Hello fellow waygooks!
I understand everyone's concern, but the measures put in today were to help alleviate "leeching" by people who register, and decide to download everything over the course of a couple of nights. That seems to have been what happened.
Quite honestly, this strategy was suggested to me before, but we didn't have too much of an issue. Typical bandwidth usage per month is roughly 2.5TB (yes, I know, it's a lot for a teaching forum). Cost on a monthly basis is about 250US$ per month (until I upgrade the server down the line), and that's if we use the allotted bandwidth and not any more. Now, imagine the cost of 2.5TB, and that we had in the past week reached a little under 25TB. I had to count the digits to be sure I was reading it right, but that's enormous.
I started the site as a teacher, and I would pay basic hosting fees, which were something like 20$ a month. I don't think I would have been able to afford it otherwise back then. We now have 11k users, and on a daily basis about 500 active users logged onto the site at any point. I think if the server could handle more it would be even bigger. Seems like many people find it useful, and I don't want that to change.
I don't like the idea of asking teachers for a "fee". I was one at one point, and I know how little really I could afford with student loans to pay off, etc... So a donation box is at the top of the site for anyone who wishes to contribute to the "basic hosting" fees. I had a different donation box there before, so what you see there right now amounts to about 10 months instead of 12, but that's simply due to what I already counted in from the previous donations. Google add sense revenues are really helpful with making up the difference with going over our bandwidth purchases every month, and any planned upgrades.
Personally I'm ok with having the site pay for itself. So long as the community of teachers benefit, and we can avoid abusive downloaders, which is the reason for the 5 post requirement for downloads. I hope everyone is ok with that?
Several people have asked about Korean bank account fund transfers, but I think it would be tricky(considering I don't have an account). If you really want to contribute financially, and don't have a pay-pal account, I would suggest visiting the sponsor advertisements (if it's something of interest to you) anytime possible.
Other than that, hope everyone is well and still find things running fairly smoothly. I do know I have to make some major upgrades, and that's coming somewhere down the road! promise
