robertmackayclan

It appears to becoming more necessary that I have to pay for the services that this website and forum are using.

I recently decided I needed to upgrade to a "Geoplus account" which costs $4.95 per month.

Also, if you've noticed the increase in pop up ads and the message "Upgrade to a Network54 Select account" message that also appears whenever anyone visits this forum. I haven't yet upgraded the forum but if I did the cost would be $50.00 per year. This would remove all of the ads and annoying pop-ups that accompany the forum.

Breaking it down the costs for running the website are like this:

Domain name (Robertmackayclan.com) $35.00 per year.

Domain redirect to geocities.com/mckyrbnsn $10.00 per year.

Geoplus account (for website with 25MB space and 5GB per month data transfer) $4.95 per month plus $10.00 one time only upgrade fee.

Adding that times 12 = $59.30 per year.

The total sum of this bill comes to (waiving the $10.00 set up fee):

$ 104.40 per year.

If the "Network Premier" forum package is added total would come to:

$ 154.40 per year.

I plan to ask at the reunion if the Clan would consider donating to cover at least half of that cost so that the burden wouldn't be as much on me.

Half of the entire cost (website services and forum) would come to $77.20.

I thought that shared costs would be easier to help keep the treasury balance up in very good standing.

The costs to print our Newsletter far exceed this amount that I've stated and I know that people regularly donate directly to cover the costs of printing, mailing etc. this wonderful resource for our family.

The total

Post your address here and I will try to send you off money by the end of the month. Perhaps others will do so as well.

With what you have said I guess it is out of the question posting my entire Sowers book here at your site. It would appear I have angered at least three people--not have copies of my Sowers book available.

I have received only a few e-mail question about my book on Ann E. Lehew (wife of T.B. Buck). I referred them to L.D.S. library--And they seems satisfied.

I have received only one e-mail or letter about my Elizabeth Antrim (wife of Jacob McKay) book and again referred him to L.D.S. library--And he seems satisfied.

My mailing address is:

Michael L. McKay
115 Morgan St.
Winchester, VA 22601

I thought perhaps doing it through the treasury would be good.

I looked it over and when spread over the time period they cover I could conceivably handle it financially but just like our Newsletter receives donations to help cover expenses I thought perhaps since the website is for the Robert Mackay family that the reunion treasury could help with paying the bill, not that I would be angry if they didn't but I remembered bringing up the cost of the domain name and cousin Gene Shipp (last year's president) said "go ahead and pay for it from the treasury". Being president this year I don't feel like I should just have my brother write me a check unless I bring it up at our reunion. It would help ease the burden of payment for these services.

As you can see, a pop-up ad keeps appearing that says something about "get the new X-cam" or something and I don't know about your system but on mine it slows things down.

Also, when it comes to bandwidth I don't really know but I suspect that this contributes to a large sum of the bandwidth being consumed by their systems when someone accesses one of these pages.

I got a surprising message on Friday telling me that Geocities had to "shut down my website for a few hours" on certain days to keep me from exceeding the bandwidth requirements for a free website which is 3GB per month.

I cannot figure out how all of what I have here could cause that because my files aren't that big. I think their ad square had a lot to do with it. I checked the amount of bytes each segment of their ad square consumed and I'm pretty sure it did that, plus the fact I've gotten some increased traffic recently.

By using the payment packages I eliminate the ads and the pop ups which should make for better viewing. I did however choose the option of having them shut down the website temporarily if it exceeded the 5GB data transfer per month allowed by a Geoplus account. I just wish I had some control over the message that would be sent to the visitor rather than their generic version.

Sorry that it comes down to this. I wish the ad supported system would have worked like they envisioned it but with the "dot.com crash" some providers have re-thought how they handle their customers.

Post your address here and I will try to send you off money by the end of the month. Perhaps others will do so as well.

With what you have said I guess it is out of the question posting my entire Sowers book here at your site. It would appear I have angered at least three people--not have copies of my Sowers book available.

I have received only a few e-mail question about my book on Ann E. Lehew (wife of T.B. Buck). I referred them to L.D.S. library--And they seems satisfied.

I have received only one e-mail or letter about my Elizabeth Antrim (wife of Jacob McKay) book and again referred him to L.D.S. library--And he seems satisfied.

I couldn't do complete genealogies on the system anyway because of the time and management involved in such a project.

People are just going to have to go and purchase these (or check them out of LDS libraries) on their own if they want more information. I cannot provide them with all the answers they want. The best I can do is try and help send them in the right direction.

That's the reasoning behind the partial genealogy records, the photographs and the last wills and testaments.

A brief introduction to the families in the hopes that the visitor might find a connection.

I am going to re-do the photographs by putting each person's picture on separate pages so that they aren't all loaded at once.

The way it is now takes a considerable amount of time to download each picture on the photo pages. It would be the same thing as having all of the wills and memorabilia documents presented all on one page. Quite a lot of bytes being sent out there.

It should be better for visitors when I do that. That way they can choose which people to look at pictures of rather than having all of them downloaded to them.

My mailing address is:

Michael L. McKay
115 Morgan St.
Winchester, VA 22601

I thought perhaps doing it through the treasury would be good.

I looked it over and when spread over the time period they cover I could conceivably handle it financially but just like our Newsletter receives donations to help cover expenses I thought perhaps since the website is for the Robert Mackay family that the reunion treasury could help with paying the bill, not that I would be angry if they didn't but I remembered bringing up the cost of the domain name and cousin Gene Shipp (last year's president) said "go ahead and pay for it from the treasury". Being president this year I don't feel like I should just have my brother write me a check unless I bring it up at our reunion. It would help ease the burden of payment for these services.

As you can see, a pop-up ad keeps appearing that says something about "get the new X-cam" or something and I don't know about your system but on mine it slows things down.

Also, when it comes to bandwidth I don't really know but I suspect that this contributes to a large sum of the bandwidth being consumed by their systems when someone accesses one of these pages.

I got a surprising message on Friday telling me that Geocities had to "shut down my website for a few hours" on certain days to keep me from exceeding the bandwidth requirements for a free website which is 3GB per month.

I cannot figure out how all of what I have here could cause that because my files aren't that big. I think their ad square had a lot to do with it. I checked the amount of bytes each segment of their ad square consumed and I'm pretty sure it did that, plus the fact I've gotten some increased traffic recently.

By using the payment packages I eliminate the ads and the pop ups which should make for better viewing. I did however choose the option of having them shut down the website temporarily if it exceeded the 5GB data transfer per month allowed by a Geoplus account. I just wish I had some control over the message that would be sent to the visitor rather than their generic version.

Sorry that it comes down to this. I wish the ad supported system would have worked like they envisioned it but with the "dot.com crash" some providers have re-thought how they handle their customers.

I do not understand all this computer talk. I do understand things cost money.

If you want a yearly donation, then you are going to have to remind me each year. Perhaps I can think of your site the same time I am going our taxes.

In any case, the check is in the mail.

I'll be sure and mention your donation at the reunion when I bring up the issue of costs for the website.

Yeah, I know what you mean about computer talk. I didn't know what data transfer was until I had to deal with it.

I think this will be an overall improvement of the website and forum.

I went ahead and mailed a check for $25.00 to cover 6 months payment for the forum services so I expect that a few days from now we'll notice results when we visit the forum. No ads, brief messages from the people at Network 54, and pop up windows. All of that should be gone I hope.