TFP Challenge
- Thread starter woodyp
- Start date
To all who have donated so far, pool owners thank you! Yesterday TFP saw its second highest dollar amount of donations to date by receiving roughly $1300. Last year during the donation drive for Operation BBQ Relief we saw higher as we donated to their great cause. We have tossed together a really quick newsletter that is being sent out now to reach those how may not see the forum daily. I cannot express how grateful I am for all the support from all. Regardless of the donation size every bit helps a TON!
To those on the verge of donating,
Over the next few as I sneak away from my little ones I hope to give you a peak at just how your donations are being used. One thing we wish is to be completely honest at how your money is used. Please, if you have ANY questions feel free to ask.
To those on the verge of donating,
Over the next few as I sneak away from my little ones I hope to give you a peak at just how your donations are being used. One thing we wish is to be completely honest at how your money is used. Please, if you have ANY questions feel free to ask.
I know it's rare----but I'll make a special exception and drink a beer to that! Thanks for the update Lee.
- Apr 23, 2017
- 2,400
- Pool Size
- 22000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Hayward Aqua Rite (T-15)
To all of you who have donated so far,
THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!! I will update more shortly but I want to make sure I keep up with all your support. I cannot tell you how much your donations will help TFP's future.
Lee
THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!! I will update more shortly but I want to make sure I keep up with all your support. I cannot tell you how much your donations will help TFP's future.
Lee
- Apr 23, 2017
- 2,400
- Pool Size
- 22000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Hayward Aqua Rite (T-15)
Got my email :handshake:
It was in my junk folder (have no idea how that happened) so spread the word...
It was in my junk folder (have no idea how that happened) so spread the word...
First time in my life I'll actually plead "guilty" in public to something!
Can't believe the level of support everyone has mustered up for this........we should all be humbled. The generosity of plain folk should never be underestimated. I just helped on a fund raiser for a Dear friend who just passed with cancer and am still astounded by that. The organization is Pink Heals if anyone has a local chapter---NO overhead costs come out of it's fundraising efforts. Shameless plug.
Can't believe the level of support everyone has mustered up for this........we should all be humbled. The generosity of plain folk should never be underestimated. I just helped on a fund raiser for a Dear friend who just passed with cancer and am still astounded by that. The organization is Pink Heals if anyone has a local chapter---NO overhead costs come out of it's fundraising efforts. Shameless plug.
- Apr 23, 2017
- 2,400
- Pool Size
- 22000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Hayward Aqua Rite (T-15)
Well everybody........we're getting there! I haven't done the exact donation numbers but I'd say we're right around $2500 so far. I greatly thank each of those who have donated.
As I mentioned before I'd like to give all a small peak into the working of TFP. While we aren't the largest site (or even close) on the net.......we're also not the smallest. Time after time I'm sure you've seen a user post that your donations "keep the lights on." What they're referring to here is that your donations covers the largest monthly expense has, our servers. Currently TFP uses and maintains 6 separate servers with plans to disconnect two of them. I'd like to quickly explain what each is used for................
Currently we use four separate servers for the PoolMath App but are planning on turning two of these off shortly. When TFP first rolled out the App we used a plugin to help us "sync" data between devices. We had high hopes of this plugin but quickly learned how much it stunk. That decision still is costing TFP. We still are seeing about 100 users (mostly inactive) who have created accounts on version 1 who have yet to update to the newest version of PoolMath. This means these users haven't updated their App's in over a year.
To address the epic fail that was version 1 of the App the developer went to work and wrote his own code to handle all of the sync responsibilities........and track chemicals. ;D Version 2 is currently on it's own dedicated server that we plan on maintaining for the future. All of your data is stored on this secured server and will be until we need to step up. Next we've got a temporary server setup to connect the two that and allow data to be migrated from one to the other. Again, two of these servers are mostly decorations at this point unless you're a user who hasn't updated to version 2 in which PLEASE, update ASAP! Lastly we've got a setup that controls all of the login tasks and Google Assistant/ Amazon Alexa (hint hint)
Next off is our newest cost, and one that a TFP user has assisted us in setting up. We are currently using a fifth server that handles all of our newsletter sending tasks. This means we're now able to send out massive amount of emails with no strain on the website. In the past we've used third party companies to handle these tasks but that cost TFP almost $400 each newsletter blast we sent. Now using a server paid for by TFP we're able to greatly reduce this cost however its now another setup we pay for monthly. This allows TFP to reach out to our users whom may not visit the site daily with important information concerning Pool Care or the forum. Don't worry though.........we're not gonna go overboard!! Items such as the changes to bleach percentage or articles like why you don't wanna use metal laced pucks are now being sent out to almost 40,000 users who are finding them useful.
