AFT Needs Your Help!

yman

Our dedicated server which has ran AFT reliably since September is expiring on the 3rd of May which means we need hosting. After long consideration ive decided to go for a dedicated server again. The reason for this is that AFT requires a high trust level, and most shared hosting providers only provides you with a medium trust level.

Currently we are looking at this site: http://www.interhost.co.uk/vps/vps-ala-carte.html

Hosting will cost us £18.99 (27 euros) a month, however if we can pay a year in advance, that drops down to £15.75 a month (23 euros). Obviously id prefer to pay a year in advance so I wont have to worry about donations for another year.

So what do you get out of it?

* The continued reliability and cheap text messages that we have been bringing you since September. The longest AFT has been down ever was for about a day (due to a server crash), but everyone can agree that AFT is up for 99% of the time. Hosting from home or shared hosting probably wont have this reliability.
* People who donate 20 euro or more gets free hosting for the duration of the contract. What I mean by this is if we get enough money for a 12 month contract, then you get free hosting for 12 months, this will include MySQL and ASP.net/PHP. If your the only person donating however, you will get hosting for 1 month, so it can go either way.

If AFT has saved you any money please consider donating. If we don't get enough donations, we will simply be forced to take down AFT, for good

Please click here for information on how to donate.

donutface

thanks to Brian for donating. Ive decided to put 5 euro towards it myself aswell, so currently we are at €10

donutface

Lar Doyle donated €10, thanks a million

colm-ccfc84

I will donate a bit there next week, is 5 or 10 ok?

donutface

I need £47 (ex vat) before May 3rd, any donation will do man

I see its cheaper to go quaterly than it is to go yearly, quaterly its a mere £11.75 a month so I think ill be paying by the quarter.

keithmcgrane

Hi,

I have donated €5.

Keith McGrane

donutface

Thank you very much Keith! The FTP server is down but once its back up ill add you to the honours list

donutface

Thanks a load to S Brady and Brian Buckley who donated €5 each

donutface

Thanks to the following:
Brian Buckley €5
Liam Cunnane: €7.50
Tony O'Halloran: €5
Dallan: €10


Good news aswell, looks like AFT will soon have support for the following countries!
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Canada
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Ireland
New Zealand
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
United Kingdom
United States

Thanks to the nice people at VoipBuster (Completely free texts provided you top up with 10 euro)

Pansy Potter

yman wrote:

If we don't get enough donations, we will simply be forced to take down AFT, for good

Please click here for information on how to donate.

I am always suspicious about anything that's for nothing. As they say there's no such thing as a free lunch. I have never used AFT because it was always in the back of my mind that there was going to be a catch somewhere down the line. Now that day has come. People are now being asked to contribute money or they will lose the service they have become accustomed to. The creators of AFT can probably see by take-up that they've saturated the market, and now its pay back time. They have been able to provide the service now out of their own pockets and now all of a sudden they're broke. If they don't have €47 by May its down the drain. FFS

Folks, just lament the passing of this temporary bonus and move on. Don't make these chancers rich. There'll be another free version along.

Thomas_S_Hunterson

Pansy Potter wrote:

I am always suspicious about anything that's for nothing. As they say there's no such thing as a free lunch. I have never used AFT because it was always in the back of my mind that there was going to be a catch somewhere down the line. Now that day has come. People are now being asked to contribute money or they will lose the service they have become accustomed to. The creators of AFT can probably see by take-up that they've saturated the market, and now its pay back time. They have been able to provide the service now out of their own pockets and now all of a sudden they're broke. If they don't have €47 by May its down the drain. FFS

Folks, just lament the passing of this temporary bonus and move on. Don't make these chancers rich. There'll be another free version along.

They could save you over €20 a month if you're on meteor, and even more if you're on O2or Vodafone...

dal

Pansy Potter wrote:

I am always suspicious about anything that's for nothing. As they say there's no such thing as a free lunch. I have never used AFT because it was always in the back of my mind that there was going to be a catch somewhere down the line. Now that day has come. People are now being asked to contribute money or they will lose the service they have become accustomed to. The creators of AFT can probably see by take-up that they've saturated the market, and now its pay back time. They have been able to provide the service now out of their own pockets and now all of a sudden they're broke. If they don't have €47 by May its down the drain. FFS

Folks, just lament the passing of this temporary bonus and move on. Don't make these chancers rich. There'll be another free version along.

Are you out off your ****ing mind??!
Not for one second do I give a s**t about making any money whatsoever from AFT. I created the J2ME client for a laugh, cos I sent loads of international texts and thought that other people could save a bit of money from it. I will give the source code to anyone who wants it, so that they can make their own AFT, they can do whatever they want with it.

Donut (who wrote all the server-side stuff) has been using a friends server for ages now, but now he no longer has the use of it. He asked in another thread if anyone would be prepared to host AFT, but no-one was able to. Neither I, nor donut want anyone to pay for it, because it takes away the beauty of the application in the first place. But the fact is that it has to be hosted.

What is your solution?

