Important Changes - please read!

I feel very badly about this as I love this place and would very much like to become a paying member. I have to survive on only one income, and make sure my inside and outside babies get fed. I have had no raise in the last three years, and my house insurance has gone up, my car payment has gone up, my car insurance has gone up, the gas has gone up ($2.03) as of today, the prices in the grocery store have gone up, and I still have electricity (which will go up), propane has already gone up, the cat food went up and there is only just me. I feel so frustrated. (By the way, the blood pressure is up too)

Please don't feel bad about it! I don't want anyone to feel pressured into paying! The intention is really to give an option to those who dislike having the ads on the page or really want to add attachments. As long as you don't mind the ads and the new limits then please feel very welcome here even as a non-paying member! The ads are generating some revenue, particularly the new ads we are serving. It's not a lot - cents for each thousand of pageviews, but it's something.

You can still help a lot! Just send as many cat lovers our way! Those who really want to help, please feel free to add links to both Meowhoo.com and Thecatsite.com on your web pages, or any web directory you come across. Add it to your email signature or to signatures on other boards (if allowed). If you can, we'll send you a nice page promoting both sites, that you can print out and maybe post in your local library, pet store, vet office etc. The more traffic we get, the more revenue from ads, and every little bit helps!

Thanks in advance!

I just checked and Paypal handles British credit cards without a problem -
https://www.paypal.com/uk

For those of you who asked

Originally Posted by Anne

You can still help a lot! Just send as many cat lovers our way! Those who really want to help, please feel free to add links to both Meowhoo.com and Thecatsite.com on your web pages, or any web directory you come across. Add it to your email signature or to signatures on other boards (if allowed). If you can, we'll send you a nice page promoting both sites, that you can print out and maybe post in your local library, pet store, vet office etc. The more traffic we get, the more revenue from ads, and every little bit helps!

Thanks in advance!

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As per the request of some of you - here's a link to the flyer that you can print out and post wherever you think cat lovers may see it -
http://www.kittybytes.com/Catflyer3.pdf

Thanks in advance and do let us know where it is !

Anne, I think this is a good way to manage things. Very creative. I like the idea of having a bigger PM storage limit for paid memebers. What is the possibilities of having other PM perks? Such as making your own folders and more options for managing and organizing your PM box? I just have a question though. Attachments are just that, correct? So attachments don't include when we link from a host?

This is a great idea. Wish I could help support TCS but it's too much hassle for me getting money transfered and stuff, so sorry. I do when I meet cat lovers send them here though!

Originally Posted by mzjazz2u

Anne, I think this is a good way to manage things. Very creative. I like the idea of having a bigger PM storage limit for paid memebers. What is the possibilities of having other PM perks? Such as making your own folders and more options for managing and organizing your PM box? I just have a question though. Attachments are just that, correct? So attachments don't include when we link from a host?

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Right - attachemnts is when you upload a file from your hard drive to tcs to add it to a post. Using IMG tags and linking to another host does not create a load on the server so it's not limited. You just need to make sure that the host of that image allows "hot-linking".

As for the PM box, I think everyone has the ability to manage and create folders. At least that what I saw when I was looking and there is no difference between paying an non-paying members in that respect (except that maybe you would need more folders if you have 150 of PM's stored ).

I will definately take up the 1 year subscription..... you'll just have to wait for payday


EDIT - Decided to go for the 6 month option and pay today instead (I will upgrade to a year when this subscription runs out!)

For those of you in the UK XE.com the currency converter puts the prices in £'s as roughly:

3 Months - $19.50 = £11.04
6 Months - $33.00 = £18.69
12 Months - $59.50 = £33.70

Best to double check though because I'm not sure how often XE update the exchange rate

Question- if a real time chat room were provided for paying members, would that be a big enough perk to consider? If enough people are interested in that option, then Anne would look into it to see if it can be done. But we just need to know if the interest would be there or not?

And just to clarify - there is no advertising revenue from chat rooms, hence it would have to be paid by the participating members and so would only be available to paying members.

I guess I dont understand whats the connection between VB ( vBulletin ) is and the pay pal monthly subscriptions is , is it that you want the money sent directly to VB ?

it doesnt matter to me how its done I just dont understand the connection , if the funds are for the server costs what does VB have to do with it.

vBulletin is the program that runs the forums. There isn't really a connection between the program and the payment options, it is that the forums themselves take up so much space on the server.

Originally Posted by Dana

I guess I dont understand whats the connection between VB ( vBulletin ) is and the pay pal monthly subscriptions is , is it that you want the money sent directly to VB ?

it doesnt matter to me how its done I just dont understand the connection , if the funds are for the server costs what does VB have to do with it.

