Patreon Re-Launched!

[Flatscan]

As most of you know, this site had been supported by Patreon donations in the past.

This had to be stopped with Mike's passing as we couldn't reliably get at those funds, and the site's finances have been on shaky ground every since, covered by a small group of very dedicated Wigglers.

Today, I'm happy to announce that a new Patreon account has been launched to go with the site's upgrade and host migration.

https://www.patreon.com/muffwiggler_forums

We're going to stay true to Mike's ideals. To quote him directly;

As always, financial support of the site is completely optional, it is NOT required nor expected, and it gets you nothing special in return, except for a warm feeling in your sweet little techno heart. One of my primary values is that the site will ALWAYS be completely free for everyone to use, and will remain free of ads, sponsored content, and anything else that muddies the waters and puts our open and free community at risk.

But with that said, support is always very welcome and appreciated!

Thanks to all who have donated in the past and expressed a desire to donate again. You are what keeps this place alive.

[Kent]

Thanks for getting this going, Rob, and discussing the goals and ramifications so openly with the M.E.A.T. (Moderator Elite Assembled Taskforce).

The following text is lifted from the Patreon page and I’m pasting it here in the spirit of the openness that you’ve shared with us and also because it will be asked.
Rob and family are being very open about the CURRENT running costs of the forum. If we add features and users, costs could go up but we don’t project that to be the case for some time.
We mention the return of Muffwiggler Radio. That is a mid-term goal and we’ll have to be more diligent with that than we were in the past and we’ll have to have some minimum and maximum requirements (no more 45 minute drones...). We’ll check into that feature at some point . There is a lot to be done with fine-tuning the core of the forum as it stands.

Wigglers up!

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The Muffwiggler Forum has become a vibrant community and de-facto locus of knowledge, irreverent fun, music making and cat fetishizing for a majority of those that choose to go the hard route in making music with modular and other patchable synthesizers.

Started by Mike McGrath in 2006, the forum is now run by Mike's family following his untimely death in 2019. The intent is to keep the forum as Mike envisioned it, in particular by not relying on adverts to cover forum running costs, while ensuring that it can continue to be a relevant resource for the third decade of the 2000s and beyond.

While the new site has been re-engineered from the ground up for better affordability, performance, stability, and supportability; it does still have various costs associated with it:
* The Vultr VPS server costs $80 a month
* Our Outbound Email provider, Sendgrid, costs us $14.95 a month
* Our Domain provider costs $8 a year
That's it. That's all. $95.61 a month is what it now costs to keep Muffwiggler running as it stands today.

However, we'd like to achieve more. We’d like to return the Muffwiggler Radio Service. We'd like to repay those who have paid for the site’s bills prior to the relaunch. And, hey, if there's a little extra to pay me for the ongoing work, and to send some back to Mike's wife and kids, that would just be awesome.

Whatever you can do would be greatly appreciated in sustaining the site and ensuring a stable and robust future.

Sincerely,

The McGraths and your Admin & Moderation Team

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