• We apologize for the somewhat convoluted sign-up process. Due to ever-more sophisticated attacks by chatbots, we had to increase our filtering in order to weed out AI while letting humans through. It's a nuisance, but a necessary one in order to keep the level of discourse on the forums authentic and useful. From the actual humans using WCP, thanks for your understanding!

Update about the outage and options for the future.

alexsidles said:
Thank you, admins, for the endless hours and expenses involved in running WCP. Thank you, too, for recognizing the value of maintaining an ad-free corner of the internet.
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I second that emotion 100%.
alexsidles said:
Over the years, many of us forum users have offered to donate to help keep WCP afloat. Just let us know how much and when.

Alex
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Yes, this discussion came up a few years ago and we were told that the voluntary donation idea wasn't an option. I'm glad to see that's changed.
 
Hi all,

Just a quick update to say thanks to those of you have already gone ahead and done e-transfers. In particular to SK, as I received the transfer notice via interac, and therefore didn't have a personal email address to send my thanks to.
 
Happy to help. If I can't figure out a transfer I can send you a check, no?
Thank you for your service, KW, in keeping this site as helpful and kind as it is.
 
dmon707 said:
Happy to help. If I can't figure out a transfer I can send you a check, no?
Thank you for your service, KW, in keeping this site as helpful and kind as it is.
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Thanks for the offer. I can DM you my snail mail address if you want.
 
Hi all,

So I would just like to express again my profound appreciation for the donations received so far. The total is in the low hundreds at the moment (I’ll advise exact amounts shortly. This week has been a bit weird as my wife spent a couple of unexpected nights in the hospital. She’s out now, but we have a bunch of outpatient follow-up tests to get to the bottom of things.)

I’ve sent Raj (Tongo-Rad) $100.00 of these proceeds as an interim honorarium, and will send him more honorariums in the future, as we work on our upgrades. He has been donating dozens of hours of his time and will continue to support the website and community with his particular set of I.T. skills.

For my part, I’ve paid a couple of hundred dollars a year for the past several years to keep the website software running and to remain “master of my domain” (by continuing to own westcoastpaddler.com and a few variations on that name). Aside from that, I mostly herd cats to keep the threads on track, contribute to discussions where I happen to have experience or expertise, and slay the occasional troll.

As mentioned before, we’re working on upgrading the search function on WCP. As you may have noticed, it’s pretty basic right now, and we think it would add a lot of value to be able to more quickly and accurately search the knowledge base that is WCP.

I’ve just created a GoFundMe at https://gofund.me/4725084b. We’ll adding a permanent GoFundMe button to the website as well.

As always, please do not feel obliged to donate or feel guilty if you’re not in a place to do so. During my life, I’ve several times received help that I was in no position to repay directly to my benefactors. So I consider keeping WCP fully accessible to all without a subscription to be a small way of paying things both backwards and forwards. Plus, I understand the last few years have been especially weird and challenging for many folks finance-wise. If you are in a position to toss a few bucks in the sou’wester without hardship to yourself, every little bit helps and is greatly appreciated.

Safe and happy paddling all!
 
I visit WCP far less often than previously as I kayak less than I did but over the 15+ years that I have been a member the site has been invaluable. Delighted to have been able to make a donation through the GoFundMe route both as a thanks for services previously rendered and to help keep this brilliant site going in the future. Perhaps we could have a link to GoFundMe at the top of each forum page? I'm going to want to be able to donate easily in the future, for example if I have had a run of visiting the site in anticipation of a future trip and have had tips and help from others. Warm fuzzies tend to lead to clicks on Donate button, I suspect.
 
How does that tip to GoFundMe work? If I send you guys $100 and set it as 15% tip, do they take $100 and give you $85 and keep $15, or do they take $115 from me and give you guys $100?
 
Hi again everyone. So I've received several donations already (amazing since we just got the GoFundMe rolling yesterday!). I get a notification each time a donation has been made, which includes a "Say Thanks" button. When I click this, I just get taken to my account landing page with no confirmation a thanks has been sent. If you have made a donation via GoFundMe, can you let me know in this thread or by DM whether or not you've received a thank you? I don't want anyone to think their generosity was unappreciated.
 
Made a donation yesterday but didn't receive a thanks note. But I know it's appreciated. :)

Edit: got it now
 
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Kayak Jim said:
Made a donation yesterday but didn't receive a thanks note. But I know it's appreciated. :)
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Kay, so I'm slowly learning to navigate the GoFundMe dashboard. I believe everyone who's donated so far should have received a thank you. And thank you all for your patience as I figure this out!
 
