Interesting PM I received....Let me set the record straight. Time for a RANT!

[Epoman]

WARNING LONG ASS POST

To ALL members,

Something has come up, two times in the last week alone. So I figured I better set the record straight just in case anyone else thinks I am getting "RICH" off of sick people. I recently had a heated chat about this subject with a very active member in the IHD Chat Room, a couple of you were witnesses. Then I get a PM this morning from a different member. And I think it's time to discuss it.

HERE IS A PM (private message) I RECEIVED from a member, that I woke up to today, (I left all the spelling mistakes in.):

I wasn't sure which one of yall was in charge

http://www.dreamworld.org  and http://www.dreamhost.com will host non profits for free and without ads, getting rid of hosting costs.  That just leaves the cost of the domains, which couldn't be that much (godaddy) unless they were purchased from a broker/squatter. 

If you're trying to make a few bucks for yourself, thats coo, but I don't understand why the site would cost so much to run that you'd need more than one or two "premium members," to cover it, especially with possible profits from the store.

A while back there was a site that offered to match living donors to reciepients.  It offered a place for people to ask for organs on the net.. for $500 a month.  The site claimed that the money was to run the site and had the nerve to even ask for donations on top of that.

Because I'm an html Jedi myself I've thought of writing a site where people could do this for free, but I'm not sure if it would even be worthwhile.  I don't think many people get hooked up with kidneys that way.  Seems it would be a waste of time.  If I do ever get around to coding this site I will contact all the people on the paid site and offer that they come to mine for free.

So anyway the only other expense I can think of for this site is moderation, and if anything it seems this site is overmoderated.  It doesn't really bother me but my posts are always getting moved around and recatagorized and such.  Are the moderators paid or something?

Again if you're trying to make a few dollars for yourself, thats totally cool and understandable.  Ain't no shame in trying to make a profit, but it does seem alittle shameful to me to say you are trying to get funds to keep the site up when that seems like it could be only the cost of domains.

If you're really concerned about the site not lasting if you go home I'd be happy to take it over, I'm young and (other than kidney failure) very healthy.  I'm also in a very comfortable financial situation and could easily come up with domain reregistration and even hosting (though hosting would not be necessary.)

I hope you don't find this to be confrontational, I first typed my questions in repsonce to a thread about premium membership but then decided that it might be better to ask this way. 

Finally if you can help me understand why this site is so expensive I'd like to subscribe.   Thing is I NEVER give out my creidt card info on the net, even to paypal.  If you have a po box where I can send a check I'd be happy to do that.

Thanks

NAME REMOVED

Here is MY REPLY:

Well it really seems you do not know the whole story and must not know about things like bandwidth and what a VPS is even though you claim to be a "html Jedi". Ok first off, the IHD family of sites which are 7, not counting domains that are bought to protect the integrity of the sites, and domains that are held for future development for the IHD family of sites.

Here are a list of the domain names which I own:

ihatedialysis.com
ihatedialysis.net
ihatedialysis.org
ihatedialysis.info
ihatedialysis.ca
ihatedialysis.co.uk
wehatedialysis.com
ihatekidneydisease.com
nxstageathome.com
ilovenxstage.com
ilovenxstage.org
ilovenxstage.net
dialysischat.com
mykidneygear.com
ilovehomedialysis.com
ilovehomedialysis.org
ilovehomedialysis.net
renalromance.com
epohosting.com

+2 more sites that I wish not to reveal as they are a secret but will be a part of the IHD family one day. One of those sites, the Premium Members already know about it.

That is 21 sites at $8.88 Each + $2.88 for WhoisGuard to protect my identity as if I didn't pay the $2.88 anyone could do a "DNS lookup" (basically a domain name owner lookup) and find out my home address. Those numbers comes to a total of $246.96

Then, sorry but those sites you mentioned do not offer 24/7 live phone tech support and VPS services and would not give me the bandwidth that is needed for the IHD family of sites. Plus the SPEED at which the VPS sits makes IHD load very quickly and I am looking at a near 100% up time, PLUS they provide many extra services that would be beyond your scope of knowledge such as cpanel, cron jobs, scripts, fantastico, etc, etc.

