User Upgrades

I don't like sticking my hat out and asking for money, and I'm not, not exactly. Several members over the past year-ish have asked if they could help support the site from a financial perspective, and some of them have stepped up to the plate in a big way.

This is not a shake-down or hustle. If no one does this, we will all be fine. This site will not be going away, there is no threat, implied or otherwise.

Obviously the site doesn't run itself for free, but it is not a major fiscal drain either. Currently the site runs on a VPS that costs a whopping 20$ / month.

XenForo itself had an upfront cost, and also has a yearly cost to maintain the licenses to gain access to official support and updates. As do the handful of paid add-ins we currently use and will be soon using (Ship Registry sooner than later I hope, with a proper Event manager in the pipeline as well). Roughly the annual service costs for these is around 100$ total.
There a handful of domain names associated with the site as well, don't remember what they cost offhand, they're paid for a few more years as I recall.
Any prizes for giveaways/contests I pay for.
There is a tiny cost for the server backups to Amazon S3 (literally pennies per month right now)
These are costs I consider affordable and had planned to simply pay for.

After some encouragement of others, I have decided to enable user 'upgrades' to members as a way of visibly & fiscally supporting the site. Only, I'm not actually offering much upgrading. If you aren't interested in pushing some money across the table without gaining some sort of superpower, this probably won't interest you, and that is ok.

There are a few different upgrade levels available:

• Admiral - the highest, there is a recurring option available on this - 20$ for a year. You get a little badge next to your name saying that your a Supporter at the Admiral Level. You get an extra entry in any random giveaways we run on the site. (as of this moment that would mean an extra entry in the photo contest giveaway should you choose to enter). You can also change that title below your name. There is a recurring option for the Admiral level as well where you will automagically be billed every year.
• Captain - 10$ / year. Everything the admiral gets except for the title changing part, and the sign by your name says Captain instead of Admiral. Like the admiral, there is a recurring level option available as well.
• Commander - 3$ / month. Like micropayments? This is the one for you. You end up paying more per year, but you get to do it in small little bits! You get the sign by your name, but no title changing. You get the extra entry, but only if you've been a Commander for 4 months (nominally equivalent to what a Captain pays out up front).
• Don't want any silly upgrades but want to send me $5 less paypal's cut? There's a 1-day upgrade available for that.

Please note: If you buy in at Captain and decide you want to buy in at Admiral instead, or some other combo, please PM me. The system will not account for your existing upgrades and you would simply end up as a Captain and an Admiral and be paying 30$ instead of 20$. Unless that is what you wnat to do, in which case, have at it.

If you pick a recurring upgrade, you can cancel the subscription at any time, but you will not get any sort of prorate refund.

You can access the upgrades panel via your account settings.

I haven't actually paid myself for an upgrade yet (it seemed silly to just hand paypal fees just to pay myself), so if you have any problems with the system, please let me know.

Any questions or suggestions feel free to reply here or PM me.

 

Done! Not too hard, actually less clunky than some e-commerce websites that handle payment thru paypal.

Edit: Title badge pretty I am all about pretty!

 

Hrm, nothing currently that fits that bill, but we could probably figure something out. Are you thinking 'x dollars in a year == rank Y', larger donation options, or lifetime donations or something else?

 

I am pleading for someone to donate 50 cents, so that the Admirals will have some Ensigns to boss around hehe

 

Well I didn't really think that big I guess. I could certainly add a wider variety of tiers though. Though if people want to throw more money in then that just encourages me to do things like give away kits and parts and such. (Obligatory tie-in: You will be submitting some photos, right?)

Amounts < 1$ are pretty silly because paypal takes a 30cent cut + 2.9% per transaction. So in theory if you kicked in at least 33pennies for an amount something would show up, but you'd be basically just feeding paypal. Even the Commander level at 3$ is essentially losing 12% per transaction.

 

lol I was, of course, being silly. I'll take volunteers for Ensign Fringe benefits include being allowed to carry my stuff and get free hulls in the shop, and the off chance at free coffee or soda pop.

 

0$ to 40$ per month, depending on how you set it up. I'm not real high on tapatalk. Is there a specific thing about it that you like? Push notifications?

 

Thank you to everyone who has kicked in and those who will but haven't yet. The community of people within this hobby is absolutely, above all else, the best part.

@VVaholic - I will absolutely look at creating more ranks / silly hats / rainbow farting unicorns for you to acquire if you want.

I was thinking about asking my arteest friend if he could throw together some rank icons, maybe cribbed off of some actual navy's rank insignia. Anyone have opinions as to which navy had/has the best ones?

 

Under Personal Details, there should now be a field under where you can view/edit your Avatar entitled 'Custom Title:'