SOS CookingBites Donation Drive

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

Until now CookingBites has very kindly been hosted for free by its original owner and founder, Shaun. Unfortunately, for personal reasons, from the end of October he will no longer be able to continue to do this. We would like to thank Shaun for the tremendous support he has given freely over the last 9 years. Without his technical knowledge and expertise CookingBites would not be what it is today.

However, to continue forward, we need to find a new home and we will need to fund it ourselves.

Members will be aware that the moderator team members and myself, the site owner, SatNavSaysStraightOn give our time freely. Due to the fact that the site is a small community and the increasing use of ad blockers, the site has negligible income from advertising.

Right now, best estimates are that we need to be generating £50-60 (US$80/AU$55) per month in order for CookingBites to be rehomed and survive. The more we generate, the better/faster the hosting we can afford to purchase which will help to increase the speed of the site.

Simply put, without a new home and the necessary ongoing financial support to maintain it, CookingBites could cease to exist after October 2021. That is the last thing myself or the moderator team want but we need your help please.

To that end, we are asking each of you to consider lending your support, either through a recurring monthly contribution or an occasional offering/one-time gift to keep CookingBites alive and thriving. We are a close-knit neighbourhood of friends from around the world, and that's something worth keeping!

We'd like to thank each and everyone of you for your continued support of CookingBites.

Emma
(on behalf of the CookingBites moderator team.)

Edit: there's a discussion thread here. The forum future after October

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

A little technical translation

All websites on the internet have a real-life "bricks and mortar" home somewhere in the world. (OK, usually steel... but you get the idea.) Typically this is in a large data center ("home") with good fast internet access, 24/7 support staff, airconditioning, redundant hardware, an exceptionally reliant electricity supply, backup facilities etc.

These centres rent out space on their servers so hosting websites such as CB. Data centres sell "virtual private servers" with different levels of speed, memory, disk space and very importantly traffic allowances or data caps. (All VPS means is that whilst you are sharing the physical server hardware with other subscribers, the space you rent is just for you and only you have access to it.) Some include free backups and managed operating system solutions so you can go in and install and configure the website/forum from the get go. It's the same idea as buying a new laptop and being able to turn it on and it work immediately rather than seeing a message say 'no operating system found'.