Community Blog

It's not been a great time for NZMac.com over the past month or so. More often than not, you've experienced a message that the site is offline. It's also meant hours of work, lack of sleep (Palmerston North is very quiet at 3am by the way) and new additional costs for me in order to get the site back up and running to the standard that I set for myself and that is required for site users. Things are going really well with the move to a Virtual Private Server system, but it's not all over in terms of glitches. That said, I consider most of the issues are resolved (or close to) and like life, this site will always be a "work in progress".

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you all for your patience during this time, to thank the advertisers for their understanding and supportive comments, and to ask one simple favour - your continued support.

In the past month many costs associated with the site have had to increase. Hosting costs have gone up and are now close to triple of what I had been paying a couple of months back before the site started getting IP attacks. These costs are going to be ongoing. It's been an amazing learning experience, but an expensive one at that....and one I could have done without...but that's life!

I've always said that NZMac.com runs at a loss. It's not something that I say out of pleasure or for entertainment purposes..it's just a fact. But I would also say that it is only over the past few months that this issue has started to worry me. Don't get me wrong...I'm not saying I'm going broke (I'm not)...I'd just like the site to be a little more cost effective and not simply a cost in terms of time and money that I have to endure....and this is where you come in.

This site rests or falls on its user base...and on the support of companies willing to support NZMac.com (to those that go to the effort of doing so, I am exceptionally grateful!). Advertising on this site is not expensive at all (in fact, it's embarrassingly cheap!), but even for those companies that don't want to advertise, there are numerous ways that I try to encourage them to support users of this site....mostly offering up their products for review or to give away on the site. As much as possible, I want companies to get involved to give back to you....and again, that's where you come in!

I have no doubt that many of you have contacts in companies that could advertise or support users of this site by being more involved in the site. You might know someone in a hardware company you can slip a simple comment to, twist their arm for them to donate something to give away, or it may simply be a matter of you saying "Have you taken a look at NZMac.com recently?". You might run a website or know someone that does that could easily link to the site or display an NZMac.com web badge.

If you're buying from the Apple Store NZ , please remember to start by clicking on one of the Apple ads on this site, and if you have any other ideas you think would be good to raise some money, please get in contact. I see MacTalk.com.au currently investing in coffee mugs for users of the site, so I would be interested in hear from people if they think this is a good idea...and even happier to hear if you know of someone that could make them (or something similar for us) at a very pleasant cheap rate.

Please spread the word with other Mac users that you know are out there. If you want to write something for the site, please please get in touch (note, I intend to make the "Submit News" link accessible to all registered users soon, not just existing authors) and feel free to continue to interact and enhance areas of the site such as the bookmarks, Quick Tips or Mac Friendly section....all of which would currently see you get a neat laptop sleeve for the effort!

Your support of the site is (as always) greatly appreciated, and I thank you once again for putting up with the site during all the glitches recently. But please remember that support can be more than just using the site....it can be a two way thing...it can be about spreading the word and getting others to support the site in numerous ways also.

Best wishes,

Philip Roy