This site is not a photo camera

First of all: I am not complaining about the financial burden of maintaining this site. It's an honour to do this and it's a pressure valve to let go off some passion for quality music. I hope to inspire visitors to listen to Bodine and keep their memory alive. If you think I managed, you may feel inclined to contribute to this mission and make a donation. If not--that's fine too. Either way, keep on reading.

A lot of sites ask their visitors for a donation without making clear what the money is spent on. I have worked for many years in charities, a sector in which transparency is highly valued, so I am used to sharing information like this. After all, there is nothing to hide. Also, I like to be unconventional.

I don't expect to raise a lot of money with this site--I call it an expensive break-even. Allowing visitors to become part of this effort is my main goal. Some contribute with articles, photos, suggestions, web design support, research and encouragements in the guest book. For others, a contribution may be the right kind of commitment as a way to share the effort.

If you consider building a website of your own, you'll get a clue of what it takes to realise it. This site is a hobby project, but it's not like I am asking visitors to donate money to buy a new camera. A camera is something that I would use privately and the results of which I would use at my own discretion. RegularRocker is a shared initiative which every one can enjoy.

Overview of expenses

Although most of the efforts spent on this site are unpaid hours of voluntary work, there are some expenses that are tangible and easily expressed in monetary terms, such as licenses. Here's an overview of expenses made thus far in starting up and technically facilitating this site.

Explanation:
- The largest expenses thus far were for hosting. I switched to a new webhost (Webreus) in August '12 in order to defend the site against spambots. The forum was invaded with 5,000+ spam messages. As you can see, there is a huge benefit, as I'm saving over 90% on hosting expenses.
- Some expenses are for software licenses. Although Joomla! Content Management System is an open source, free-of-charge system, the necessary plugins and modules needed to make this site live are not for free.
- Some expenses turned out to be a waste of money. In particular, I have no use for JomSocial by Azrul, Frontpage Slideshow and Simple Image gallery Pro by Joomla works. Think twice if you want to buy those plug ins
- I bought Flickr Suite Content Plugin by Universal Playground to host all my photos on an external website. This will save me time since I don't have to download all the images any longer when I make a backup.
- Jerre Baumeister of Flumit assisted the move to Webreus, helped installing plugins and performed some overdue maintenance of the site.

Projection

Anyone can argue that these expenses are already covered--which makes it needless to contribute.

I couldn't agree more.

However, the overview is also a projection of the future expenses. The hosting expenses are most important. They recur every year and are needed to keep the site "in the air". Some licenses (particularly Joomla Facebook Connect, for interaction with Facebook) will likely need updates in the future. Statcounter is an annual subscription. This tool helps focusing on popular themes on the site and understand what visitors are actually looking for. I couldn't do this as well without these tools.

I hope that this gives you an idea about the choices I made to create this site and the way I work.

Immaterial expenses

It is too late to start counting the hours that were spent on this site. There are a couple of persons who spent time on this site:

None of the above persons asked for any financial reward, but it is worth mentioning the human effort that was needed to make this site happen. Due to the effort of the above persons, it was possible to make this site happen and keep it low-cost.

Revenues

On the income side, as of 01 December 2017 there is one anonymous donation of € 250 to report about! Thank you so much for the money, which is a sign of recognition and appreciation.

The banners you see on this website are non-commercial and merely decorative. They bring the early years of hard rock alive but do not represent any income. Most of the banners are from artists and friends who amply supported the creation of this site. If you think of an advertiser who might be interested in placing a banner on this site, please point me in the right direction by using the contact form! I am only interested in non-corporate advertisers.

What you get in return

- A non-commercial ads-free website;
- For those of you who want to advertise on this page, get in touch with me and I'll provide a quotation for placing banners on this site.
Apart from getting access to the only place online where you'll find reliable sources about Bodine and a vast library of publications, you may expect the following:
- access to exclusive updates;
- access to music and videos never published before by Bodine way ahead of the rest.

What you don't get

There are some things that I cannot give you in exchange for your contribution.
- access to the back end (programming dashboard) of this site.
- right of say about the content on this site. It's RegularRocker's prerogative to decide what published and what not.
I hope you understand.

Future improvements

- An upgrade to the most recent version of Joomla CMS. Because the latest version is very different from the one I'm using, this is a major operation, requiring at least EUR 400 for the migration only. Any donation is welcome!

- A slicker newsletter, published on this site and distributed by email. That's still a time consuming hassle.
- A polling system that allows visitors to vote for each song on the list. Now, each visitor can only vote for one song only, which is quite a limit to user activity on this site and does not rank the songs fairly either. REALISED
- Embedded audio files in contents. I have some audio streams that I want to embed in texts on this site. Not as easy as it seems! REALISED

There, I've said it. I've never asked anyone in my life for to contribute to something that was a product of my creativity! Feels kinda odd. It took a while before I gathered the courage to do it. In case you make a donation:

Thank You!

Jan Riemersma