Lastly is our largest bill, the server for the website itself. I'm sure many of you were around 5 years ago or so when TFP was maintained single handed by user TFP had "hired" to keep us up. This user installed the website on a server he had owned and that he had his personal website on. All was going well for about a month but then he suffered some issue that took down TFP just before the 4th of July. This outage put TFP offline for almost a week until we altered our path and ponied up for our current setup. Let's now look back a few days ago when TFP suffered our last outage. When this last issue occurred I was at McDonald's with my children with NO computer on hand. Additionally I had zero desire to deal with this outage as our "Daddy/Daughter" date was in full swing. To address this issue I was able to reach out to our hosting company who's available 24/7 whom was already working on the issue. While we did suffer some downtime the forum was up and running way before our date was over. In fact this was our first unplanned outage in well over a year. TFP pays our host to not only manage the server but they also do multiple daily tasks like security updates and complete backups of our data daily. What this means is that the machine TFP is currently hosted on could explode right now and at the MOST, we'll only lose a few hours of activity and we could be up and running again in about 20 minutes if all goes well.
As you can see there's alot of lights that are being funded by your support and we greatly thank you for helping keep them on!
As I mentioned before I'd like to give all a small peak into the working of TFP. While we aren't the largest site (or even close) on the net.......we're also not the smallest. Time after time I'm sure you've seen a user post that your donations "keep the lights on." What they're referring to here is that your donations covers the largest monthly expense has, our servers. Currently TFP uses and maintains 6 separate servers with plans to disconnect two of them. I'd like to quickly explain what each is used for................
Currently we use four separate servers for the PoolMath App but are planning on turning two of these off shortly. When TFP first rolled out the App we used a plugin to help us "sync" data between devices. We had high hopes of this plugin but quickly learned how much it stunk. That decision still is costing TFP. We still are seeing about 100 users (mostly inactive) who have created accounts on version 1 who have yet to update to the newest version of PoolMath. This means these users haven't updated their App's in over a year.
To address the epic fail that was version 1 of the App the developer went to work and wrote his own code to handle all of the sync responsibilities........and track chemicals. ;D Version 2 is currently on it's own dedicated server that we plan on maintaining for the future. All of your data is stored on this secured server and will be until we need to step up. Next we've got a temporary server setup to connect the two that and allow data to be migrated from one to the other. Again, two of these servers are mostly decorations at this point unless you're a user who hasn't updated to version 2 in which PLEASE, update ASAP! Lastly we've got a setup that controls all of the login tasks and Google Assistant/ Amazon Alexa (hint hint)Next off is our newest cost, and one that a TFP user has assisted us in setting up. We are currently using a fifth server that handles all of our newsletter sending tasks. This means we're now able to send out massive amount of emails with no strain on the website. In the past we've used third party companies to handle these tasks but that cost TFP almost $400 each newsletter blast we sent. Now using a server paid for by TFP we're able to greatly reduce this cost however its now another setup we pay for monthly. This allows TFP to reach out to our users whom may not visit the site daily with important information concerning Pool Care or the forum. Don't worry though.........we're not gonna go overboard!! Items such as the changes to bleach percentage or articles like why you don't wanna use metal laced pucks are now being sent out to almost 40,000 users who are finding them useful.
Lastly is our largest bill, the server for the website itself. I'm sure many of you were around 5 years ago or so when TFP was maintained single handed by user TFP had "hired" to keep us up. This user installed the website on a server he had owned and that he had his personal website on. All was going well for about a month but then he suffered some issue that took down TFP just before the 4th of July. This outage put TFP offline for almost a week until we altered our path and ponied up for our current setup. Let's now look back a few days ago when TFP suffered our last outage. When this last issue occurred I was at McDonald's with my children with NO computer on hand. Additionally I had zero desire to deal with this outage as our "Daddy/Daughter" date was in full swing.
To address this issue I was able to reach out to our hosting company who's available 24/7 whom was already working on the issue. While we did suffer some downtime the forum was up and running way before our date was over. In fact this was our first unplanned outage in well over a year. TFP pays our host to not only manage the server but they also do multiple daily tasks like security updates and complete backups of our data daily. What this means is that the machine TFP is currently hosted on could explode right now and at the MOST, we'll only lose a few hours of activity and we could be up and running again in about 20 minutes if all goes well.As you can see there's alot of lights that are being funded by your support and we greatly thank you for helping keep them on!
- Jul 1, 2018
- 264
- Pool Size
- 27000
- Surface
- Vinyl
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Hayward Aqua Rite (T-15)
[emoji115][emoji115]Wow! I had no idea. No wonder so many forums have insane advertisers! Perhaps an annual fundraiser is in order!
- Apr 23, 2017
- 2,400
- Pool Size
- 22000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Hayward Aqua Rite (T-15)
John your work on the site to put up the announcement was most excellent! Thanks for your expertise!!!
- - - Updated - - -
This was from Amazon Smile. I just found out about the charity function within Amazon so my paltry $1.34 may not be much thus far but it will add up! Just posting this to show there are painless ways to help TFP to function as the best pool care site on the net....
- - - Updated - - -
This was from Amazon Smile. I just found out about the charity function within Amazon so my paltry $1.34 may not be much thus far but it will add up! Just posting this to show there are painless ways to help TFP to function as the best pool care site on the net....
In all fairness some of what was mentioned isn’t really a physical “server” but a web service in a huge data center. Many headaches are removed but the fees are still there.
CJadamec
TFP Expert
Things have been kinda crazy around the house for the last couple of weeks. Mostly been looking at the forum on my phone. The Email brought me in to check out all the commotion.
Thank you! To all those who donated!!
Thank you! To all those who donated!!