The last time a news post was made with a title like this was
RMRK, its finances and you, just over a year ago, so it's a good time for an update.
RMRK's running costs have infact decreased since then. This is down to a few things:
- Resource usage; switching to a more advanced searching method more than halved the daily average load (almost as much activity from members' actions are from guests/members searching). Also of help were some database tweaks (switching the heavier tables to InnoDB, for the nerdier crowd) and the setup of eAccelerator.
- Our server provider beefed up their offerings for each particular price point, you may remember a news post about how we lowered usage and at the same time ended up with more available on a lower option. I might write a praise post about them sometime in the future.
RMRK has always been totally free for anyone. As free as possible. Members get everything other sites would prefer to restrict to paying members only, like PM space, attachment priviledges, forum access. Things that
are restricted are done on your merit, and have nothing to do with whether you pay anything.
Also, we prefer to have as little advertising as possible. You may have noticed that for a while now, RMRK has been totally ad free. You can vote on that
here if you like. Of course, this has the obvious downside of next to no income, but no ads are nice.
It seems the community recognises and/or appreciates that; as
our honors list shows, you always come through to keep RMRK up. RMRK is truly a site owned by its users
I hesitated for a long time on writing this next part, but eventually decided I would. People from other sites, communities and games will be directed to this news post. It will save me having to repeat many times to different people. In short: my PC is dying. But that doesn't sound very dramatic, and of course is lacking many details.
This computer has had many transplants and patches here and there, but if I had to apply a solid date to it, I'd say 2002. And most of those parts have been in near constant operation since then. However, stuff wears out, and this has become very close to dying completely. Again, still doesn't sound so dramatic, so I'll elaborate. Here's a list of what's wrong:
RAM is bad (both sticks of my ram fail memory burn-in tests and memtest86+ diagnostics. Some times applications just crash from memory errors)
Motherboard is bad (Visually, numerous
capacitors are bulging, also the thing is just old, running for years and years)
Hard drive is bad (it's got to the point that every few hours or so it chokes, stops, stalls, whatever. This takes down the whole PC and a power cycle is needed)
Since the most critical/central parts (namely the board) are on their way to the grave, a whole replacement is the only way.
What does this have to do with RMRK? (Or gff, m2 and so on for other readers). Along with how I talk to, work with, play with and interact with you all, this computer is pretty much the birthplace of the modern RMRK. What you are looking at now was designed, developed and tested here.
Currently on hold due to these problems are a move to SMF 2.0, rewrites of the current
mods and a port of RMRK4 to SMF 2. Also are new unreleased additions; a revamped tutorial system on the main site, a breath of life to the resource system, and upgrades to the main site itself.
RMRK is safe (at least as for uptime) for now till the end of March. However, this (and I) won't be around till then unless something amazing happens. If you want to see what I put together, look no further than this
Roph's cheap PC build thread. I've built many PCs for friends or RMRK members, I finally worked on putting together a cheap one. A complete replacement ends up at £258, though with VAT (15% tax) and Shipping, £297.
If you want to help with this cause, just click below:
I'll update this post as anything happens, and answer any questions. I hate looking like this and asking for help, and I guess I've postponed this as long as I can, but it's crunch time
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