While none of the existing features and areas at PTO will be taken away from existing members, we have decided to offer the following enhanced features to those who contribute during this fund raiser. All money generated will be used to purchase additional equipment & services as outlined in the following thread: http://www.prisontalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=331568


The current list of enhancements are listed below.

1. "PTO Contributor" Icon located in your Postbit. Your "postbit" is the area above each post that you make that includes your user name, post count, and other information. The modification that will allow us to do this is being completed at this time and hopefully will be ready to go later this week.

2. The ability to watch new PTO Posts & Threads as they are posted live via a browser window. If you would like to see when new posts and threads are made then you will really enjoy this. No refreshing of the new posts is needed. New posts show up in your browser window, and if you want to view it, you can simply click and it will take you there.

3. The ability to Search your Private Messages! This feature is just like the PTO forum search engine that lets you search all the threads and posts here for content and keywords except it works in your Private Messages. If you only have a few PM's this probably isn't needed, but if you have a lot of them that go way back, this will make it very simple to find what you are looking for even if you don't remember who sent it or when.

4. Private Message Limit increased to 4000 messages! No more deleting PM's because you are running out of space!

5. Photo Album & Gallery Image Limits increased to 500 images.

6. The ability to send attachments via the Private Message System. Have a document or picture (etc) that you want to send to someone here at PTO without posting it publicly or having to send via email? You will be able to via the attachment option in your Private Message System.

There may be more enhancements coming soon for contributing members now that the software we are running is about to be classified as a Stable Release and many new hacks/mods will now be updated to work with it.

A couple of the mods listed above have not been upgraded to work with the new system yet, so it may be a few weeks before they are released or before I can contract someone to upgrade them, but they will be added soon either way.

We will make available to all PTO members who contribute $25 or more to the 2008 Fund Raiser 1 year worth of free premium hosting. This is also available to those who contribute any amount and have over 1000 legitimate posts at PTO.

The contributor hosting package includes the following:

Your-Domain-Name.com/.org/.net (etc) Hosting
cPanel Control Panel (Best available - Full Featured)
300 Megabytes of Storage Stace for files
5 Gigabtyes of Bandwidth Transfer per Month
yourname @ your-domain.name.com email accounts (5)
Backups available!

If more bandwidth or features are needed, we may be able to help!

Please note: This hosting is mostly unsupported.
Meaning that we are only responsible for keeping your site hosting up and running. We do not have the time or resources to teach everyone the basics such as: "what is hosting?", "how do I use an FTP program?", "how do I design a website and what is the best program(s) to use?", etc.
What we will do is: If there are enough people that are interested in us hosting their website, we will open a dedicated forum dealing with hosting & design related topics so that everyone can help each other.

Also, please note: The website hosting option will only be available after we upgrade the servers and thus have the available resources to offer this.

Thanks,
David

P.S. If you have any questions about the enhanced features for contributing members, please post them in this thread.

Is there a minimum donation for the additional features? I understand it's a $25 or more donation for the web hosting. But that $25 is just for the web hosting and not all the other additional features right?

I believe there is a $2.00 minimum to pay with PayPal or CC, but there really isn't one for those who mail in a donation.

Also, members that have over 1,000 posts do not have to donate the $25.00 minimum to qualify for the hosting option.

Thanks,
David

As stated above in Post #2

We will make available to all PTO members who contribute $25 or more to the 2008 Fund Raiser 1 year worth of free premium hosting. This is also available to those who contribute any amount and have over 1000 legitimate posts at PTO.

Has PTO looked into advertisers to help pay for the costs of website hosting? (There are a few that already advertise on PTO, but I would think that there would be others that might want to reach such a broad and varied spectrum of people...especially with the recent high level of users and the article in (if I remember correctly) the NY Times.)

We are working to address this and accomodate new advertisers with the new site design. The current one doesn't give us much flexibility at all. The new one will give us more more and hopefully offset all hosting expenses.

Thanks,
David

The free premium webhosting for one year...since it will be available after the servers are upgraded, will the year start from that point on? Or once the donation has been sent in?

Thank you ahead of time for your answer!

GiaElise

The free premium webhosting for one year...since it will be available after the servers are upgraded, will the year start from that point on? Or once the donation has been sent in?

Thank you ahead of time for your answer!

GiaElise

Hi,

It will be from the date the service begins. Actually, once available, it will start as soon as anyone eligable asks for hosting to be setup for them within reason. I.E. Please don't wait (example) 5 years to contact me to start it. ;)