Get RICH? what the hell are you on about?

ronbyrne2005

Sent you a tenner there even though im broke! Keep up the good work.

yman

Pansy Potter wrote:

I am always suspicious about anything that's for nothing. As they say there's no such thing as a free lunch. I have never used AFT because it was always in the back of my mind that there was going to be a catch somewhere down the line. Now that day has come. People are now being asked to contribute money or they will lose the service they have become accustomed to. The creators of AFT can probably see by take-up that they've saturated the market, and now its pay back time. They have been able to provide the service now out of their own pockets and now all of a sudden they're broke. If they don't have €47 by May its down the drain. FFS

Folks, just lament the passing of this temporary bonus and move on. Don't make these chancers rich. There'll be another free version along.

Sir, I can ensure you that myself, donut and dal have no such plans to try and extort money. As dal has just mentioned, I'm the person who currently provides the server. The server wasn't purchased for running aft; I bought it in May last year to run the number of websites which I operate. As the server was damn expensive, 1.2k for your information, I can no longer afford to finance the renewel of my contract. Out of my kindness, I gave donut some space to host his website, and subsequently aft which he ran on it. This jesture was benign as myself and donut have developed to be good friends.

So Sir, I am insulted when you try and suggest that we are trying to run a "get rich quick" scheme. Running AFT on a dedicated server is optimum as it allows greater reliability and peformance. This is why we need funds. Yes, we probably could run AFT on a shared box, however the performance and relability would be less than acceptable as the box is shared with x thousand of other customers. Also, services such as the msn bot, aft realtime gateway would have to disappear as one needs direct admin access to a box to run the applications. Also, if we wanted to make loads of money, we would have placed ads on the site or tried to run some type of premimum account service for paying customers. Donut, is currently away so he hasn't had time to update the donation page reflecting the new donations. However, you can clearly see how much money is being donated. This isn't some type of "black box" donation. You can see how much money has been donated and how much is required. Once we get the amout of money required for the annual payment, donut will pull down the donation page.

If you don't want to donate, you don't have to. Other people however recognise how useful AFT is, and are willing to donate a small amount of money to finance the purchasing of a server which will provide the same levels of performance and reliability currently enjoyed by over 900 people.

donutface

yeah your right, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Running AFT does cost money and donations are going straight to the hosting company, not my pocket.

For the majority of the people here however, it will be a free lunch as the whole donation process is completely voluntarily. At the rate that AFT is growing, by next year im expecting atleast triple the usercount, so by next year when i'll need money for renewal, hopefully no one that donated this year will have to donate again or maybe someone else can provide me with a server free of charge.

Sam Vimes

Pansy Potter wrote:

I am always suspicious about anything that's for nothing. As they say there's no such thing as a free lunch. I have never used AFT because it was always in the back of my mind that there was going to be a catch somewhere down the line. Now that day has come. People are now being asked to contribute money or they will lose the service they have become accustomed to. The creators of AFT can probably see by take-up that they've saturated the market, and now its pay back time. They have been able to provide the service now out of their own pockets and now all of a sudden they're broke. If they don't have €47 by May its down the drain. FFS

Folks, just lament the passing of this temporary bonus and move on. Don't make these chancers rich. There'll be another free version along.

feel free not to use it if you think you're being scammed.

i know the guy who wrote multitext (which uses AFT) and wrote part of it myself. i know that these people aren't trying to scam anyone


a dedicated server costs a lot of money to run. do you expect him to pay it out of his own pocket to keep you in free texts?


and how is it a catch exactly? you've been asked to donate. no one's holding a gun to your head

edit: dal put it better than i did:

dal wrote:

Are you out off your ****ing mind??!

Random

Doubt they'll get rich off something like this - people won't donate more than they'll save - that wouldn't make much sense.

All they're asking for is a couple of quid for anyone who has it to spare or would like to help out - in order to keep this service running!

The lads seem decent and are doing a great job at the moment. Try out the system and then come back and let us know what you think.

donutface

Ok lads, ymans dedi is expiring on the 3rd of May, so im buying 3 months on the new dedi on the 28th of April (marked on my calender).

Within that time span ill add UK support and we'll get a few UK people added to the userlist, maybe one of whom can provide a dedicated server free of charge on a reliable line or else something else will come up.

Thanks to all that donated!

flodis79

donutface wrote:

Thanks to the following:
Brian Buckley €5
Liam Cunnane: €7.50
Tony O'Halloran: €5
Dallan: €10


Good news aswell, looks like AFT will soon have support for the following countries!
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Canada
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Ireland
New Zealand
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
United Kingdom
United States

Thanks to the nice people at VoipBuster (Completely free texts provided you top up with 10 euro)

But they add this nice disclaimer: "This is a special offer for all Voipbuster users with credit. This free text message (SMS) offer is valid only if you're using our service from the same country you want to send the text message (SMS) to."

