Viewing Donation Drive: 2024 Site & Server Running Costs

Due to the fact that the site is a small community and the increasing use of ad blockers, the site has only a small income from advertising. Advertising revenue covers around about one quarter to one third of the total site & server costs.

Members will be aware that the moderator team (Morning Glory, TastyReuben and The Late Night Gourmet) and myself, the site owner, SatNavSaysStraightOn give their time freely to ensure the smooth running of this site.

Right now, my best estimate is that we need an additional £80-100 (US$120-140/AU$160-200/€100-120) per month in member donations order for CookingBites to finance itself over and above advertising revenue.

To that end, I am asking each of you to consider lending your support, either through a recurring monthly contribution or an occasional one-time gift to keep CookingBites alive and thriving. We are a close-knit neighbourhood of friends from around the world, and that's something worth keeping!

What your donation goes towards:

* A virtual server running in the cloud, backup software, IP Address checking, decent RAM and server speed for faster access of the site & plenty of data bandwidth so we don't exceed our monthly allowance.

* Domain Name Renewal (Keeping www.CookingBites.com as our web address)

* Platform Licence & Support Renewal (When the worst happens, we have XenForo's help to get us back up and running as quickly as possible. Additionally continued payment of the support fees allows for free upgrades to new versions of the software including the media gallery and enhanced search.)

* The 18-20 Add-on Licenses we have in use at present (Upgrades and/or Renewals of) (Examples include the extras like this Donate Add-on, the Featured threads add-on, the Countdown Timer or the Ignore Threads/Members add-on including some add-ons you see and some that you don't (such as the add-ons that prevents this board from being filled with spam and advertising). Two or three are free, but most are not. Costs vary from US$15 to GBP£45 per add-on and from one-off payments to annual renewals.)

* PayPal Fees. Yes, I get to pay the PayPal fees, so I don't get to see all of your donation (only about 90% off your donation makes it to me, the rest are PayPal fees).

* Can donations be anonymous? Yes, they can. There is a tick box when you make the donation to make it anonymous. Just tick the box and no-one (except you and I) will see who donated what.

What if you don't have a PayPal account? You can use PayPal without having to have a PayPal account, provided that you have a credit card. Simply following the instructions that PayPal provide (only valid in some countries).

What if you still want to donate, but don't wish to go anywhere near PayPal? Please send me (SatNavSaysStraightOn) a PM and you can setup a (international) bank transfer (established members only). Please note, I can only accept cheques in Sterling or Australian Dollars due to restrictions imposed by banks on foreign currency cheques.

T&C's of the donation drives can be found here.