This is something that I've discussed in one of the threads back when taking on RPGWatch in May of 2022 (man, time really flies...). I won't be doing it like Myrthos for several reasons, and the fact that much of the expenses and maintenance work done on the server and our hosting environment in general benefits more than RPGWatch alone is also a factor in that. Like you said, it would be difficult to calculate exactly how much of the various expenses to attribute to RPGWatch vs. the other sites I run and/or manage. There are certain expenses that are easy to attribute to RPGWatch alone, like various forum and addon licences and domains, but they represent only a fraction of the overall running and operational costs.
I'm not sure if Myrthos displayed ads when there were not enough donations, but regardless, no, as I mentioned above, I won't really be keeping tabs on how much it costs to run RPGWatch exactly and I don't want to have to constantly "nag" people about donating either. Ideally, donations combined with ads contribute enough that asking for donations is only needed if any major expenses are incurred, like the need to move to a new server and so on.
That's a false positive over nothing, see this thread. Sorcerer's is definitely not "infested" in any way, shape or form. Unfortunately the prevalence of various addons that overzealously flag non-issues as "potentially malicious" means that many users will have some addon that needs to justify its installation popping up warnings so that users will be more likely to keep it installed. That's their business model, which IMO is almost equally as bad as actual malware.
From the discussions we had when the server had to move, you may find help here in the community for that. On the one hand, people may have second thoughts after a while for any number of reasons (mainly busy life or unexpected amount of work), but on the other hand, passionate people who know and like the site are more willing to do something good. External help of quality is either hard to find or expensive.
For some things that could be possible, but not for others. RPGWatch actually has a very extensive back-end custom coded by Myrthos. It goes quite a bit beyond what your average coder dabbling in PHP would likely be able to comfortably work with without spending quite a bit of time studying it (and possibly learning that they're out of their depth). Also, letting anyone external work on a complex existing system is inherently risky for a number of reasons, security certainly being among the top ones. Being a forum member is one thing, but having access to all the RPGWatch code and data is something else entirely.
Obviously it would need to be someone familiar with it. I don't know whether someone here is, but PHP is quite trivial as languages go (though it can be very messy). The risk is defined by the protocol to modify the code and test it, so it's the same for anyone, member or 3rd party.
Quite welcome! I've been enjoying this site for years, so it's a no-brainer to support it for me.
As to the poll, I prefer a one-off sum.Will being a 'supporter' also get rid of the GOG ad on top? Hopefully not, since it makes it easy to contribute further and buy through the affiliate link.
Yea, the previous donor tags are from the 2021/2022 donations that Myrthos still processed. Since it's been around or over 2 years since those donations were made, I'll probably retire the old donor tag in a couple weeks once everyone's had the chance to donate in our new system. Either that, or make it so that only the Supporter tag shows in posts for those users who have both. That can be done with a bit of custom coding.@Pladio has both "Supporter" and "RPGWatch Donor" tags? As if he needs more tags
A brick is also very trivial a thing; an entire house made of it not so much any more.
I can do most small modifications myself, so I'd need help with things that go beyond that for the most part. As far as I know, Myrthos has been the sole developer of RPGWatch since the beginning, so there's nobody that knows it even remotely as well as he does. Arhu is the only other person involved since the beginning, but primarily on the styling/design side, not the actual code. If I can keep Myrthos involved on the back-end side, either voluntarily or in a paid capacity, he'd definitely be my first choice.On the other sites that I manage, I don't exclude the GOG button with the regular ads, exactly for the reason you listed. So the plan is to keep it here as well, I think that makes sense.Quite welcome! I've been enjoying this site for years, so it's a no-brainer to support it for me.
Will being a 'supporter' also get rid of the GOG ad on top? Hopefully not, since it makes it easy to contribute further and buy through the affiliate link.
Sure, that's a good idea to do eventually as well. Though we'd probably need a re-do of all the logos and some custom design work done for merch items as well as the old stuff lying around on the server isn't really usable for print. You need everything in vector form so that it can be resized to fit various merch items without any loss of quality, and it has to be consistent in terms of fonts used etc. as well.
Only you could possibly be bothered by something that trivial.
Well, why change it?
