Postby wayne » Fri May 29, 2009 11:35 pm
I've just received an email from Marisa that discusses Scamdigger. Let me explain the situation right now. It was compiled on the old version of the operating system the site's server runs on, and when we did the upgrade we knew that it would have to be recompiled. It's not just a matter of reinstalling the software tho. It would have to reindex all the photographs as well. That's close to 100,000 photographs. However, there's another, much bigger issue, and that's the server itself. Two years ago, when the site was placed on the server it's on now, we never dreamed it would use up even a fraction of the resources it's using right now. As the site's grown and new tools like Scamdigger have been added to it, we're at the point where we're rapidly outgrowing the server. We desperately need to move to a better server, but this costs money. To upgrade would cost us an extra $500 a year, on top of what's being paid already. One idea we're seriously discussing now is to ask for people to agree to a small monthly donation from their bank or Paypal accounts, say a minimum of $5 a month, or a larger amount to cover a year's sponsorship. Anyone that does this would have a new custom title, "RomanceScam Sponsor" and their name would show up in a different color on the forums to represent their status. We'd also have a running total to show how much has been raised. How would people feel about "sponsoring" the sites for a small monthly fee? It's only a small amount each month, and it helps us to save victims from losing thousands of dollars to the scammers.
The reality is that without donations to be able to move to a new server, it's highly likely we may not be able to bring Scamdigger back at all, and the site may suffer constant downtimes due to us reaching our server limits.
<UPDATE>
Now we've raised the money for this year, let's not stop. All the money raised in the next 12 months will go toward helping to cover the fees for the year after. Every cent you give goes to keep this site running and both fighting scammers and offering support and advice to the victims of scammers.
Last edited by wayne on Fri Jun 05, 2009 5:53 pm, edited 6 times in total.