Patreon Goal

I added a goal to our Patreon. If the goal is met we can move DollDreaming to a VPS server for the site files and database. These upgrades should speed up the site and add reliability. A VPS is a Virtual Private Server which gives you dedicated server resources. We currently are on shared server where we share resources with others. 

5 hours ago, Averis said:

I added a goal to our Patreon. If the goal is met we can move DollDreaming to a VPS server for the site files and database. These upgrades should speed up the site and add reliability. A VPS is a Virtual Private Server which gives you dedicated server resources. We currently are on shared server where we share resources with others. 

The only reason I'm not doing the $10 tier is I'm not a vendor, so the label and benefits seem kind of pointless. If there were another tier in that same range that was more apropos to how I use the forum I would contribute more.

I'm open to perk suggestions, if they are doable and reasonable. Just adding another colored tag doesn't seem like enough. 

Can we paypal you money instead of having to sign up with Patreon? I would like to support the forum and occasionally sell but I dont know if I will ever post enough to be a vendor . Thank you.

A PayPal donation would be a different thing and I can look into that. This was meant to set a monthly goal so that there is some stability in keeping up the monthly server payments. ^^

I find this good to look into.

I do not like to have to register with others more than necessary and I also don't like "automatic" "monthly"( or other interval) payments.

That said I would consider paying $12 via PayPal instead of 12 * $1 via Patreon for being a patron for a year ... you would just have to find a way to deduce my $1 from the aggregate each month and find a way to alert me some time (1-2 month I guess) before it runs out so I can consider paying again.

 

I see a "Donate PayPal" link now, very nice work.

So, if I donate $12 using that, will that give me "Patron" status for a year - i.e. will you handle it that way or is it meant some other way?

Well, Patreon is its own thing. The PayPal donate is there for those that don't want to sign up to Patreon or pay monthly but still want to help out. I had no plans to setup separate perks or anything for PayPal since it's open on how much people can donate, whereas Patreon has set amounts. Also Patreon keeps track of who is subscribed and who isn't. With PayPal I'd have to keep track of all that manually. ><

What I could do is maybe make a little tag for those that donate to PayPal, but I want to keep the Patreon tags for Patreon. 

Something like the "backer" tag (or the same one) I and others that donated one-time amounts for the new forum have perhaps?

I personally don't care, just rambling.

The one thing I could think of was larger mail storage, but not sure if that is feasible. It seems like that alone wouldn’t really be all that interesting either. 

Maybe as new features come into the forum, new ideas will present themselves. 

Lil forum titles or badges (pixel things) are popular usually in my experience!

-Paypal Donator
-Patreon Supporter
-Beta Backer

Things like that! (This can be expanded into forum participation things as well if folks desire. Even custom forum titles are often an incentive, I've found... people generally enjoy gestures of appreciation like that.) You can also set up an automated "Thank you for supporting DollDreaming" message that talks about the impact it will have in offsetting hosting costs and other things, if... that's an option? ^^;

I'm not sure what's available, of course, especially when it comes to micromanaging who's done what as the forum grows! Obviously it falls back on what can be implemented without too much headache, but those are a few of my thoughts, if that's ok!

On 8/5/2019 at 8:26 PM, cfx said:

Something like the "backer" tag (or the same one) I and others that donated one-time amounts for the new forum have perhaps?

I personally don't care, just rambling.

I personally don't care anymore

Edited September 27, 2019 by salica

13 hours ago, salica said:

We pay every months for that tag , try to respect that .

I don't know how suggesting that one-time supporters have a tag like the one that already exists for previous one-time supporters is being disrespectful to you, but OK. The enitre point of my suggestion was that it would be different than the Patreon tag.

If you want the existing tag removed then I suggest taking it up with forum management. I don't care whether I have a tag or not.

Edited August 18, 2019 by cfx

I personally like the idea of folks getting a tag of some sort, regardless of how they donate. Since PayPal doesn't allow for tiers like Patreon does, maybe set a minimum PayPal amount needed to qualify for the banner (maybe $12 -- equivalent to 1 year of Tier 1 Patreon), so people aren't donating $0.50 to try to get a tag.

Personally I don't like Patreon as much, I had a whole host of issues with it when my credit card got stolen last year (I changed the card and yet Patreon kept defaulting back to the OLD card and trying to charge to a card # that no longer worked), so it's nice to do a one-and-done via PayPal.

On 8/18/2019 at 1:42 AM, salica said:

We pay every months for that tag , try to respect that . It is about the commitment . If you give once ,you get a ''thank you'' and the good feeling that you are helping our community , and that should be the first reason to do it .

But it is the opinion of an old collector as myself .

"Backer" tags were from a one time donation collected while Averis was raising the $500 he needed to buy the new forum software. It makes perfect sense people got a tag for that, because they helped finance the new forum in a substantial way.

