- Joined
- Dec 1, 2020
- Messages
- 14,151
Here at the Free Speech Forum, we are trying to do much more than host an online forum. Our goal is to grow a new internet for the people, free from big tech.
We plan to continue to grow the site and the revenue for this platform. This money will be directly invested into growing our new corner of the internet. As we grow and expand, we have no intention of turning a profit off donations or royalties we receive from merchandise. We understand the differing opinions on website growth, but we feel strongly that it is important to get our message and platform out to like-minded Americans across the country. We have many ways that we can protect the site from obnoxious trolls or other disruptive users.
Currently, we are tied to HostGator as our hosting platform. We have about 10 months left of server time on an enterprise server that should carry us into 2022. We cannot guarantee that HostGator will not attempt to push us off their platform once more attention gets on the site, but we feel that we should be safe over the next year.
At this moment, we are working on standing up a server with our own hardware. This server does not have the horsepower to run a high capacity forum, but we are doing this to gain the experience we need to stand up our own hardware for the forum in early 2022. However, we do have a plan for this server – we intend on using it as a publishing platform for people on the Free Speech Forum and have been working with some in the community to create content for this site.
We incurred several one-time costs in getting this enterprise off the ground. These expenses included legal fees, payments to a branding agency and server costs. The legal fees account for business formation, intellectual property protection and a sponsorship agreement we are working with a partner platform. We made a heavy investment in branding which included several iterations of concept design, messaging strategy, and provided the blueprint for our web page. We will be releasing an income-expense statement shortly that will provide full transparency of where your donations have gone.
We have one full time contractor working to carry out the technical services of this enterprise. We pay this contractor a reasonable rate that amounts to an expense of around $3,600 a month. I feel it is critical for us to keep this contractor funded because he is the heartbeat of our tech startup. He has already demonstrated great value to us by resolving the lag issue on the site, implementing the branding agencies vision for the website, and is actively working to stand up the new server.
Separately, we have a plan to build our own forum platform. The vision is analogous to Reddit, but it will have some features to discourage group think and empower the individual users. Madison (Croot_Lord) will be leading the software development effort and we have received volunteer support from a retired long-time software engineer. Madison is currently wrapping up his Spring semester in school and will begin work in earnest on the new platform in late April or early May.
In the background, we are forming alliances with other like-minded organizations. This includes local and state media organizations and politicians. We guarantee that our site will remain autonomous to these organizations, but feel it is very important to make these connections so our community can have its voice heard to impact the direction of this country.
Thanks again to everyone for being a part of our community. We will continue to work relentlessly to make the original vision of this community come true.
We plan to continue to grow the site and the revenue for this platform. This money will be directly invested into growing our new corner of the internet. As we grow and expand, we have no intention of turning a profit off donations or royalties we receive from merchandise. We understand the differing opinions on website growth, but we feel strongly that it is important to get our message and platform out to like-minded Americans across the country. We have many ways that we can protect the site from obnoxious trolls or other disruptive users.
Currently, we are tied to HostGator as our hosting platform. We have about 10 months left of server time on an enterprise server that should carry us into 2022. We cannot guarantee that HostGator will not attempt to push us off their platform once more attention gets on the site, but we feel that we should be safe over the next year.
At this moment, we are working on standing up a server with our own hardware. This server does not have the horsepower to run a high capacity forum, but we are doing this to gain the experience we need to stand up our own hardware for the forum in early 2022. However, we do have a plan for this server – we intend on using it as a publishing platform for people on the Free Speech Forum and have been working with some in the community to create content for this site.
We incurred several one-time costs in getting this enterprise off the ground. These expenses included legal fees, payments to a branding agency and server costs. The legal fees account for business formation, intellectual property protection and a sponsorship agreement we are working with a partner platform. We made a heavy investment in branding which included several iterations of concept design, messaging strategy, and provided the blueprint for our web page. We will be releasing an income-expense statement shortly that will provide full transparency of where your donations have gone.
We have one full time contractor working to carry out the technical services of this enterprise. We pay this contractor a reasonable rate that amounts to an expense of around $3,600 a month. I feel it is critical for us to keep this contractor funded because he is the heartbeat of our tech startup. He has already demonstrated great value to us by resolving the lag issue on the site, implementing the branding agencies vision for the website, and is actively working to stand up the new server.
Separately, we have a plan to build our own forum platform. The vision is analogous to Reddit, but it will have some features to discourage group think and empower the individual users. Madison (Croot_Lord) will be leading the software development effort and we have received volunteer support from a retired long-time software engineer. Madison is currently wrapping up his Spring semester in school and will begin work in earnest on the new platform in late April or early May.
In the background, we are forming alliances with other like-minded organizations. This includes local and state media organizations and politicians. We guarantee that our site will remain autonomous to these organizations, but feel it is very important to make these connections so our community can have its voice heard to impact the direction of this country.
Thanks again to everyone for being a part of our community. We will continue to work relentlessly to make the original vision of this community come true.
