Please upgrade the servers

vidlee wrote: I didn't know I was asking for so much. Just a goal number would be appreciated and would be amotivator to some people.

Actually, we have a quite well defined goal: We want to move to a more reliable server at an offshore location so that German laws no longer apply. The USA are no option since US laws would then apply. So, we were thinking of Panama or Caribean Islands...

Moving to Panama would cost (just as an example; Panamaserver might not be a wise choice, though): www.panamaserver.com...confproduct&i=0

Anything below a dualcore is out of question. Optimum would be a quadcore. Our bandwidth usage is at .75 TB/month.

Missywonder wrote: I actually don't have the actual number or a goal number, only the owner of the site will be able to elaborate further on this. As soon as I further information I could post you an update.

Out:
Currently, we pay round about 50 €/month for the server and about the same for maintenance. An additional 20 €/month can be accounted for by misc. spendings.
Further, once in a while Caroline wants to encourage mods and admins, so she buys some presents for their work from the money donated. With “presents” I do not mean “a new computer,” but more something like a pack of mochi or other Asian foods.

In:
No idea, this Caroline needs to answer.

califmediziner wrote: Use crowd funding sites like Kickstarter to help finance upgrades and to promote the site.

And which crowd would we as the crowdfunder target? Crowdsourcing (of which crowdfunding is a derivate) only works when offering a propper reward. Currently, Caroline is not planning to turn the site into a business, because then the site needs to target market margins, etc.... It would turn the entire concept of a nice civil/private community upside-down.

kensup wrote: There is an alternative solution to upgrading the servers -- optimizing the codebase. I can guarantee that the Joomla code being used and the database queries are inefficient -- not to mention that PHP is just an inefficient language in general, when compared to the likes of Python, Java, etc.

In laymen's terms, reduce resource usage instead of increasing the resource pool.

As we have told you: Who is going to do the programming? And who is going to pay this programmer? With which money?
Lot's of people say, there is no problem to modifying some Joomla plugins. Then we grant them access to just a fraction of the code, and suddenly, there is no more reply from them. Nada. Seems, as if they were overwhelmed by the task... And now image, poor Kari fights Joomla everyday, but not for money. So, normally Kari’s day looks like this: Get up, go to work, return home, do some Hey-Ai stuff till late at night.


The other obvious solution would be to change the CMS. But, we have given this some thinking, and the features we require are only available with proprietary CMSs, which leads back to the questions “who is going to pay this?” and “with which money?”