Here is a break down of my monthly cost from a company called http://www.liquidweb.com and http://www.namecheap.com The domain registra I use.

VPS with 20gb/200gb bandwidth $60 a month so lets do the math shall we? $60 X 12 months = $720

$720 hosting + $246.96 = $966.96 which is the MINIMUM amount due to host the IHD family of sites ANNUALLY, a far cry from what you think. Divide the cost of Premium Memberships that comes to 16 Premium Memberships required EVERY year. Now when I have new members become premium member, I pay in advance the hosting fees as to insure this site ALWAYS stays online even after my death and that will indeed be a reality thanks to the Premium Memberships. AND that is not even counting money I spend out of my own pocket to pay others to help me with projects that I need help with such as creating "Kidney Kickups" (the kidney game), RSS feeds, etc, etc.

I don't think you understand that ihatedialysis is the most popular dialysis message board on the INTERNET, IHD is the most active averaging 120+ NEW posts EVERYDAY. IHD is more active than any other site on the Internet 10X FOLD. The second TOP site for dialysis message boards receives at most 10-15 new posts a day. And IHD is growing FAST within the next year we will have over 1,500 members. And the more the site is used the more bandwidth that is needed, and the more it costs to run a popular site. Just for your information some of the top sites on the Internet can cost many hundreds to even THOUSANDS of dollars to run MONTHLY, yes I said MONTHLY, IHD is not close to that, but hopefully one day we will be that popular.

Now if you add the cost of hosting IHD, all the other sites, plus the cost of hosting the ARCADE games located at dialysischat.com you will realize how expensive this site is. Soon if the site, IHD and others continue to grow at the current rate of growth, I will need to upgrade my VPS hosting to another package which will be $100 a month which is a Premium VPS. And the even MORE Premium Members will be needed to help support IHD. AND eventually I may need to upgrade to a DEDICATED SERVER which through Liquidweb costs $149 a MONTH to START, and goes up from there. Here is a link so you can see for yourself: https://www.liquidweb.com/cart/content/dedicated/ which is a very good price for a "dedicated server" some places are much more expensive. There is a lot more to hosting then you think, many places offer cheap hosting for as low as $1.99 a month but IHD is now far above that level of service/storage/bandwidth, in fact when I first started IHD, I WAS INDEED using a FREE hosting service, however as the site grows you are forced to upgrade your plan and that is just the way it is. As a side note to hosting, when IHD was on a FREE hosting plan the site was much slower and we had several times where we were offline due to technically issues that webmasters who use FREE webhosts are prone to.

Also I have NEVER once claimed that IHD is a NON-PROFIT, I do have "Google ads" but the money received from it is very minimal, just enough to take my family out to a nice dinner once a month and feel like a man knowing that I PAID for that meal with all my hard work. I don't think you have any idea how much time and energy I have invested in IHD and the other sites and the amount of time I put into this site on a daily basis, even when I feel sick like a dog sometimes. I am always updating the sites and ALWAYS keeping my members surprised by adding new features, events, or even NEW websites. I keep the family of IHD sites fresh and that is one of the reasons IHD is so popular.

Also becoming a Premium Member has added benefits not available to regular members, did you even see that thread? Here is a link: http://ihatedialysis.com/forum/index.php?topic=1482.0 One of the benefits is since I have a VPS I hosts Premium Members personal websites. That is just one of the benefits of becoming a premium member. So you'll see that not only do the premium members support the site, they get added features.

Now since you mentioned the "Store" mykidneygear.com, I have designed EACH and every one of those designs, I make a few bucks off of each shirt and I offer FREE custom work. How much does a Graphic Artist make now a days, mykidneygear is HARDLY profitable. I do make a little bit of money off the products I sell and design, but mostly I do it for fun and to make dialysis patients laugh and find humor in this terrible disease. The money received from MyKidneyGear is not used to run IHD, why should it be? It is for my time and design work. Did I mention I do FREE custom designs?

