Time to chip in and help pay for this site for another year

[John Masciale]

It's time once again for us to raise the money to pay for this site for the next year.  Once again the widget has been added to the page.  Your contributions are appreciated.  We have already  had a couple of contributions before I could even get this notice up.  Thank you!

[Strumelia]

I donated last night, but it's not showing up on the little widget.

[John Masciale]

Sometimes it takes a little time for the widget to update.  I have received your payment - thanks!

[Brian Glass]

John, I want to do my share but for the life of me, I don't see the donation widget anywhere! Maybe it is hidden on my iPad? Please, take my money!

[John Masciale]

I tried putting a link up, but it was to my paypal account.  Set your browser to 100% zoom, and the widget is on the left hand side under the resources page tab.  It could be that your browser security is blocking the link.

Brian Glass said:

John, I want to do my share but for the life of me, I don't see the donation widget anywhere! Maybe it is hidden on my iPad? Please, take my money!

[Joel Hooks]

If it uses flash then iPhone/pad/pod/&c won't work.

[Tim Twiss]

Just to toss it out there....we can continue as is, and we are almost there.

Step up a bit....John, what would we get? I think we could load MP3 files.....would that be of a significant benefit?

 

[John Masciale]

For $500 per year we can upgrade.  It would allow us to upload video and audio files directly to the site, but that's about the only benefit I can see.

[John Masciale]

If we are content with the current level of service, we have met our goal!  Thank you everyone who has contributed!

[Dan Gibson]

I'll second Tim's thought.  MP3 uploads would be very helpful, and easier to deal with for the uploader.

[Tim Twiss]

I think it would be great for audio. My video cam is crap for audio quality.....and personally I'm anxious to post new material....without going throught the trouble of turning it into a youtube thing first.

[Andy Chase]

Re: Audio, i dont have time to test this myself right now, but does Ning support embedding stuff from Soundcloud.com? (does Soundcloud have a limit to the number of files you can post?). I haven't used it much but if it's free like YouTube and plays nicely with it that would be a thought.

An aside: As a learning aid, I have found everybody's videos tremendously helpful. I know they're less convenient to produce than audio clips, but seeing what someone else does with their left or right hand on a tricky part of a tune is often the light bulb moment for me. But audio quality can definitely be frustrating when shooting video.

[Strumelia]

The NING audio service is a music player which is quite limited.  Yes we can load audio files to our own pages then, but the music player only shows the latest 20 music uploads on the main page, and there is no 'audio clips section' or page where you can see all the audio clips at once, unlike the video section.  You can only see audios listed on people's personal pages, or the last 20 clips posted on the main page player.  You can see how the NING music player works here on my site if you like.

Even with a NING Pro upgrade (which I have for my mountain dulcimer site), there are site storage limits, above which you must pay even more.  Granted, the limit is fairly high.  With NING Pro, people upload videos either directly to the site's video section (in which case the files can be very big if folks use high video settings) or through uploading their youtube videos (which are automatically downsized by youtube).  On my site 95% of the members still go through youtube and then upload to the site.