Announcements

[Requiem]

I've decided to open donations on a permanent basis and allow anybody instant lifetime access to post if they donate $25. Before the spiel, some important information:

In order to gain posting access for your donation, you must be logged in. If you do not see "For posting rights" under the Donate button, you will not be granted access.

People who can already post will not see the "For posting rights" message and will be able to donate any amount they enter.

To preempt the "$25 to post on foh?! Are you crazy?" and "This is going to stifle the site" people, I'd like to point out that currently(and always in the past) there is NO way for anybody to gain access to post. The same avenues that were always available(talking a mod into doing it or waiting until I randomly get drunk and approve everybody every few years) will still be available if you don't want to pay, this is just another way for you to gain instant posting access and give some support. $25 is intentionally high enough that new people will trickle in at a pace that the moderators can handle them and the paradigm that I've applied to the posting users of the site can remain intact. There's also some "put your money where your mouth is" mentality to filter out people that are likely to get banned in there somewhere. By the way of that notion, don't expect not to get banned just because you donated to get access.

Why am I doing this? I've seen the need for some mechanism to introduce new quality posters to the site for some time, not because the site is stagnating, but because I think lots of good posters are out there lurking. That's why I tried the Trial Grounds, which failed miserably, so I'm going to try this now. The price may go up or the option may be removed all together if I don't like the results, but this plan seems pretty solid(as all plans that revolve around people sending money to me do).

Which brings us to the matter of the money. Currently, the site is hosted with the same company that manages it's advertising, and who I am vested in and employed with(and merged into). The ROI on their work to find quality advertising on this site just isn't good enough to justify when they could spend the same time on larger sites with clean content(a decision that I agree with in the context of the company), which leaves us all here on fohguild.org with some pretty crappy advertising most of the time. We're trying to work together to make an arrangement where I can regain control of the advertising and compensate the company for hosting, but this may not be possible due to potential conflict of interest issues. The same thing has prevented me from getting any of the advertising money as long as there has been advertising on foh, since I co-founded the company that merged into the new company and brought foh with it. Anyway, the tl;dr of it is that I want to get some money built up in case I have to erect independent hosting for fohguild.org, so that I can regain control of it's advertising, so that we can all stop being subjected to flashing anime crap that makes like 200 dollars a month that I don't even get. That's not what I want to happen, but the money needs to be ready in case I'm told that foh is damned to flashing anime for eternity, or for any other future event that would require a new hosting solution.

To the people who donated during this last round, thanks again, and don't feel obligated(as if, right?) to do it again now just because I put a new button up. To the rest of you, donate. Talk all the shit you want, but you know this site has given you some dollar amount in entertainment.