You are the second person to question my integrity and I take great insult to it, especially to you comparing me to the owner of that site that offered to match living donors to recipients for a profit. I literally work my ass of for this site and I do it for practically NOTHING, what is your time worth to you? What are these sites worth to you? If you were to pay me hourly for the work I do on these sites, for people like you.... I would make MAYBE .10 cents a hour, which to me is not worth it at all. There is a lot of work that goes on BEHIND the scenes that I guess you fail to realize, there are daily backups, weekly backups, optimizing the SQL Database, forum software upgrades, meetings between the admin team, etc, etc and that is JUST for IHD, I am not counting all the work for the other sites such as the ARCADE. It takes a LOT of work to run this site that many people have no idea what is involved. HOWEVER what does make it worth it is when I get APPRECIATION from members like this thread: http://ihatedialysis.com/forum/index.php?topic=2083.0 or the number of NEW friends I have made since creating IHD some are as close or even closer than FAMILY. I do all my work for those kinds of rewards not money.

I am sorry if you take this as an attack or as a hostile reply, however since you told me "Finally if you can help me understand why this site is so expensive I'd like to subscribe. I just wanted you to get a true understanding and I wanted to post this on the site for others to see since this has come up before from another member recently and I wanted to set the record straight. Because I am tired of defending myself to people who have no clue.

Now do you still want to become a Premium Member? If so send me another PM asking me for my address since you do not use Paypal. Hopefully now you have a better understanding for WHY I ask for people like you to support this site and become premium members, since if you notice this site is JUST as BIG as the other corporate sponsored sites, however I have no corporate sponsorships. Again I mean no disrespect to you and I realize that you meant none to me. Again I just wanted to set the record straight. And I look forward to your PM.

- Epoman
Owner/Admin

P.S. You say "I'm also in a very comfortable financial situation and could easily come up with domain reregistration and even hosting (though hosting would not be necessary.)" So then will you be purchasing a Premium Membership or will you be making a donation or BOTH?



So that was the PM's we exchanged, I left the members name out to hide their identity out of respect since I posted their PM here on the site. I hope this clears up any doubts any of you had about me or my true intentions, if any. Here are some links to help you get a better understanding of the items that were discussed, if you are interested in learning more.

http://www.liquidweb.com
http://www.namecheap.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_web_hosting_service
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_cap
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_hosting_service
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_private_server
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedicated_hosting_service

If you have any questions, feel free to discuss here.

- Epoman
Owner/Admin

P.S. I forgot to mention about her saying in her PM,

"So anyway the only other expense I can think of for this site is moderation, and if anything it seems this site is overmoderated.  It doesn't really bother me but my posts are always getting moved around and recatagorized and such.  Are the moderators paid or something?"

That was probably the most IGNORANT comment ever from a new member I have ever heard, she has no idea obviously what it takes to run OR keep a site organized, well maintained, and free from spammers and I consider her statement a "slap in the face" to the mods and admin team for all the hard work and long hours they put in. The admin works for no money they do it out of the kindness of their heart. This site is open 24/7, active every hour of the day and night, we get thousands of posts every month, delete spammers EVERYDAY, and we have 3 mods and 2 admins, again she is showing her lack of knowledge of what it takes to run a site. She has a very small amount of posts (at the time of this writing) and 5 have been moved, and one was a double post. She is so new and already starting trouble. In fact she is so new she doesn't even know who the owner of IHD is. Yet she feels compelled to say those things AND:

If you're really concerned about the site not lasting if you go home I'd be happy to take it over, I'm young and (other than kidney failure) very healthy.  I'm also in a very comfortable financial situation and could easily come up with domain reregistration and even hosting (though hosting would not be necessary.)

WTF? You would happy to take it over? Oh sure no problem, consider IHD and all the sister sites YOURS when I die. SCREW the Admin team and my only son.

Sorry to my members, if you are thinking to yourself "oh shit, Epoman is freaking out again" sorry but I take comments like this very personal and I just wanted to clear up some issues, and you know me I speak my mind and let it off my chest as I encourage you all to do. The night I chatted to that member in the chat room about her questioning my integrity, I didn't sleep wondering what else everyone thinks of me. Just ask Goofynina as I told her how I didn't sleep that night because of the conversation I had with that well known very active member. It was very upsetting she even said to me:

if i tell someone about kidney.org, no one can say "oh they are just making money off sick folks"

And that really shocked the HELL out of me. And made me think am I such an asshole for making $50-$60 off the site monthly because of the "Google Ads" am I as a sick person myself taking advantage of sick people? SHE must feel that way or why else would she say that also she is VERY active and uses the site daily and well off financially but she herself is not a Premium Member, she used the excuse that she hasn't had time to become a premium member? Yet she had time to spend in the chat room insulting me, so she MUST feel that way and that is what upset me, but I let it roll of my back as ignorance of what it actually takes to run these sites. But then I get this PM from a different member this morning and BAM! I became upset. To give you an example of how much time this site and the others eat from my life... because of this members PM, I have been working on this post for the last 4 hours.

