2022 Annual Amphicar Forums Support Campaign

[mike_israel]

The Amphicar forums have been around for over 20 years. The software and hosting costs for maintaining the forum are approximately $650 per year and are funded solely by member contributions. The forums are maintained separate from the IAOC and are not a part of your IAOC membership dues. Labor is all voluntary. Unlike Facebook, or other social media platforms, your data is not sold for profit and your privacy is maintained.

In 2020, donations fully covered the forum expenses. In 2021, they covered only 50% of costs.

• Hosting (recently upgraded) at $240 a year
• Core licence renewal at $75 per year
• Spam prevention services at $50 per year
• Image management (handles lossless compression and related) at $90 per year
• Other "add-on" licenses at $150 a year
• Misc costs like domain registration, SSL certificate, etc. at $50 per year

If the 20+ years of Amphicar information and expertise maintained here is of value to you (32,000+ messages), consider making a contribution in 2022. I especially appeal to some of our newer / younger members as several of our long-term supporters have gone on the that great Amphicar Harbor in the sky over the last few years.

Here is the direct link for making contributions.

https://amphicar770.com/donate/

Thanks.

Mike

 

[mike_israel]

Within a day after posting this, there were 3 contributions. Thank you to all. Those who do support this effort tend to be repeat contributors. It is their generosity which makes this wealth of information and expertise available to the entire Amphicar community.

I still do envision that this site will eventually become part of the IAOC. I am not getting any younger! We tried doing so a while ago, but this was during the migration to new software for the club and there were significant limitations as to how all the archived messages could be transferred to that platform and still be searchable or readable. I also worry about moving it to any software as a service that may not be around for the long run. Those of you who have been here since the start may recall that this started on ListBox, then went to YahooGroups which are now both defunct. Fortunately, we never relied on photobucket which deleted millions of images from thousands of hobbyist sites when they suddenly went to a paid subscription model and prevented site owners from even backing up those images first. By managing the forums locally, I am confident that the information could quickly and easily be migrated to alternative software, servers, etc. The value here does not come from the software itself, rather it is the shared knowledge and experience of many experts over the years which is important to maintain for future generations of Amphibians. Unfortunately, protecting this data comes with a cost. As for Facebook, that is a toilet and I do not trust it.

 

[Ken Chambers]

Mike,

Thank you so much for administering this forum. Your understanding and expertise of the many intricacies required to make the software work requires skills that not many possess. Your long term commitment to the cause is such a great service to all of us Amphicar owners, rebuilders and enthusiasts.

Folks, please take a moment and hit the Donate button at the top and send a few bucks Mike's way. He has personally helped fund what it takes to make this forum work for over 20 years now, not to mention the tremendous amount time he gives. Thank you to all.