Donation changes

Oh god with all the donation posts

This is the last one, I promise. I swear I actually have something meaningful to say.

In all seriousness: I got the first monthly Patreon payment a few days ago. And I'm really happy with it, both because it means fewer financial worries for me, and because I can work on JKHub things now. I just want to give another huge thankyou to everyone who supported it.

That said, here's the issue: right now, JKHub donations and Patreon donations are entirely seperate, with Patreon donations going only to me. It bothers me, and frankly, makes me feel a little guilty. So we're changing it, and as a bonus, I'm introducing some Patreon donation goals as features right now.

Here's an overview of each changed goal:

✅ ACHIEVED: At $99/month

UNCHANGED: I will un-retire and return as JKHub staff member. I'll actually dedicate quite some time to it. JKHub will see a lot more news articles, improvements, and activity. I'll be holding lots of polls to see what people are interested in and what I should start with.

At $199/month

UNCHANGED: The JKHub 2.0 overhaul will begin immediately, instead of waiting longer. It will be the biggest face lift in the history of JKHub, featuring a clean, modern redesign based off constant feedback from the community. It won't be one of those crappy corporate redesigns that suck - it'll be awesome.

At $299/month

CHANGED: at this goal, I said I would pay for JKHub costs out of my own pocket, and JKHub wouldn't need donations anymore. I'm going to start paying for JKHub costs out of my own pocket right now, rendering this goal void. If JKHub needs to pay for something:

• First, we will use the JKHub donations paypal account, until it's empty. There's still significant money on it, and it will all go towards JKHub. We won't replenish that Paypal account though, just use it as primary source of funding until it runs out.
  
• Secondly, I will pay for whatever we're paying for. By extension, Patreon funds actually benefit JKHub as well, not just me. This leaves me with slightly less money, but really not all that much, and frankly makes me feel better.
  

At $499/month

UNCHANGED: I will offer unlimited free JKA & JKO servers to the community. Seriously. No strings attached. You ask, you get a free JKA/JKO server. Any mod, no restrictions. Nobody will ever need to pay for a JKA/JKO server again.

Beyond that

I don't think we're going to hit any goals beyond that, and that's fine, but there was talk of getting a professional CDN up and running for file downloads, to replace Dropbox. That's happening now, too. Elaboration below.

Coming soon: faster, more reliable mod downloads

So I'm expanding my hosting business a lot right now, and working on cool new features. One of them is a CDN type offering, which lets files be downloaded from several servers spread across the world. Instead of downloading a file from a single web server that might be on another continent, you get it from the closest web server to you. The result is dramatically faster downloads.

My point is: it's not intended for JKHub's use case, but it's trivial to adapt it to be used for it anyway. Because I need to offer this anyway for my hosting business, I'm going to adapt it for JKHub too.

The end result is this: within the next 1-2 months, all mod downloads will be moved off Dropbox. Downloads will no longer periodically break, we'll no longer have to worry about bandwidth limits, and most importantly, all mod downloads from JKHub will be dramatically faster. Among other things, we had several survey submissions express frustration with current Dropbox file downloads, and this will resolve them.

Tl;dr

• All JKHub costs will be paid by me now. As long as the Patreon donations keep coming in, JKHub will never have to worry about getting donations again.
  
• More reliable, and much faster mod downloads are coming to a JKHub near you within 1-2 months. Probably closer to 1 month, but it depends. My running a hosting business has never been more convenient.
  
• I promise I'm shutting up about donations now. I'll add a portal sidebar block for them, but aside from that, this is the last news post about them.
  

Also, don't forget about the Halloween modding contest!

You have 19 more days to submit entries for it!