In closing I would like to add that I do not mind if she or that other member do NOT become premium members because I have always said that becoming a premium member is VOLUNTARY and OPTIONAL and is not a requirement of viewing IHD or ANY of it's sister sites. And in general IHD will always remain FREE to EVERYONE that has Internet access. I would like to thank the Premium members for realizing that sites such as this do INDEED cost money to run and are thankful enough to show their appreciation and want to help make IHD not a financial burden for me, a fellow patient. And if have read this entire post I thank you for allowing me to rant.

Discuss?

[charee]

I'm not sure what to Say to that  BUT one thing I can say is that I've never thought you were making money out of this, I would love to become a "Premium Member" and I will one day when things improve with my finances I know you put heaps and heaps of time into this site and so do the "moderators " and i appreciate all you all do for us. Just my worth. Hope you can have a nice day now you have got that out of you system 

[jbeany]

Don't let them get you down, epo.  I know how much time my husband puts into his web hosting and internet service.  He's online for hours almost every night.  So far he hasn't made a dime - everything goes back into equipment and registration fees.  It's a time consuming job without much immediate reward.

I want premium member status myself - hopefully, I will have the cash sometime this year.

[goofynina]

Since becoming an Admin. i have been paying close attention to all Epoman does and let me tell you, unless you actually see what goes on behind the scenes, you dont know shit... The upkeep, the maintenance, the amount of time he/we spend online trying to find new ways to improve this or improve that, all for US, (the IHD family)  and i CANNOT BELIEVE anyone would have the audacity to question this mans integrity.   They should be ashamed of themselves.  I took personal offence to the remark about the Moderators getting paid and such,  what kind of bullshit is that?   THIS IS A PRIVILEDGE!!!  Being able to help build this site and keep it so well maintained and in order has probably been the best job i've had ever... I have been to other websites that have been (not so organized) and it is overwhelming and confusing,  i dont even bother anymore, i am happy here, MY HOME AWAY FROM HOME...  Epoman, i admire your professionalism in the post regarding this matter and i apologize for the ignorance of others.  Please, by all means,  keep on keepin' on my brother, so many people need this site and whether they want to admit it or not,  we all need you too... YOU are this site boss 

[Sluff]

I'll keep it short. Being the newest Moderator here, I can attest to the fact, the amount of time I personally spend on the site IHD and Renal Romance. There are day's when I'm not working that I am litterally on for many hours a day. I enjoy my position and provide the service absolutely free of charge, I am proud to do this for all the IHD'ers out there that I feel needs my help. My job here requires me to move threads into the proper sections when needed, whether that hurts someones feelings or not. Trust me sometimes it is an undecisive nightmare, but I do my best, and I think that most of the 640 members understand this. I read every post that is written, repair the Icons and the quote tags that usually don't work due to poster error. I'm not complaining, there is a lot of personal satifaction in knowing I am helping.

Bottom line... I wish I could do more, I am very motivated to make a difference in others lives in the renal community, and I hope that I'm doing that by Moderating these sites, organizing the annual meet and helping to try and help the rest of the Admin team come up with new things to try and make this site even more interesting for you, the members.

If the money issue is a problem than don't become a premium member, Simple.

I Love the IHD Family of sites, it's members and the rest of the Administration Team. I am here for you.

[BigSky]

Don't know what to really say??  Kinda speechless that anyone would suggest that about you and this site.

