From January to March we have been asking your support to pay 6 months of hosting for our website, believing that the general interest about The Sims 2 would have decreased and we might need less resources. It hasn't been so, and back from holidays (that we didn't have though) we still have to face the hosting bill :P This time we need much less money, 350 euros circa, and we actually have the half of it, thanks to donations received after March and ads, thus we need only 199 euros.

We're trying to find an alternative solution, so that starting from next year we would be sure not to ask you any donation (well, if you want to donate anyway, it would always be a great help for us).

Why don't we use this solution from now?
Well, this is kinda simple: as you can read in the last months' donation target, some of the servers we use have already been paid for a year, thus we'd lash out a lot of money. Moreover, every possible solution requires time and testings, that I actually do not have, because you always have to remember that this is a pursuit for us and not our job; we have our own lives, our jobs and problems. Nonetheless, be sure we'll do our best!!

We are a FREE SITE and WE ALWAYS KEEP FREE, with or without your help. I want you keep in mind this. If we don't raise needed money.. see on bottom of this post...

notice: remember that paypal apply to me 0.35€ as fix cost pro transaction plus the 10% of the donation amount... for example if you donate 1€ I will receive 0,60€.

Actually we use some hosting plans to keep site online with full functionality.

To keep online we need:

1 hosting x pages
2 hosting x images
2 hosting x files
2 dedicated IP
1 hosting x emergency (when one of other go offline)

We need and we have unmetered bandwidth usage. The total charge is over 2.000.000 hits at day and over 100gb bandwith at day, with over 6000 visitors at day.
With such numbers we need some hosting in order to split the charge on different servers.

Total cost for all these hostings is about 800 eur yearly. But some services are already payed.

Now we have about 160 € from donations and google ads (since march until today). So the total need is 199 € against 356.

By ending this boring plans of cover cost, what we ask is
support us to pay:
1 hosting x images (6 month)
2 hosting x files (6 month)
2 dedicated IP (6 month)
1 hosting x emergency (when one of other go offline) (6 month)
________________________________

356,31 €
- 156,59 Donation & Ads Plat fond (march-aug 2008)
-------------------------------------------------

199,62 eur
TOTAL DONATION TARGET

and we will be online for the next 6 month without problems.

What does it happen if we don't reach donation target???

If we don't reach the total target, Sims2Cri remain online but with uncomfortable fuction. For example less images of our files, downloads only on mediashare or megaupload and so, or only link to tsr or mt2 threads for download. And perhaps many time when you go on Sims2Cri you could see "Suspended page".

notice: remember that paypal apply to me 0.35€ as fix cost pro transaction plus the 10% of the donation amount... for example if you donate 1€ I will receive 0,60€.

further notice if anyone has something to suggest us

What do we offer in change of donation?
We can't offer donation skins or other, we offer all for free... but we want thanks all the donators in a dedicated page where we thanks all of you that have contribute to keep online our site.... In add we will send you a kind of "Stock Certificate" image with your name at your mail adress....

We tried a private server, but in order to supply Sims2Cri, it's required a dedicated server, only for us, and with a quite big minimum bandwidth guarantee (my private server dedicated to my work, and I can't use them for my hobbies, but I've used them to test if one is sufficient). For example I talked so long with Nouk when she started the Wicked Nouk Family together with Jessica. We look at my resources use, and we have point of that is impossible for Sims2Cri keep part of family without create problems to all other sites hosted. The risk is to bigger, and the cost of a dedicated server is too expensive (all the offer I've found was greater then 1.800,00$).
So for all suggest me to keep part of their plans because they have unmetered space and bandwidth, I say thanks, but I'm not interested. My problem is not monthly bandwidth or disk space, my problem are the CPU usage and the memory load on servers. And for all want suggest to me cheap provider, my reply is another time "thanks, but I'm tired of try". I've search for solutions for some months in 2007 and now I've learn how to manage my 5 hosting plans and what are the days of too much load, how reduce them etc.
I've no more time to spend in configure some other hosting plans, I hope you can understand this.

. Thank you for your attention and help, remember that the "Thanks To" page is dedicated to you!
if you have questions or comments use the dedicated thread on our FORUM