Hey folks!

Just over two months ago, Read and Find Out celebrated its third birthday

The last three years has seen the number of active RAFOnauts slowly shrink but, despite dire predictions of our inevitable demise, we're still here. I believe that Read and Find Out still has a lot to offer its community, and that the community here still gets a lot out of the site. I want to see the site continue delivering joy and happiness in abundance to its members, facilitating the peaceful and harmonious discussion it's renowned for, free of the hate and discord which afflict so many other online communities.

*cough*

For the 9 months or so, I've essentially been financing the running of the site out of my own pocket. Prior to this, the site generated about 80% of the cash needed to keep it operational through donations and premium account purchases, but the volume of these has dropped off significantly over the last year.

Monthly hosting and maintenance costs for the site currently come to £75 (or approximately $110 for you US types), and I recieve about £15 a month through PayPal, leaving about £60 for me to cover. Unfortunately, this is unsustainable for me.

I have options to reduce the hosting costs by moving the site to a significantly smaller server, but this would come at the price of a noticable drop in performance; for a site which is a little sluggish at the best of times, this is a last resort.

Instead, I'd like to propose a fundraiser! A bar shall shortly appear at the top of the website, visible to anyone who hasn't purchased a premium account; this will show the progress towards a fundraising goal of £750, enough to keep the site running until next Christmas!

I'd like to encourage everyone who enjoys the sense of peace and wellbeing that being a part of Read and Find Out gives them to either <a href="/donate/">donate</a>, or <a href="/premium_account/">purchase a premium accounts</a>, and help support the site.



But wait, there's more!

I can appreciate that folks might be unwilling to support a site that's been largely static. I still believe RAFO has a rosy future ahead of it, and so will commit to developing additional features for each fundraising milestone we hit along the way:

• At£250, I'll integrate<a href="http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/">Markdown</a>, making it easier for peeps to include HTML in their posts, without needing to mess around with HTML tags.
• At£500, I'll add the facility for folks to completely customise the look and feel of the site by allowing custom CSS.
• At£750, I'll resurrect the old wotmania CMB3, commonly held to be a record of some of humanity's finest moments.
• For every£100above the target of £750, I'll bring back another wotmania messageboard, starting with the community boards.

All you need to do is support the running of the website by either <a href="/donate/">donating</a>, or <a href="/premium_account/">buying a premium account</a>!


If you've any questions or concerns, please reply below or drop me a noteboard and I'll get back to you as soon as I can!

Thanks,
Ben