As most members know Ickie handled the donation drive for over 10 years. In Ickie's absence we starting the Donation Drive for 2017, but we are a little behind at this time. Normally Ickie has fresh quotes from the hosting service and we know what the next year will cost us. At this point we do not know what our total costs for 2017 will be.

For that reason the amount we are trying to raise is the same as last year. This we expect will cover our bandwidth, hosting service, domain registration, software licensing fees, maintenance costs for both our .com and .net servers.

Since we are in a shrinking community it has proven harder each year to fund both servers. Of the two servers the .com server is our core and is the server we absolutely must retain. If we are uable to fund both servers by the end of January we will strongly consider eliminating the .net server. Like past years that decision is hard to make. The bill for the .net server falls at the beginning of feb and the .com follows at the beginning of March. This is backwards from how we would like it but we have always been able to pull through in the end.

For the new members here is the break down on the functionality of each server.

www.sim-outhouse.com - Linux server - Primary website/forums and file library.

www.sim-outhouse.net - Windows Server - Backup website/forums, TeamSpeak3, FS Host (must run on a Windows server because of Direct Play requirements), Colaboration tool for a small number of developers and .com website/file library backup location.

We look forward to being here for another year.

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum....php?do=donate

Note the forum software is not moving the confirmed donations to the new Charter Member 2017 group. I am manually doing that part. If you don't get moved within a few days PM me.