As of today, we have a total of $2,580 (rounded to the nearest ten). The donators in no particular orders are:

Bronze: thatwasawkward, jamiet99uk, peregrine falcon, chumbles, thegatso, kokodarick, lamson, ndwyvern, MadMarx,

Silver: Hannibal76, eturnage, twinsnation, Dshopper, CommanderByron, Pepijn, (anonymous donor)

Gold: MKECharlie, eliwhitney, (anonymous donor)

Platinium: swordsman3003, Doug7878, Hellenic Riot, flash2015, Creigh

Adamantium: zultar, jmo1121109, The Hanged Man

Thank you to those who have donated so far! I am working on adding ways that people can donate.

Please guys, donate as you can. This is our big push to get more features for the site and improve many of the functionalities that we need and want. I think we will keep this drive going until the end of February, maybe mid March.

25% of goal in under a month is not a bad rate of donation. Especially if people decide not to one-time donate. I plan on making regular donations so hopefully that helps.

@Zultar (aka Z-Money) When will you end the donation drive? when is our cut off? If i may suggest atleast giving us 6 months?? I know I plan on making monthly donations and I would hate for this to stop before I can contribute my maximum.

Also you should consider keeping it open long enough to allow for donations after US players get back their tax refunds. :) I for one will likely put a decent bit of that into webdip.

Rise

Are there going to be other methods of payment available in the future or is it only PayPal?

As of today, we have a total of $3,220 (rounded to the nearest ten). The donators in no particular orders are:

Bronze: thatwasawkward, jamiet99uk, peregrine falcon, chumbles, thegatso, kokodarick, lamson, ndwyvern, MadMarx,

Silver: Hannibal76, eturnage, twinsnation, Dshopper, CommanderByron, Pepijn, (anonymous donor)

Gold: MKECharlie, eliwhitney, (anonymous donor)

Platinium: swordsman3003, Doug7878, Hellenic Riot, flash2015, Creigh, rdrivera2005, bo_sox48, Balki Bartokomous, mscott, RoadHog

Adamantium: zultar, jmo1121109, The Hanged Man

Thank you to those who have donated so far! I am working on adding ways that people can donate.

Please guys, donate as you can. This is our big push to get more features for the site and improve many of the functionalities that we need and want. I think we will keep this drive going until the end of May, after tax returns as some have suggested! :)

Of course I'll consider donation.
By the way, is it really necessary to rethink the forum? Considering the actual one it'll be made almost from scratch. Why don't use an already made one (phpBB or others) with just a script that permits to drive both site and forum with one user account (already done in the past)?
It'll spare time and effort to think about new features for the Diplomacy.
This forum could be anyway used as a blog for moderator communications, or as a closed forum for technical issues like in other webdiplomacy versions.

I don't know where to post this as I am not a thread person.
Why is Known World not available? Will it come back? The tease is too much I needed something fresh and now its gone.

@KANG_Sev is was too full of undocumented problems sorry we're working towards a different solution.

@alexintour
The reason the forum needs updating is because it causes problems with some of the underlying code of the site. The way it is coded now, the site isn't able to be expanded to accommodate more features and players, since the it needs constant maintenance in order to keep it functioning properly. Fixing the forum allows the rest of the site to be expanded and developed further. While fixing the forum is the top priority, other features will be pursued as well.

jmo explains it well in the second post on page two of the thread.
http://www.webdiplomacy.net/forum.php?threadID=1430976&page-thread=2#threadPager

Has any work been done on finding a dev or are you waiting until you reach your goal?

^?

We have a lead. :)

I'm working a few things out to see if it will work. Once I have a solid idea and fairly certain that it will work, I will let everyone know.

Cool. I've been asking around, but haven't found anything good enough to pass along. If you want help reviewing candidates, just let me know. I have a lot of experience hiring engineers in the software field.

Out of curiosity, how much money does it take to host a site like WebDip annually?

This had become wicked obnoxious to find:

Bronze: $1+
Silver: $25+
Gold: $50+
Platinum: $100+
Adamantium: $500+

What about a redesign? I am a designer I could make some draws...

Please feel free. Member contributions are always welcome.

Haven't kept up with this thread until now. Checked out the code again after not having looked at it for a while, was amused that the latest commit to forum.php is from my small bit a year ago to stop double posts. Going to contemplate this issue.

