An appeal for donations? On LAShTAL.COM? I thought the webmaster kept boasting that the site was free?!
Can’t blame any of you for taking this view. Actually, if this is the view you take, then that’s okay, continue visiting the site and participating as you see fit. If, however, you have a few pounds (or dollars!) to spare and believe that LAShTAL.COM is important to you and to the legacy of Aleister Crowley, please read on…
Thanks for reading on!
Okay, the situation is this…
Hosting the site and maintaining the various alternative domain names costs me personally an average of somewhere in the region of £85 per month. Add to this the cost of high speed internet access and obtaining the software I use for graphics manipulation and the rest of it, you’ll see that the cost is significant. And I’m happy to pay it, and will continue to pay it for as long as the site continues to inform, entertain and educate. Some extraordinarily generous individuals have helped by contributing cash and items-for-auction.
However, the most recent of these donations (for a much appreciated five pounds) was received on 19 April and the coffers are currently bare!
So, why an appeal for donations now? Well, LAShTAL.COM is currently deployed using Postnuke which, as any techie will tell you, is far from ideal. When the site started all those years ago, Postnuke was about as good a content management system as you could use, but times have moved on and it’s time for LAShTAL.COM to “grow up” technically. This is confirmed by our wonderful Technical Administrator, Ian Rons.
What we now need to do is to introduce some significant enhancements so that LAShTAL.COM can remain at the forefront of online Thelema. And I am reliably informed that this means transferring the site to Drupal, a modern alternative to Postnuke. This introduces all sorts of functionality, numerous opportunities for improvement and the chance to develop, for example, The Aleister Crowley Society and, who knows? Maybe The Austin Osman Spare Society?
Okay, the bottom line is that transferring the content of the existing site to Drupal will take a techie about 10 days. I’ve been offered an extraordinarily reasonable rate of just £100 per day, but that’s still £1,000 (about $2,000) that I need to raise before the commission can start. So what I’ve promised is that I’ll publicly appeal for donations totalling £1,000 – if donations don’t make that significant amount by the end of this month then I’ll make up the difference from my own pocket.
The Donations button is available at the bottom left of every page of this site, so if you are willing and able to donate towards the next stage for LAShTAL.COM, please do so using Paypal. If you’d like a mention on the site, please include your username.
In addition, I’ll be auctioning some very interesting items kindly donated for this purpose to the site by ManOfWycombe and KidneyHawk – these auctions will be announced through the Forums.
All donations will be gratefully received! Not least because it could save me a few quid personally from my £1,000 commitment!