years since we added new groups, I forget to add the new permissions to the Chatbox which are completely separate as it’s a third party add on. This didn’t help!

Combined, this meant an existing member signing-in since Saturday afternoon would be met with a page suddenly asking them to choose a subscription plan and some members couldn’t even see the Chatbox.

Normally when something rarely goes awry, someone would contact me of such an error using the contact form or my personal email address if I hadn’t already spotted and fixed it already.

As you may know, the minimum price we can set is dictated by the payment processing companies so they started at a low $10 for 6 months. Personally, I know that we’re all broke and struggling but I think that’s great value and affordable twice a year. Other sites insist on more than that per month.

The other issue you may have read about, is that my genuine mistake gave a member the wrong impression that suddenly all of their downloads were now permanently behind a ‘paywall’, for everyone without warning.

This was never the intention, our 650+ existing members would still have been able to download them just as before, and new members too but admittedly new members would need a paid site account for some downloads and file submitters may have some thoughts about that.

We have the functionality to charge for downloads, and also for members to be able charge by themselves for their downloads and the site would be given a small commission. We’ve never implemented this, and I wouldn’t do it for script downloads for a number of reasons especially as they aren’t my property to sell and hosting them is potentially risky anyway without consent from media corporations.

So I humbly apologise for any confusion caused to existing members who tried to log in since Saturday evening (UK time) and this morning. Existing members don’t need a subscription unless they want one. New members are most welcome but I have now removed the 12 month plan option because the site may close in the next few months and I will need to refund them pro-rata.

[The Old Man]

A quick follow up to this recent drama, unfortunately I discovered that all of the members scripts concerned had been replaced with alternative content and the descriptions defaced with criticism of the site. I have deleted the uploads and will consider the continued hosting of scripts over the next week or so. Meanwhile the member has been banned from the site.

On a more positive note, I have received kind consent to retain one of the other member’s scripts should the repository make a return.

[The Old Man]

Here’s an example of a leech

aka someone who leeches:

A person joins our community and grabs all the goodies. Despite downloading more than a Gigabyte of files, they’ve never contributed 1 post, not a quick hello or a thank you, much less a micro donation. They didn’t even bother to make a profile.

Changes are coming. The Time Is Near.

[Gotham Gal]

I'm among those who doesn't fully know the time and effort or expense of maintaining websites, but it's definitely appreciated Old Man.

[The Old Man]

Thanks @Gotham Gal much appreciated.

Yes, costs can vary and as sites get larger you obviously need more performance, increased storage, better security, professional software licences increase etc, so the costs continue to rise. All the hidden costs add up too, most things online are in US dollars, so my bank extorts currency exchange fees on everything coming in and out.

Every now and again tech comes along that helps move the goal posts back sometimes in our favour, like being able to offload bulk images and files to cloud storage and Cloudflare has been excellent in terms of performance and security. Nothing is truly free though, you often need paid add-one and we ideally need a Cloudflare Pro account. 

You would be amazed at the constant, indiscriminate automated hacking attempts made every minute at the server, mostly from Russia, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, even seen threats rise from Netherlands and the US lately.

This site started as a hobby for me and in my 20’s I could afford it. But it has snowballed over time. In 2017 my team and I were thrown under the bus so my income ended. For the past 5 years, I’m ashamed to say my partner has funded everything, which is unfair and unsustainable, so this is why I’ve tried to encourage donations and subscriptions, plus she cannot continue after the next few months.

[davidmarx2000]

That’s why a bought a shirt earlier this year to defray some costs. I hope that helps. That said, I will gladly give a donation soon.