The updates are provided below. In terms of developers, I think I have some very good news. After a series of discussions, I've been able to convince Kestas to take about a week or so off of work to do the bulk of the updates for the site. Since he's taking time off of work to do this, we feel that it is reasonable that we reimburse him for his time off. Fortunately, he's agreed to a very generous per hourly rate (I'm not sharing that) to do the development work for us. He also knows the site codes better than anyone so we will also not lose time on a new developer getting up to date. The plan that Kestas and I have is that he'll take off sometimes in the summer to do the bulk of the development. We will also use some of the money to update on our site services to accommodate the new changes. Due to his generosity in his hourly rate, we may have enough to do the site updates barring any major unforeseen difficulties. If we can get to $4,000 or $5,000, that would give us a nice buffer in case things don't go as we expect (which for those in programming know will probably happen sooner or later).

In short, Kestas will do the site development work for us this summer. Our new updated goal is to raise $4000 or $5000, which should be sufficient to do the bulk of what we want.



As of today, we have a total of $3,370 (rounded to the nearest ten). The donators in no particular orders are:

Bronze: thatwasawkward, jamiet99uk, peregrine falcon, chumbles, thegatso, kokodarick, lamson, ndwyvern, MadMarx, (anonymous donor),

Silver: Hannibal76, eturnage, twinsnation, Dshopper, CommanderByron, Pepijn, (anonymous donor), grumbledook, nodnyl, alexintour,

Gold: MKECharlie, eliwhitney, (anonymous donor), dargorygel

Platinium: swordsman3003, Doug7878, Hellenic Riot, flash2015, Creigh, rdrivera2005, bo_sox48, Balki Bartokomous, mscott, RoadHog

Adamantium: zultar, jmo1121109, The Hanged Man

Thank you to those who have donated so far! I am working on adding ways that people can donate.

Please guys, donate as you can. This is our big push to get more features for the site and improve many of the functionalities that we need and want. I think we will keep this drive going until the end of May, after tax returns as some have suggested! :)

That sounds like a great solution for everyone. I know he doesn't come by much anymore but send him our thanks for keeping the site running despite not playing.

Really exciting news :). Can't wait to see what comes of it.

Many thanks to the donors and doers!

That list seems to be a bit short. :|

Easy way to fix that, peterlund...

Thanks to everyone who's donated.

That list started right after you donated, peter. I've added you to the list though. If anyone else donated but did not receive a donator badge or a direct thank you note from me, please let me know and forward the donation email. There is a rare chance that the paypal notification doesn't go to me but Kestas receives the money anyway, and I would like to correct that whenever I can.

I have had an account here for several years. But, I have not played here before. I expect this to change in the next week or so.

Everyone has their own preferences for interfaces. And, people hate change. But, when I went looking for online sites to play Diplomacy, the minimalistic forum and pm systems here were a bit of a turnoff. Again, this is a personal preference not a disparagement.

As the this site is open source, why not integrate other open source systems that specialize in the functionality you want/need? There are a number of perfectly reasonable open source Forum systems. Most also include PM system.

Likewise, an open source wiki would be good. I have found that when you only have a forum, things that really below in a wiki get stuck in the forum and is not as accessible.

As a coder myself, I know integration can be tricky. But, I think focusing your development resources on your core Diplomacy systems makes more sense. Just my thoughts.

Best regards,
Carebear

How to make a "quick" $10k

1) Make a hobby website
2) Stop developing
3) ???
4) Profit

Seriously, though, I'm very glad to hear that it's kestas who will be doing the work. Not only is it well deserved for all the enjoyment we've all gotten from his site, but I'm confident he's the most qualified person to make these improvements. Looking forward to it!

Also, what do I have to do to get Pure on here? PM me a number.

Thanks again for all the donations and kind words guys. The limit really is time to develop, not because I've got no free time but because it's really hard to carry on doing your day job after work.

I'm hoping a bit of an incentive can entice back other hobbyist developers at low rates, like Tim, but as others have said I think getting a professional developer would have too little bang for buck.


I've spent today getting a dev server set up and getting webDip working with the new PHP version that has come out, and now I'm getting ready to take a backup so I can work with the actual database. Hopefully over the next couple of days I've got off from work I'll be able to get a minor feature or two out to get the ball rolling.