[aharris2]

hey, do u guys mean that nobody gets paid for running this great site 

o shit!! n i was thinking on becoming a moderator myself...

i guess u have to be  to do something like that....well crazy people r the best

  everybody life wouldn't be interesting without its  and 

life is too short to be taken so seriously just keep the ihd  growing

  to epoman and the moderators

sincerely,

Rolando  (a newbie here)

[glitter]

well I hope this site grows to the point where you are making enough to leave a boatload of cash to your family-screw what anyone else thinks-you are providing a valuable service,and I for one appreciate it.In the future i hope to be a premium member too.....and I don't see anything wrong with you makeing one buck or a boatload of bucks for all the hardwork....and if some peeps think your awful for that,bear in mind they are a small percentage...and not worth worrying about...I mean really...they don't HAVE to come here.F*** em and feed em fishheads!!

[Rerun]

You couldn't PAY me enough to moderate this site.  In fact, I pay to be a Premium Member too.  I was the first moderator because Life On Hold died (bless her soul)  Finally the site grew too big for just me, so Epoman appointed others to help.  Thank God!  I do like being able to fix things that are wrong.  Except spelling!  Epoman won't let us fix spelling errors!  My fingers get really itchy but I don't do it.  Which reminds me!  Can we all just hit "spell check"?  Is it that hard to read your post before sending it?  It doesn't have to be perfect but some of the crap that I "try" to read is an embarrassment. 

I'm not mad at the person who questioned.  Questions are good.  Answers are good too.

[Chicken Little]

When I see things like that PM, I have to wonder does this person act like this in real life or do they just feel it's safe to do in the anonymity of cyberworld.  

Don't let them get to you Epoman.  The best response to people like that is "You're entitled to your feelings, even if they aren't based in fact.  Have a nice day."  You don't owe them an explanation. 

 

[Sluff]

well I hope this site grows to the point where you are making enough to leave a boatload of cash to your family-screw what anyone else thinks-you are providing a valuable service,and I for one appreciate it.In the future i hope to be a premium member too.....and I don't see anything wrong with you makeing one buck or a boatload of bucks for all the hardwork....and if some peeps think your awful for that,bear in mind they are a small percentage...and not worth worrying about...I mean really...they don't HAVE to come here.F*** em and feed em fishheads!!

Epoman is not making money off this site.

[jbeany]

Maybe not now, sluff.  But if he starts too, that wouldn't be a bad thing.  Why shouldn't he be reimbursed for his time and effort?  I agree with glitter - this site is a valuable service!

[glitter]

well I hope this site grows to the point where you are making enough to leave a boatload of cash to your family-screw what anyone else thinks-you are providing a valuable service,and I for one appreciate it.In the future i hope to be a premium member too.....and I don't see anything wrong with you makeing one buck or a boatload of bucks for all the hardwork....and if some peeps think your awful for that,bear in mind they are a small percentage...and not worth worrying about...I mean really...they don't HAVE to come here.F*** em and feed em fishheads!!

Epoman is not making money off this site.

I understand that he isn't-but if he did I would be glad,and eventually he might,and that is not a bad thing.

[Jill D.]

Epoman - you just keep doing what you are doing. You provided a great outlet for dialysis patients when you decided to make this site. Frankly, I think it would be great if you could make some decent money doing what you do. After all, it's pretty much your job, and you have a wife and son who would benefit. Think of the $$$$ that people in the medical field make off of dialysis patients...I would rather see a dialysis brother make some cheese for providing such an awesome service for other dialysis patients! I certainly understand you being insulted by the PM that you received, but I think that 99% of the membership would be throwing money at you if we could!
Keep up the great work   (that goes out to the mods too!)

[Sluff]

well I hope this site grows to the point where you are making enough to leave a boatload of cash to your family-screw what anyone else thinks-you are providing a valuable service,and I for one appreciate it.In the future i hope to be a premium member too.....and I don't see anything wrong with you makeing one buck or a boatload of bucks for all the hardwork....and if some peeps think your awful for that,bear in mind they are a small percentage...and not worth worrying about...I mean really...they don't HAVE to come here.F*** em and feed em fishheads!!

Epoman is not making money off this site.

I understand that he isn't-but if he did I would be glad,and eventually he might,and that is not a bad thing.

Sorry If I misunderstood your other post.

[angela515]

I don't think you need to defend yourself from such a ridiculous PM. I personally think you SHOULD make money off this site, you dedicate a LOT of time and hard work into it, I think you should get some kind of profits. I look forward to being able to become a Premium Member when I have enough money, this site rocks... and has been VERY helpful to me, and I onsider you al family.