How is that going to work with AFT? Someone will pay €10 and then we can send unlimited within Ireland? I cannot see a way where we can send to all those countries listed above with the same voipbuster account?

donutface

wow, interesting point flodis

I wasnt interested in it as much for the people in Ireland, but more to bring AFT to people in the UK, it will still work for that

quintron

Pansy Potter wrote:

I am always suspicious about anything that's for nothing. As they say there's no such thing as a free lunch. I have never used AFT because it was always in the back of my mind that there was going to be a catch somewhere down the line. Now that day has come. People are now being asked to contribute money or they will lose the service they have become accustomed to. The creators of AFT can probably see by take-up that they've saturated the market, and now its pay back time. They have been able to provide the service now out of their own pockets and now all of a sudden they're broke. If they don't have €47 by May its down the drain. FFS

Folks, just lament the passing of this temporary bonus and move on. Don't make these chancers rich. There'll be another free version along.

Pansy, dal said he'd give you the source code for the program. I'm sure the lads will give you code to the front end as well.. so ..work away.
I expect your "free lunch" version to be up and running by weekends end. Thanks for stepping in there. (FFS is right).

Random

I'm confused by the whole voipbuster thing- can you elaborate on it's workings?

drdre

Pansy Potter wrote:

I am always suspicious about anything that's for nothing. As they say there's no such thing as a free lunch. I have never used AFT because it was always in the back of my mind that there was going to be a catch somewhere down the line. Now that day has come. People are now being asked to contribute money or they will lose the service they have become accustomed to. The creators of AFT can probably see by take-up that they've saturated the market, and now its pay back time. They have been able to provide the service now out of their own pockets and now all of a sudden they're broke. If they don't have €47 by May its down the drain. FFS

Folks, just lament the passing of this temporary bonus and move on. Don't make these chancers rich. There'll be another free version along.

You dont have a clue what you are talking about.go get a life.

donutface

ciaranfo wrote:

I'm confused by the whole voipbuster thing- can you elaborate on it's workings?

www.voipbuster.com is a site to get free calls over the internet, and a few months back they added text messaging support, but it cost like 5c a text, now the texts are free. Basically, I have to code the VoipBuster bindings to AFT (been busy over the weekend preparing for orals and a geography project but I will soon) and then people can send text messages using VoipBuster instead of o2 or vodafone or whatever.

The only catch is you have to top up with €10 every 6 months or something to get the free texts.

My dad told me more people donated, Ill update the list this afternoon. Thanks to all those who have

MartMax

donutface

just in case. should you guys need a server to crash in for 2-3 months, let me know as for a while i will have some spare resources on my VPS account. good luck.

Marty

donutface

marty can you please add me to msn messenger? address donut at donutsoft dot net


The new plan is to perhaps share the VPS with 4/5 different people, then it becomes much more affordable (instead of £15, it becomes £5). That way we get the high ASP.net trust level we need, can run the services and can have it affordably. yman knows a lot about server 2003 so he can keep things secure too (everything is encrypted anyway). So far we have the possibility of 3 people but im still working out a few kinks.

Finally, thanks to the following people who donated
Cillian Cunane: €5
David Hales: €10
John O'Callaghan: €5

Edit: Martys dedicated server wont work as its unix :S

donutface

Thanks to the following who donated this today:
Gareth Cummings: €15
Huntly Lauder: €10

I just placed an order for the server and ill keep you guys informed

donutface

ok the british people were nowhere to be found so I decided not to paypal them any funds, but I found an american place called vpsland.com which had even more reasonable prices so I ordered 6 months in advance.

Thanks a million for everyones help, finally I would like to thank
David Voakes: €20
Gareth Cummings: €15
Huntly Lauder: €10
Preet's DVDs: €47 (in exchange for a third of the resources)


And here is the email

Hello Paul Murphy,

Thank you for your order! We look forward to serving you as our customer.

Your server will be configured by our Hosting team within the next 24-48 hours. We will send the server details to this email address once setup has been completed.

Welcome to VPSLAND.com!

Here is your order information:

Email: <censored>
Company: donutsoft
Address:
<censored>
Phone: <censored>


Order Summary:
Main Package Value VPS:
6-Months @ $162.00 + Setup: FREE
Existing Domain::
-OR-
Sub-domain of vpsland.com::
aft
(add-on) Additional IPs:
Optional
(add-on) Control Panel:
Optional
Control Panel:
Optional
Additional Remote Desktop (RDP) Licenses:
1 RDP License $24.00
Package(s) Total $186.00
Sub Total $186.00
Total Due $186.00*
* $186.00 will be due on the next renewal date: 10/17/2007
(Domain renewals billed separately.)

Payment Method: PayPal

Further on, I got a friend to pay a third of the running costs in exchange for access to the server (hence the extra remote desktop license), yman might pay the other third so AFT users are only paying a third of the final price ($10 a month, approx 6-7 euros a month) which is much more reasonable than what I first estimated.


The donation button will still be up but from now on theres no need to donate for atleast another 6 months, probably even more

Thanks to everyone, your help is really appreciated. Now to work on getting o2 working!

Edit: Its working now

donutface

somethings up with your phone, dal just tested it and he said it works. Maybe your password has changed? try logging into the o2 site itself

nick23

donutface wrote:

somethings up with your phone, dal just tested it and he said it works. Maybe your password has changed? try logging into the o2 site itself

Was that for me?

Its working now anyway.

Thanks!

ronbyrne2005

Did ya get the 10euro i sent by paypal? I received a confirmation from paypal labelled NOEL.

Cheers.