Over the years I've posted a number of things about steamlocomotive.info, and now I feel rather like the folks who post messages saying "Oh horrors! My favorite [insert historic object here] is about to be scrapped unless we raise [insert number of dollars here].

Simply put, in about 5 weeks or so, our hosting contract will run out, and I simply do NOT have the $50/month (approximately) necessary to keep it running. I put a 'Donate' button on the site's front page. No donations, but four hostile emails about "commercialization". So I guess, I'm resigned to whatever happens.

The site's requirements are such that finding it a free home is very, very unlikely. So, if it is still here in five weeks, you'll know that I raised the funds for another quarter. If it disappears, please don't ask.

Regards,
Doug

Steamlocomotive.info is a tremendous resource and it's obvious that you've put a tremendous amount of work into making it such a comprehensive, organized and informative site. I hope that there are enough people out there willing to contribute that you're able to keep it going!

Would it be possible to move the site to a cheaper host/plan? 1and1 offers their home package for $4.99/month, unlimited storage/transfer volume. I'm a graphic/web designer by trade and host all my client sites with them. Haven't experienced any major problems, service outages, etc. (For the record, I have no affiliation/connection with 1and1).

I just made a small donation via PaPal. All it needs is a couple more of us to do the same thing!!

Stephen

Unfortunately no. The site requires Coldfusion 9, Enterprise Version and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 or later. It also consumes an insane amount of disk space and bandwidth.

Thank you Stephen!

It's a great site, but is all that really necessary for the info you're trying to convey? I realize "re-engineering" the site to a lower tech configuration would be a lot of effort.

I've had my Ultimate Steam Page site hosted for free at http://www.trainweb.org for 10+ (?) years now. They do some automatic banner ads on each page but that's a pretty good deal.

Well, you've got another contribution. Hope a few more people here step up as well.

Howard P.

When I owned the servers (and the rackspace) Cold Fusion and SQL Server were a simple, clean, elegant solution for what I wanted to do. The code was begun in early 2002 It certainly could be rewritten into PHP and MySQL. The database re-engineering would be painful because we used features that are either unavailable, or radically different in MySQL, including the very useful, but otherwise painful GUID. Additionally many things that are intrinsic in Coldfusion (<cfimage> for example) have to be supplied extrinsically (in the case of CFIMAGE, you'd have to insure that your host had ImageMagick installed and available).

Or if I were really a masochist, I could rewrite in ASP and ASP.NET. I don't have enough Advil for that. Nor am I good enough in .NET and C# to do it.

Steaminfo,

I paypal'ed this month beer budget.

Come on guys, it's put up or shut up time.

Just a little from a lot of you.

Another donation just made!

Same here!

The one problem I see with all of this is that it's like the gay/lesbian bookshop in town that was faced with closure. The supporters rallied to do a surprise fundraiser for the bookstore, and after being presented the check, the manager said, "So, will you be doing this every month now? Because that's what it's going to take to keep this shop open..." Needless to say, the shop closed about a month later than originally planned....

A "beg-a-thon" every month is not a sustainable business plan. The donation kettle helps, but we don't survive in this world without a few big "angels."

The long-term planning:
*Is there a practical way to reduce the costs? Different service, format, whatever?
*Is there a sponsor that can help? Be it through advertising or underwriting? Kalmbach? Carstens? the AAR? A video producer?
*Is there a group out there that can be persuaded to take the underwriting of this under their wings? The NRHS? R&LHS? ARM/TRAIN? Amherst Ry. Society? One of the railroad museums? Maybe even one of the commercial steam preservation outfits, like the Strasburg or the like?

Ultimately, the answer will have to be a compromise between all of these.

I disagree. The number of people who use the site compared to the cost of maintaining it means that either a large percentage of the users contributing a pittance, or a small percentage (probably just those reading this thread would suffice!) contributing the cost of a beer or two each, would likely fund it for a year or more. I don't disagree with your ideas for a different long-term solution but, as was pointed out earlier in the thread, there are software and other barriers to some of these changes and they would be easier typed than done.

I contributed!

Doug -

Please contact me off-list. I am the Vice President of the NRHS and would like to speak with you about your site and some tangential work going on within the NRHS. I can be reached at bulletin@nrhs.com.

Jeff Smith
NRHS Vice President