Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 10:13 am
Firstly, I would like to thank all of you that have contributed, either by uploading your covers/labels, or by donating. Since we have reopened hires, the site has never been so popular. Our bandwidth allowance has just had to be doubled, as we have used 390GB bandwidth already this month!
On top of that, we now have well over 13000 images in the gallery. This is an excellent feat, and proves the dedication of our community.
However, hosting this excellent community is becoming extremely expensive. The site is costing a lot more than we are receiving in donations, due to the amount of members that sit in the gallery downloading all day. Because of this, we are looking to move towards subscriptions. This would mean, all non contributing members, would have to pay a yearly subscription of $10 Euros per annum. Roughly about $12.5 USD or £6.9 GBP.
I would like to make sure that all contributors do not have to pay this subscription. So, all current artists / resident artists / donators (over $10) etc will automatically be subscribed. Therefore, I would like to know of anyone that is not currently in one of the above groups, that feels they should be.
In the future, it will work similarly. Anyone joining the site, or indeed anyone improving their skills, will have the opportunity to prove they deserve to be in the artist group, and will be able to be automatically subscribed for free.
I would like you to know, the whole reason for this move, is by the end of the year, the site costs will have more than doubled. We want to keep the site running as fast as we can, which costs a lot in hosting fees. The idea of subscriptions will remove the non contributors, who take advantage of the contributing members, who have helped to keep this site alive.
On top of that, we now have well over 13000 images in the gallery. This is an excellent feat, and proves the dedication of our community.
However, hosting this excellent community is becoming extremely expensive. The site is costing a lot more than we are receiving in donations, due to the amount of members that sit in the gallery downloading all day. Because of this, we are looking to move towards subscriptions. This would mean, all non contributing members, would have to pay a yearly subscription of $10 Euros per annum. Roughly about $12.5 USD or £6.9 GBP.
I would like to make sure that all contributors do not have to pay this subscription. So, all current artists / resident artists / donators (over $10) etc will automatically be subscribed. Therefore, I would like to know of anyone that is not currently in one of the above groups, that feels they should be.
In the future, it will work similarly. Anyone joining the site, or indeed anyone improving their skills, will have the opportunity to prove they deserve to be in the artist group, and will be able to be automatically subscribed for free.
I would like you to know, the whole reason for this move, is by the end of the year, the site costs will have more than doubled. We want to keep the site running as fast as we can, which costs a lot in hosting fees. The idea of subscriptions will remove the non contributors, who take advantage of the contributing members, who have helped to keep this site alive.
I think this will be a great improvement for the site! Kudos on all your (and others) hard work. Although I'm fairly new here, and hey...maybe my stuff isn't up to par with some but I'm hoping I would be considered for the "Artist" category also 