 

[strateup]

Epoman  The services you provide are priceless.  Realize that for every one negative person there are at least a thousand of us that are extremely grateful for what you do.  You have provided all of us a place to share, to rant, to help, to care, to come together to deal with the issues in our lives.  Although my family loves me very much and cares about my health, they don't quite understand like the people I have met on this website.  To you I give one thousand thanks, keep up the goodwork, you are appreciated.

[Ohio Buckeye]

I hope this is a profitable venture for you someday.
hope I can be a prem. member also someday.

[Bajanne]

How could I put a money value on what this site has meant to me?  I thank God that I met it when I did.  It made at total difference to how I coped with dialysis, and I have gained some fantastic friends, to boot.  Look at the time and effort that Epoman spends on this site.  He should be making a mint for that, if life was fair!

[raina]

I never said you were getting rich off sick people, I questioned the need for donations to keep this site going when it can be done for less than $20 a year.

Yes, the free options are not as shiney as the 1000/a year ones, but they could keep the site up and running.  You said yourself you couldn't afford it.  Perhaps you don't need 25 domains?  I'm sure one would do. I personally have dozens of websites and no domains, I just use free services on the net to keep my anonimity.

You made it sound like the site would go down completely withot memberships.  This is obviously not the case.

I understand making a site like this is a lot of work and I respect that.  Alot of sites I visit, like oddtodd.com, have tip jars and po boxes to send donations too and I have donated. 

You were making it sound like you needed money that was absolutely necessary to keep the site running, and that doesn't seem to be the case.   It could be run on one url with free hosting.  Tons of services offer free forum hosting, like bravenet and craigslist. 






EDITED: Merged this reply from a NEW thread to this thread. Why would you create a NEW thread and not just reply to this one? - Epoman, Owner/Admin

[Epoman]

I never said you were getting rich off sick people, I questioned the need for donations to keep this site going when it can be done for less than $20 a year.

Yes, the free options are not as shiney as the 1000/a year ones, but they could keep the site up and running.  You said yourself you couldn't afford it.  Perhaps you don't need 25 domains?  I'm sure one would do. I personally have dozens of websites and no domains, I just use free services on the net to keep my anonimity.

You made it sound like the site would go down completely withot memberships.  This is obviously not the case.

I understand making a site like this is a lot of work and I respect that.  Alot of sites I visit, like oddtodd.com, have tip jars and po boxes to send donations too and I have donated. 

You were making it sound like you needed money that was absolutely necessary to keep the site running, and that doesn't seem to be the case.   It could be run on one url with free hosting.  Tons of services offer free forum hosting, like bravenet and craigslist. 






EDITED: Merged this reply from a NEW thread to this thread. Why would you create a NEW thread and not just reply to this one? - Epoman, Owner/Admin

WOW, thank you, now I know that you really are clueless and don't know nothing about running websites. You can't even post in the correct thread, you made a new thread to reply to this one. I had to merge it here. You actually wonder why we have to moderate your posts? And you own dozens of sites? I don't know why I even bother with you but, explain to me where I can get a FREE host that will allow me so store a site as large as IHD, and offer the speed and reliability. You said "perhaps I don't need 25 sites", did you even read my thread, you can't even read where I said I own 21. So tell me how ONE site will do to handle: ilovenxstage, renalromance, dialysischat, kidneyoogle, mykidneygear, SUB-DOMAINS? No thanks. Oh that's right you have a blog and get 10 hits a month and you think you are a webmaster...Oh wait that's right you are a "HTML Jedi". Look if you think you can build a better site and offer the same great site as IHD then by all means go out and try and do it yourself. All the MAJOR dialysis sites PAY for hosting, NONE of them use free hosts, the difference is they have corporate sponsorships to pay for the hosting and extra bandwidth, which is why you do not see "Premium Members" on their sites.

Here is from some info from http://www.bravenet.com/ the one you mentioned that I could get free hosting from with one of their FREE accounts:



Notice where it says 50MB of disk space? currently, IHD alone, not counting the other sites like the "Arcade" uses:

8556.80 MB's

And as for bandwidth they offer 1.5GB which is about 1,500 MB for their FREE account, IHD used:

15GB last month which is 15,000+ MB's 10 times MORE than what they allow.