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VB3 now has the built in option to collect money for subscriptions through paypal. That's the connection. The money doesn't go to Vbulletin.com but to TheCatSite.com. The money goes to offset the costs or running these boards and website. The costs are getting higher not because of the price of the application (VB3) but because of server loads getting bigger.

Hope that clarifies it a bit.

Not sure how it would work in terms of additional admin for Anne, but what if a part of the subscription fee went to a cat charity . . . so the majority would go to fund additional features on TCS, but a percentage would go to helping someting close to our hearts . . . cats.

Just a thought to maybe getting those not motivated by the additional features to join up.

Do you mean you are keeping the old forum posts on the server indefinitely? If so, maybe you should remove the ones which have had no activity and archive them on CD. Why not remove the closed threads as well, since no one can post on them anymore?

Anne, I'm wondering if it would be beneficial and/or an option to delete very old threads that although are nice at the moment that they are posted, they are not necessarily informational. Such as "Happy Birthday, I've reached 1000 posts, Sally, empty your PM box" and other threads such as this? Those are the kind of posts that more then likely wouldn't be searched for 6 months later. But the other thought is, would that make everyone's posting numbers go down? Which wouldn't be good, especially for some who don't post as often (but post very meaningful things). I was wondering if that would free up some space but not be too much of a problem.

Originally Posted by mzjazz2u

Anne, I'm wondering if it would be beneficial and/or an option to delete very old threads that although are nice at the moment that they are posted, they are not necessarily informational. Such as "Happy Birthday, I've reached 1000 posts, Sally, empty your PM box" and other threads such as this? Those are the kind of posts that more then likely wouldn't be searched for 6 months later. But the other thought is, would that make everyone's posting numbers go down? Which wouldn't be good, especially for some who don't post as often (but post very meaningful things). I was wondering if that would free up some space but not be too much of a problem.

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We are going to cut down on the numbers of old threads and posts. Basically, some of the forums are intended as a database "for future generations" so to speak , so that someone can come here in a year's time and find all the threads about cats going outside the litter box and maybe find that one thread that would help his specific problem. Even on the lounge, there are threads that people often look back on and read - just to follow up with the history of this community. I realize that you don't mean those kind of threads, but then we have to manually prune the threads and going over literally tens of thousands of threads to see which ones can be deleted. We are at the process of trimming the database in that way (in face hissy is doing that) and yes some people may lose on their post count. But again this is a long and tedious process and we're very careful with what we're sending to the bin (it's no recycle bin -it's deleted forever). I guess and hope that we will have to move to a better server - this community is growing at a great rate and at some day we will just have to

Yola - I am reluctant to mix cat charity into this. It would be too difficult to track and proved "proof". I can let you know that %5 of all profits from our sites (TCS and Meowhoo) in fact go to cat charity, but it's not directly from the subscriptions only.

Just to share some more with you guys. We have no problem of disk space. We already rent a dedicated server, this is no $8 a month hosting plan . The problem is with the processor and its ability to handle a large work load such as when we do the daily backup of the forums. It's going to be mighty difficult to cut down on that but we are doing our best.

Thanks for the advice everyone! I really appreciate the fact that everyone's trying to help!

Anne and Mary Anne,
Have ya'll ever thought of putting a Paypal Donation Button on the front page of the forums or on a sticky thread where people can randomly make donations to The Cat Site? I would be more than happy to occasionally donate money to help support TCS.
Also, since we are on the subject of donations...My bf hosts a forum about cars where they had stickers printed up. Each sticker only costs a few cents to have printed. People who donate $5.00 or more to the site get a sticker in the mail. They make alot of money this way that goes towards the upkeep of the forums.
Personally, I may have a hard time joining as a paying member. Only because I don't know from one month to the other how much money I will have to spend on things other than the bills. I however do like the options that you are giving to people who would like to join. I think that it is well worth the $.
Talk to ya'll soon, and thanks to both of you for running the best forums on the internet

Donations to help with the running of the website can be made to the following paypal address [email protected] Just on notes, put that it is for TCS. Anne did tell me that she doesn't want a donations button showing on the website.

Again the paid membership is not mandatory. It is just a way we are trying to help with the running of the website, for as Anne has said, it is not inexpensive to keep this going. Another way you can really help us is to go to the Cat Shop and look at the merchants there and support them by buying the products they have if you wish to. The same goes with the marketplace and TCS showcase and the new Cat Coupons. All can be accessed through the Cat Shop at the top of the page. The Market Place is one of the forums here.