Dear members and guests
CF is almost 3 years old.
Since its inception, the community has grown exponentially, until today it stands as the world's largest online Christian community, with the largest number of posts and members for a Christian site. We are also ranked no. 17 out of all forum sites on the net. We are almost hitting 10 million posts and constantly have over 1,000 users online during peak times.
This means that our hardware and thus our running costs have been increasing as well.
Since its beginning, CF had never had any advertising or external sponsorship. No banner ads, nothing. I have always held the belief that I can afford to do this on my own, with the help of donations from members.
However, since the early days, CF has grown to require multiple top-of-the-range dedicated servers with its own private network, with separate database, web and image servers. CF has a combined monthly bandwidth quota of 6000 Gigabyes. Yes. 6000. It is being run by a total combined number of 10 Pentium IV CPUS. Yes. 10.
All these require money. I currently spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on hosting fees, hardware upgrades, software licenses etc. every month. The donations do help, but they do not cover the costs. I am not even including the countless hours I spend maintaining the servers, administrating the site, modifying and programming the software as well as managing the staff who are all volunteering their time.
Although CF is big, all the background maintenance is done by 1 person - me.
Anyway, the time has come for me to see if I can get CF to pay for itself a bit more.
I am currently trialing Google text ads - I only get paid if a visitor clicks on a link.
I am still NOT going to have image banner ads of any sort - only unobtrusive text ads.
I have to say that compared to many other large forums, the small text ads I have placed are still small and should not be in any way a distraction.
NOTE: Site Supporters do NOT see any of these text ads.
However, Site Supporters can go to their User CP, Options, go down to the last option and choose "No" to see the text ads.
I hope you understand why I am testing these Google text ads - if I don't get more financial support to keep CF running, CF may not be financially viable to keep online.
Please pray that God will provide in any case.
Thank you for your understanding, support and prayers.
CF is almost 3 years old.
Since its inception, the community has grown exponentially, until today it stands as the world's largest online Christian community, with the largest number of posts and members for a Christian site. We are also ranked no. 17 out of all forum sites on the net. We are almost hitting 10 million posts and constantly have over 1,000 users online during peak times.
This means that our hardware and thus our running costs have been increasing as well.
Since its beginning, CF had never had any advertising or external sponsorship. No banner ads, nothing. I have always held the belief that I can afford to do this on my own, with the help of donations from members.
However, since the early days, CF has grown to require multiple top-of-the-range dedicated servers with its own private network, with separate database, web and image servers. CF has a combined monthly bandwidth quota of 6000 Gigabyes. Yes. 6000. It is being run by a total combined number of 10 Pentium IV CPUS. Yes. 10.
All these require money. I currently spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on hosting fees, hardware upgrades, software licenses etc. every month. The donations do help, but they do not cover the costs. I am not even including the countless hours I spend maintaining the servers, administrating the site, modifying and programming the software as well as managing the staff who are all volunteering their time.
Although CF is big, all the background maintenance is done by 1 person - me.
Anyway, the time has come for me to see if I can get CF to pay for itself a bit more.
I am currently trialing Google text ads - I only get paid if a visitor clicks on a link.
I am still NOT going to have image banner ads of any sort - only unobtrusive text ads.
I have to say that compared to many other large forums, the small text ads I have placed are still small and should not be in any way a distraction.
NOTE: Site Supporters do NOT see any of these text ads.
However, Site Supporters can go to their User CP, Options, go down to the last option and choose "No" to see the text ads.
I hope you understand why I am testing these Google text ads - if I don't get more financial support to keep CF running, CF may not be financially viable to keep online.
Please pray that God will provide in any case.
Thank you for your understanding, support and prayers.