An interesting problem - when the site is down, who do we notify (email?). I wasn't sure if the problem was with the site, or my computer/ISP/VPN.

The site is back now. Was there a site glitch or did things get straightened out (full restarts) at this end?
 
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cougarmeat said:
An interesting problem - when the site is down, who do we notify (email?). I wasn't sure if the problem was with the site, or my computer/ISP/VPN.

The site is back now. Was there a site glitch or did things get straightened out (full restarts) at this end?
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We apologize for the inconvenience. The site has come down a few times due to a number of factors on the hosting server. As of today I've put a notification system in place that will check the website every hour and email me and Philip when it's down so we can at least investigate the cause. Spambots are also making life more difficult and have caused the site to crash more than once. Sometimes this becomes a bit like whack-a-mole but we're exploring more permanent measures to keep the site safe.
 
Thanks, @Tongo-Rad .

An idea: would it be possible to do a bulk email to all users in the event of a lengthy outage? During the latest episode, I got to the point where I wondered if WCP was going to be offline indefinitely. Should I check in daily? Weekly? That sort of uncertainty will kill the site, as people will migrate elsewhere. It would have been helpful to get an email saying, "Hey, this is the situation" and another saying, "Hey, we're back!"

Cheers,
Andrew
 
AM said:
would it be possible to do a bulk email to all users in the event of a lengthy outage? During the latest episode, I got to the point where I wondered if WCP was going to be offline indefinitely. Should I check in daily? Weekly? That sort of uncertainty will kill the site, as people will migrate elsewhere. It would have been helpful to get an email saying, "Hey, this is the situation" and another saying, "Hey, we're back!"

Cheers,
Andrew
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If we can help it, the WCP will hopefully never (at least in our lifetime) go offline indefinitely!

Beyond some of the spam attacks which have brought the site down in the past, the more recent outages were apparently due to a misconfiguration that the hosting company made to the site without our knowledge, leaving the admins in the dark as to why it happened. If this occurs again, we will likely look into migrating the site to another host, but that is a very complex task that frankly we'd rather not have to resort to. Time will tell.

For any expected outages, like maintenance and upgrades, we post a top-of-page banner on the site a few days in advance to let folks konw when the site will be unavailable. In terms of unexpected outages, there are some caveats for bulk emailing users; First, we don't want to opt people in by sending them unsolicited emails. Secondly, if the forum is down, we also don't have access to the user list. Third, as there are 8,315 users registered (legit or not) on this site the logistics around sending a bulk email to that number of registrants is simply outside of our capacity as we'd have to either build a custom application just for that purpose, or import that many into a separate, paid tool. Again, there's still the issue of unsolicited emails.

Instead, a more practical approach for notifications is to use the same free service that Philip and I now (as of yesterday) are using, called UpTimeRobot, to be informed of whether and when the WCP forum's availability has changed. You could create an account (only requiring an email and password, necessary if you want to be notified), set the interval to check on https://www.westcoastpaddler.com/community, and then you'll be informed by email whenever the site's status has changed. I personally have it set to check every hour and email me when its down, whereas you might want a daily check. It will only notify you on a change.

We certainly appreciate the users of the forum and do our best outside of our full time jobs, family, etc to make sure the site is available in and in good health as best we can.

I hope that helps. Let us know if you have any other questions.
 
AM said:
It would have been helpful to get an email
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Or at the very least, a banner or a new post (to appear at the top of the list) after the site came back online, mentioning the duration of the outage and a brief summary about the nature of the problem. IMO, that would have been better than something buried on page 2 of this older discussion.
 
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JohnAbercrombie said:
Or at the very least, a banner or a new post (to appear at the top of the list) after the site came back online, mentioning the duration of the outage and a brief summary about the nature of the problem. IMO, that would have been better than something buried on page 2 of this older discussion.
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I think it is important to temper our expectations a bit.

For my day job, I'm a systems engineer at a relatively small software company/publisher and am responsible for for a few commercial web applications. When things go wrong, there's a lot of pressure to fix complex problems ASAP. Regardless of what time of day, other plans in your life, family obligations, whatever. This can be extremely stressful and I am lucky that I get to use significant resources to prevent outages, share the responsibility with my co-workers, and depend on our Customer Service department when communication is needed.

This site is managed out of love for the community by a very small group of volunteer(s), I am grateful for their hard work and would not want to burden them with extra obligations.
 
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