Let's talk about how awesome that fundraiser was in Site Updates (Josh)

Hey everyone,

It’s been a really exciting few weeks! I was totally blown away by the response to the fundraiser, and I’m happy to share a few fun statistics.

So without further ado, the amount raised over the last two weeks is $3,704.80!!!!

That’s almost two and half times the goal amount! WOW.

Aforementioned fun stats

• There were 218 donations over 14 days, the majority of which were within the FIRST SIX HOURS YOU GUYS, and they just kept trickling in! It was incredible!
• The fundraiser launched at 11:42 PM on Sunday night. I 100% meant for it to start early Monday morning but got overexcited, accidentally flipped the switch, and before I knew it money was coming in. Whoops!
• The goal amount was reached at 6:27 AM (PST) the next day. I woke up, saw the number, and scrambled over to the computer to write up the “WE DID IT” post.
• The average donation was $18.34, with actual donations ranging between $1 and $200! It was great to see the donations with funky amounts where people obviously tried to compensate for the fees. You guys are fun.

Cool! So, what is this money being spent on again?
For this first round of fixes, here’s the list of what the developer will be working on:

• Build out a staging server so we can thoroughly test any changes before they’re pushed to the live website (you may have noticed some glitches the past couple days while I’ve been doing updates to the site – this will help prevent that kind of thing)
• Establish a safe deployment process to avoid those glitches
• Fix all existing server issues so the server runs much much more smoothly and a nightly restart is no longer required
• Upgrade all software packages to a much more stable and happy place

This should give us a good foundation to build from going forward. Hopefully this will also fix a lot of the existing speed issues.

What about the extra money raised?
Outside of these fixes, the donations will stay where they are in a “rainy day” fund, just in case something goes wrong with the site and development resources need to be hired to fix it. If that happens, I’ll post about it.

Due to popular demand, the donate button will stay active, and a link to the donate page now lives in the menu. Donations will always be set aside specifically for keeping PB running smoothly and handling any unexpected fires.

What about subscriptions?
I’ll be talking more about this in future updates, but my current thinking is that subscriptions will fund the development of complex and potentially expensive new features like image uploading, search, and an entry calendar. I’ve been listening, and there’s a big master list.

Building out the ability for the site to support subscriptions (which is a lot of work) will come out of my own pocket up front, as I don’t feel comfortable funding that with community donations. Once the subscriptions start happening, I’ll pay myself back and we’ll go from there.

And finally: there will always and forever be a free and ad-supported version of Prosebox, and no existing features will be going away.

In closing, I just have to reiterate how amazing all of you are. I knew this community was strong and passionate, but I am and remain in awe. I’m so happy to be a part of it.

(caption me)

<3,
-J

Last updated June 20, 2018