Hello members of Ponybooru. Today I bring with me some mostly good news, albeit it’s not very timely. For the past 6 months the mod team has graciously helped this site here be the best it could be, even when things were tough. I wanted to start this post out saying how much I appreciate their support and effort despite myself not being in a position to reward them for their efforts currently. Please give a thank you to our staff, it means a lot to them and they really do like helping out. Especially the lil shids.
The first bit of news is a bit surprising and I’m kind of down about it, but I’ll have to go on with it anyway. Some of you will note that there was supposed to be a hardware transition between what we’re on now as a temp server from a friend to a server jointly owned by myself and CurtianedWizard. Due to unforseen life events, this has been held back indefinitely. I however am still determined to progress forward with Ponybooru.
So here comes the really important bit. I need to make a very sharp distinction that Ponybooru is **separate** from The Pony Archive in administration and policy. It is however far easier for me to run one company over two, which means TPA will be sharing finances with Ponybooru after a new server is in the datacenter. This unfortunately will not be the wonder server that was promised in the altbooru threads, again, due to unforeseen events. I did want to make the statement about shared finances very clear here though. This is because both sites, and more, are under my Z+ business branding. Now there really won’t be any changes to either site, or any other projects I currently maintain or will be maintaining. It just has to be said that I’m lazy and can’t afford the time to run everything separately.
So why are you here? Well, the real frank part here is that I already have *most* of a new server for Z+ built. I am lacking two crucial parts to the server, and after I have those parts we will be able to begin migration and *finally* update much of the code to a newer philomena version. So, you might ask what am I lacking? Well, I need 8 8TB hard drives and 128GB of DDR4 server memory. The hard drives I plan on purchasing used at a steep discount compared to new disks, these units do come with a year warranty and replacement for DOA’s. The ram is quite pricy, around $350 but it’s needed for this server for a couple of reasons. Been saving up to get each item as I can.
Gee, this sounds like an awful lot for a booru! You’d be correct, Ponybooru will not be the only site hosted by this server, as part of the Z+ network it will also be our stepping stone to actually being able to provide actual services such as user-managed VPS’s and high-bandwidth web-hosting. This new server was already planned to be a part of Z+’s network but I kept getting held up by financial stresses. It just happens to be that now it would be very nice to have. This would also make Z+, and by extension Ponybooru and TPA entirely self owned.
Will this raise monthly costs for the Z+ / TPA / PB network? Well initially no, not really. It’ll raise costs by about $5 - we’re recouping the costs of colocation by cutting all rented servers in our network. I’ve been cost cutting the past 6 months to make this possible as I understand hard financial times have hit most people with that damn virus. If we see lots of traffic, our colocation costs will go up a bit. This is however expected to only occur when Z+ has actual paying clients which will help to begin off-setting our costs. It is my goal to eventually have Z+ able to pay for itself rather than rely entirely on donations. It will be quite a while before that happens, but until then I am eternally grateful for any and all donations to the network.
For the first time I have added physical rewards to the tiers in the form of printed badges. Example image will be attached in a week or so. Donators also have the option to receive donator roles in both Ponybooru and Z+ discord servers. Additionally they have the option for a badge on ponybooru with higher tiers getting to pick from a large selection of donator badges or even choose their badge’s flavor text.
With this also comes a very small policy change. Ponybooru’s badge limit as set by policy will be 6 going forward. It would not be fair for those who already have 5 badges to have to give up one to get or display a donor badge.
Thank you again for your time, patience in reading, and your support of the pony fandom at large. Even if you don’t support us directly you can still go out and make content for the fandom, it’s highly encouraged. Spread some cheer and happiness. Ask someone how they’re doing or if you can do something to make them feel better.
The subscribestar is here:
https://subscribestar.adult/theponyarchive
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EDIT 1: If you subscribe please PM me using Subscribe Star’s messaging feature. Nothing is automatic at this time.
EDIT 2: Hey, an image example of the badges:
Initially it’ll be a limited pool of badges, but as things progress I fully expect some unique badges will arise. Eventually fully custom badges like the 2nd pic will be allowed provided you have the permissions to have the artwork printed for personal use (or are an artist of said work(s).)
The first and last badge’s are already in the pool of physical badge choices… PB badge design is made but is not yet printed.
If you would like to design a badge you may contact me for exact sizing and color palette required.
Again, thank you for the support, and thanks for the staff making this possible.
