In the thread below about the slowness of the site recently and about how I was thinking about moving to a hosting company to serve it, Zita comments that I should ask for donations to help defray the cost of the move. The last time I rattled the tin cup was last spring and you were all very generous, and I wasn’t planning on doing it again. Frankly, it didn’t seem necessary at this point.
But it’s looking like if I want do this move right I’m going to have to pay a guy to do some of the backend programming (I want to upgrade to the latest version of the software running the site, which is a non-trivial task, preparing it for many years of blogging to come.)
Now, I’m hesitant to ask for donations right now for one particular reason: Mark Shea has just begun his quarterly pledge drive today and I really don’t want to siphon donations from him. He’s asking for donations to support his family; I just need help maintaining this site.
So here’s what I’m proposing. If you are able to give only to one blogger now and are inclined to give to Mark, then I would urge you to do so. If you were not planning to give a donation to Mark or if you’re able to make two donations, then I’ll gladly accept whatever help you can give. If you can’t make a donation at all, then your well wishes and prayers are just as welcome.
I don’t want anyone to be made to feel that if they don’t give a donation that they aren’t welcome to read or post comments. That’s just not true. Everyone is welcome here regardless and I make no account of whether they have given or not.
So if you want to donate, you can either click on the “Make a Donation” link at the top left of the main page or you can drop a check in the mail, made out to me, and send it to:
Bettnet Enterprises, Inc.
203 Washington Street
PMB#262
Salem, MA 01970
What kind of software are you running now? It looks pretty elaborate.
I moved to phpwebsite (with a custom blog module I wrote) after 2 months on blogger and I’ve never looked back.
Things have been pretty snappy for me since.
I have noticed that your blogads sometimes take an inordinately long time to load the pictures. I have shut off the pictures with firefox, and things seem to be moving a lot faster.
If there’s anything I can do to help, please let me know.
I use WordPress, which has a lot of plugins developed by their user community. I can recommend it, but I would caution you about any move during the peak of the shopping season. Look at your own usage patterns in the context of the general glut on the web.
I’m using pmachine pro now and am in the process of moving to Expression Engine, which is from the same company. I would rather stay within the pmachine/EE family because I own a licence already and I’m familiar with it (and they will help me bring all my archives into the new software, something I don’t think I could do as easily if I moved to another system.)
The blog ad images are served from the blogads.com site and I think the slow response time of their server is affecting my load times.
Fr. Larry,
I’m not sure what you mean. Why would the peak of the shopping season prevent me from upgrading my software and moving to a new web host?
(I don’t plan on moving to the new webhost until after the new year anyway.)
Around 10 GB, I think.