Server Bills and Information

[shaitan]

It's getting to be that time again folks. I don't know the exact due date on the New Box(that is replacing the 64.31.41.114 PC) nor the Cpanel license. They just say "May 2019" right now. We rented those April 23 & 24th and they are automatic payments, so having the money would be best just in case.

Marathon: $140.29  Due: May 27
Minecraft: $66.67  Due: May 31
New Box:  $84.00
Windows License(new box): $25.00
Website: $15.00   Due: May 31
Cpanel License: $14.00
= $344.96
In paypal(5-22-2019 @ 12:30pm): $92.04
We need: $252.92 before paypal fees.

I would like for us to have an extra $70, so we can rent a different PC to replace the Marathon one next month(month of setting up/load testing).

On the 27th I plan to get the latest Ark saves copied and anything I may have missed, then we can tell Limestone we're no longer renting the 64.31.41.114 PC(the $152.69 one). @ice187dna and @Skilz will be using this time to inform their players about Terraria, Starbound, and TF2 changing to the new IP's.

As some of you have heard by now, the new PC we have was a fucking disaster to get working right, but it works. It'll also save us about $44/month.

State of the Rencorner Union, over.

[shaitan]

Well, that's an interesting turn of events. Limestone wants to keep us and is offering to only charge us $84/month for the life of the server on the 208.115.205.106 PC(instead of the $140.29). This is the one that has the three brand new harddrives. What do you guys think? That's about $15/month more than what we were going to do with NFO server testing.

 

Also, the forums here might be/get broken for you. I upgraded the php to 7.1, and was trying to update the forums(to get the Spam Service for bots working again), but things went haywire and I reverted things(whole thing was broken).

[Joetorp]

Wow, that's $56.29 savings, $675.48/yr,  I think they know they've been screwing us all these years, and when they realize we have looked elsewhere, they come back with a realistic and reasonable offer.  In my opinion, you should give them a counter offer equal to the price we are considering.  If they won't go $15 lower, you should say goodbye and go with the new host.  Saving $180/yr more would be a relief for us. 

We just don't have the support for donations we have had in the past,  It seems like most of the players either don't realize it cost money to keep our community going or they just don't care.  A lousy $5 or $10 isn't much now-a-days. I know we have said it before, it is just getting people to realize that the server isn't free.  Myself, you, ice, Ital, and Manny have donated every month this year (Manny missed Jan.)  It would be great to not be strapped with $380/month to keep the community going. 

Since it is Rob's server, it would be nice if he kicked in some money every month also,  I know he isn't playing, but he owns the community and he should be contributing, and I don't mean just to make up any shortfall.  He should be setting an example for the rest of us by making a monthly donation,  I know I'd feel a lot better seeing him donate, knowing he is showing responsibility, instead he made you co-owner and let you have all the headache of keeping it going, while he takes bragging rights that he owns a gaming server while doing nothing the past few years.

[shaitan]

We currently do not pay anything near what their servers are they charge other people, even before this we paid about half with all of the discounts.

As for Rob: he's never stinted on money when we've needed it(he offered plenty of times during the last couple of years, but when I'd make my monthly post, you guys would come through). The main reason is I don't like owing people, we can do our own payments. Last month he covered what we couldn't(almost $100). I didn't even know it until I was searching our paypal, and then his paypal for an OVH payment today I knew we made; it looks like he automatically paid the host names(.com)we got.

[ice187dna]

To be honest it's the same people who donate all the time. Right now cost is an issue. I'd rather have lower bills than stick to somewhere which might give us a discount for so long that in a few months time take that money back of us. 

Even the donators with the donator ranks don't pitch in anymore. A £5 $5 or €5 is something rather than nothing. I know people may not have income coming in etc and financially not able to but if the same peeps stopped donating then everything would go offline within a month.

Lowering cost's should be the main priority, what happens if myself or manny lose our jobs? That will be 50 -100 in donations gone right there and who will pick that up? There is more than one place which can host our servers, not just Limestone.

 

[shaitan]

They lowered the price again. Marathon pc will cost us $75/month now. 

[Joetorp]

Down from $140.29?  Boy we've been getting screwed.  However, thank God for the capitalistic system and competition.

[Manuel857]

30 minutes ago, Joetorp said:

Down from $140.29?  Boy we've been getting screwed.  However, thank God for the capitalistic system and competition.

For real LOL

[shaitan]

We have what they have termed the clearance servers, I'm good with clearance ones. If I had known about those before all of this, we could've just changed the 64 pc to one of those. When I was talking with @ExEric3 yesterday, we found another section I didn't know about that doesn't include that first link: 2nd new one there

Oh well, it's too late for that now. Technically our drives are still there, they offered to plug them in, in case we missed anything.

[Joetorp]

Soooo...How much did we save overall?

[shaitan]

After we had to move the forum webserver and pay the extra for the Cpanel license: $388.63

We should now be paying: $279.64 +/- $3 IP(we haven't been charged recently on it).

[Joetorp]

Nice, a hundred bucks is a big help!  Now, how does that compare with the host you were looking at?

[shaitan]

Well, $66 for what I was planning. 

[fratboy]

amd I the only one having connection problems? both here and on the server?

[shaitan]

What server? If you mean Teamspeak: it's screwed right now. We may end up paying for a license, we've always had the Non-Profit one.

[fratboy]

seems to have fixed it's self. I was talking about MC. Couldn't play on the server at all and the forums wouldn't load. It's all good now though

[Sean]

Glad to see we'll be making some quite substantial savings. Great work to all involved and a massive thank you to you guys for keeping the server going.

With the birth of my 3rd child (26/05/19) and a job change I'm mindful of how much I'm spending at the minute. When things calm down I'll try and make a regular donation.

[Animoski]

5 hours ago, Sean said:

Glad to see we'll be making some quite substantial savings. Great work to all involved and a massive thank you to you guys for keeping the server going.

With the birth of my 3rd child (26/05/19) and a job change I'm mindful of how much I'm spending at the minute. When things calm down I'll try and make a regular donation.

Congrats!

[shaitan]

Teamspeak is back up after paying $55/year license. Get to used to Discord though(myself included :/ ) this year, we won't be having TS next year.

[Manuel857]

2 hours ago, shaitan said:

Teamspeak is back up after paying $55/year license. Get to used to Discord though(myself included :/ ) this year, we won't be having TS next year.

Yikes what a waste of money xD

[Animoski]

If all I needed to do was send an e-mail out or something and save the community $55 - why wouldn't you have me do that? 
Would've taken maybe 5 minutes. 

FWIW Teamspeak has been money hungry for as long as I remember, even back in early ts2 days - if they heard you hosted 2 servers, one for your community
and 1 for a clan or something, they would want like I forgot, ~$200-$300 ?

[shaitan]

I wanted it tied to Rencorner, not one of us. Things happen, I don't want the next guy/girl after us to run into the same problem. From what I was seeing during my searching on their forum; they were kicking people off of those last year, we just got lucky I didn't update the server until this May.

Idk, I am just angry. Everytime I think we're saving some money to keep things afloat for abit longer, someone wants more for something lately.