Can you understand that? Do you have ANY comprehension of what I am talking about? And that is JUST for IHD not counting the other sister sites of IHD, do have any idea how much storage/bandwidth the ARCADE located on dialysischat.com uses? Do you have any idea how much the members enjoy the arcade? That site uses a lot of storage and bandwidth all on it's own. Did you even know how CPU speed and RAM come into play when it comes to hosting when your site is sitting on a FREE host and 1,000's of sites are hosted on that same server? The next thing you are going to tell me is I can host this site from my OWN home computer right? Well WRONG, what if my computer goes down, what if my Internet provider goes down.

You also said: I never said you were getting rich off sick people, I questioned the need for donations to keep this site going when it can be done for less than $20 a year. I never did say, you said I was getting rich off of sick people, did you even read my thread? And if you think you can run this site for less than $20 a year. You should tell that to the webmasters who spend hundreds and thousands of dollars a month on hosting to save them a lot of money, you could be a consultant, because it's obvious you have this great knowledge that no one else has. And you have these awesome sources, by the way "craigslist" is not a webhost, it is a virtual yardsale. Did you even know anyone can be a webhost? I mean LITERALLY anyone can be a webhost EVEN from their home computer. But the "guy in his home" vs. "a professional company" is what separates unreliable sites and reliable sites. Let me put it this way If you had a store, a real store would you want your stores electricity provided from some guy with a generator or would you want your store powered by the local power company?

So, you mentioned you own dozens of websites, do me a favor and show me some of your sites. List some here, lets see how popular YOUR sites are. Please show me what makes you a "HTML Jedi" as you call yourself, and please don't show me sites that you used a template or a CMS to create. Sorry but running a blog does not make you a webmaster.

- Epoman
Owner/Admin

[angieskidney]

Sorry if this is offtopic but no way I have time to read all this right now. It is 4am and I am going to bed but I just wanted to say this:

A while back there was a site that offered to match living donors to reciepients.  It offered a place for people to ask for organs on the net.. for $500 a month.  The site claimed that the money was to run the site and had the nerve to even ask for donations on top of that.

Because I'm an html Jedi myself I've thought of writing a site where people could do this for free, but I'm not sure if it would even be worthwhile.  I don't think many people get hooked up with kidneys that way.  Seems it would be a waste of time.  If I do ever get around to coding this site I will contact all the people on the paid site and offer that they come to mine for free.

I know another site that both Epoman and I belong to has tried to address that but since it is not a popular site no one knows about it.

Donor Search on D&TC

Maybe Epoman can start ANOTHER site but just for that reason?? Sorry if this was already brought up! I will read both pages of this thread later (but it will probably be 4 pages by then lol  )

[nextnoel]

I am amazed - just totally friggin' amazed!

Epoman, I can't tell you how invaluable this site is for me, and how much I appreciate your expertise and how much of your self you put into it, and how strongly I stand by you.  Sometimes critics need to think through things better before they post, and they should certainly put more thought and consideration into how they express things.  Questions are good, answers are good, comments are good, but Jeez, uninformed ad hominum attacks are just bull##it!  YOU GO, GUY!

[Bette]

Epoman,  I am sorry that you had to deal with this crap.  I love this site and there is no amount of money that can pay you what it is worth to me.

[Hawkeye]

I know a really decent amount about computers, but next to nothing about running a website.  Even with the knowledge I have I know it can't be easy or cheep to run a site this size.  There is and old saying that goes you get what you ay for.  If you go the cheep route you get cheep and unreliable service.  Epoman does a fantastic job keeping this site fresh with new secret additions around every corner, and the others helping do a wonderful job keeping it all clean and tidy.  If it weren't for the work that all of you do this site wouldn't be the cream of the crop that it is today.  With as much work goes into IHD the few measly dollars you may make that doesn't go right back into the site is nothing compaired to what you deserve.  To anyone that thinks this site can be done better and for less money I would like to see them try so I can watch them fall flat on their faces.  Keep up the great work and don't let the ignorance of others bother you.