Dear Angels,

Due to the fees involved with maintaining Charlie's website, I've decided to begin asking for donations. Donating is completely voluntary and will stay that way. But any little contribution you can make will earn my eternal gratitude and help keep the puppies in bones.

Below I've outlined the current expenditures. You may not be interested, but I think it's only fair that you know where the money is going. In every case I looked at alternatives and made my decision to go with a particular service based on several factors, some of which I've stated here. If you want to know more, you're welcome to .

1. With Charlie's permission, I became the registrant of the domain name CHARLESDANCE.CO.UK in 1998. The site outgrew my personal webspace allowance at Netcomuk in 2001. Since 2002, the Homepage has been hosted at Supanames.co.uk under their Value Host Account at a cost of £13.99/year + VAT (renewed every two years, total including VAT = £32.88). This includes free renewal of the domain name.
   
   Info:   This is the cheap and cheerful web-hosting solution. No annoying 'data transfer' (page & image view) computations, no set-up fee, no domain renewal fee. Compared to competitors, Supanames is quite good bang for the buck...so much so that I've moved our business site there. (Just for the sake of interest, looking back over the 15-month period ending March 2004, Charlie's Homepage averages 1500 visits per month!!)
   
   
2. The Message Board is hosted at Network54 on their Premier Account at a cost of $25.00 every six months.
   
   Info:   There are innumerable message board providers on the net; most have a free service. However, a poll of the Angels around the time of the move to Network54 showed they preferred the 'threaded' style board, which is not widely available anymore and, when free, is very basic, lacks security features and is typically rife with ads.
   
   The main reason I opted for Network54's Premier Account rather than sticking with their free one was to keep the Message Board ad-free. With an average of 16,615 page views/month (i.e. when someone reads or replies to a note), the board is easily the busiest part of the site; imagine how slow it would be if there was an ad on each of those pages!
   
   
3. After the old, free provider finally gave up the ghost, I re-established the guestbook and Angel Bios on Alxnet's Deluxe Package in March 2004, at a cost of $19.95/year for both.
   
   Info:   Virtually all guestbook providers now charge similar prices for ad-free, secure guestbook services.

Here's the simple view:

   $29.64 -- web hosting per year, at March 2004 exchange rates -- £13.99 + VAT of £2.45 = £16.44
+ $50.00 -- Message Board for a year
+ $19.95 -- guestbook & Angel Bios per year
= $99.59 -- Total approximated outlay per year

Now, I don't expect to get that whole amount back in donations each year. I started the site; I'm happy to bear the burden of costs for its necessary evolution. But like I said above, any contribution will be gratefully accepted. In fact, the maximum I will allow any one Angel to donate in a year is $5.00 (or its equivalent in your currency). Send me more and you'll find your hard-earned money right back where it started. You listenin', Doc? ;)

That's it. The donate button is below; it'll take you to the PayPal site. I won't take donations any other way, so if you aren't a member of PayPal either sign up or forget about it, I'll understand. :) And even if you can't help right now, thank you for reading. It shows your heart is in the right place.

With gratitude,
Mez

Donations for '04 so far:

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