The ongoing donations pay for the annual cost of the hosting solution. I kind of like Cauldroness' idea that a new Paypal tag should have a minimum donation.

Edited August 19, 2019 by BeyondTime

Well, I played around with new tags:

 

I'm still trying to think up ideas for the Super Patron level.

Another idea I'm toying with is an award system. It could be used to award folks that have donated multiple times or have been a patron for a certain length of time. It could also be used for other awards such as being a member for so long or liking posts etc.

 

On 8/26/2019 at 6:29 AM, Averis said:

Well, I played around with new tags:

 

I'm still trying to think up ideas for the Super Patron level.

Another idea I'm toying with is an award system. It could be used to award folks that have donated multiple times or have been a patron for a certain length of time. It could also be used for other awards such as being a member for so long or liking posts etc.

 

The tags are cool. Award system isn't a bad name, as long as the name avoids coming off as a ranking system it should be fine.

On 8/18/2019 at 11:42 AM, salica said:

We pay every months for that tag , try to respect that . It is about the commitment . If you give once ,you get a ''thank you'' and the good feeling that you are helping our community , and that should be the first reason to do it .

But it is the opinion of an old collector as myself .

I admit that your sentence is a bit contradictory, to me. You say that first and foremost, the reason people donate (whether monthly or once) is to help the community and therefore people shouldn't care to get a badge if they only donate once. The same could be applied backwards - people shouldn't care if others get badges, regardless of how they donate, because they do it first and foremost for the community.
And say someone donates $50 in one go, whereas someone else takes 2 years to donate that through Patreon... is it really the same? Cause I don't think so. It seems to be that giving $50 in one go is more meaningful - it's money that's given right away for the community to use, for the Admin to know that it's there whatever might be needed, whereas a Patron can be dropped at any minute + it's not really as "painful to the wallet" to donate $2 per month, compared to dropping it in one go.

As neither a Patron nor a Backer (yet, need to find a house first), perhaps it doesn't really matter what I say. But I think that the statement above is true - people should donate first and foremost because they want to help the community and not for a cute tag. I do appreciate Averis' effort to make something for everyone to be satisfied, but personally I don't mind if I don't have one, if and when I am able to donate. Having said that, I think the blue Donator tag is really cute and would match my icon nicely ;D

I think a system to reward activity isn't exactly bad, but it's also a bit... strange, perhaps. At least, linking such rewards to liking posts... I hardly like posts because I don't often think of the feature... and I think posting would be more "important", but then it'd become weird cause some older members who are not active anymore could have 2k posts, would they still get the tag, even though they're inactive? 🤨 Unless this new and improved forum does automatically track such activities and inactivities... so say, someone has 2k posts, they have a "Talker" badge (with a cute speech bubble instead of heart please), but once two months have gone by that they've been inactive, the badge fades... but once they come back and start being active again, they get the badge back? But not something that would be needed to do manually, cause gosh that would be a lot of work. Idk if I'm making any sense.

On 9/16/2019 at 1:08 PM, Shailara said:

I admit that your sentence is a bit contradictory, to me. You say that first and foremost, the reason people donate (whether monthly or once) is to help the community and therefore people shouldn't care to get a

My everyday language is French , the way I write is direct because I don't like to have long discussion in english . I  don't care anymore , I was trying to save Averis some work so he or she can concentrate on more important things .

It should be a place of love and acceptance but it is not anymore . Everybody make it more complicated it has to be . 

Edited September 27, 2019 by salica

Sorry for butting in, but one potential perk that I thought of could be an avatar frame? Social media links listed on the side panel next to posts, under the avatar? A colored side panel next to posts? Animated .gif avatars?

Just throwing out ideas that came to me to try to be useful. It doesn't affect me one way or the other since I'm unable to donate right now.

You know what I would pay extra for (but admittedly would probably be a royal pain to implement)? A way to auto-import dolls from my profile into my signature. I keep wanting to do pictures of them down there, but have never gotten around to doing it due to how irritating it would be to implement it. But pulling from the doll list in my profile? Update a new doll with a new pic and boom, updated signature. 

Again though, I am aware that would probably be a coding nightmare lol. 

9 hours ago, Poofiemus said:

You know what I would pay extra for (but admittedly would probably be a royal pain to implement)? A way to auto-import dolls from my profile into my signature. I keep wanting to do pictures of them down there, but have never gotten around to doing it due to how irritating it would be to implement it. But pulling from the doll list in my profile? Update a new doll with a new pic and boom, updated signature. 

Again though, I am aware that would probably be a coding nightmare lol. 

Hmm...

automatically generating a signature image from a set of other images should be a piece of cake for ImageMagick (which is usually installed on most servers).

I could probably whip up a shell script for local use for this.

However I have no idea how this could be integrated into the forum software and how the database has to be queried to use the correct images...

Edit: Here's the script

 

Edited November 4, 2020 by Tierparkzone