[Alex Pepple]

Dear Eratosphereans,

Once again, it's time (or past time, going by the endless months of dry spell) to remind those can or are willing to, of the need to support Able Muse/Eratosphere per all the 'donate' links on the Sphere pages. It's especially important this time because I've been putting off upgrading the forum software, etc., which is now several releases out of date. However, it's now time for me to take the technical and financial adventure to get it done! The reasons for upgrading include--

1. Hardening the software to minimize breach by hackers. This has become epidemic these days in the form of denial of service attacks and brute force hacking attempts of passwords, especially from IP addresses originating from China and Russia! And some of you might have noticed this in the more frequent instances of the Sphere going offline due to database query overload with the server ... even though this might only last for a few minutes, when I catch it in time.
2. Improving the system and operational performance of the forum software itself--this will result in better user experience as well as more resistance to the denial of service attacks mentioned in 1) due to a higher point of failure of the software and supporting database.
3. Potential new features for members for more or improved creative tools and better member interactions.

. . . and the above is only for starters, sticking to things I can describe in layman terms. Indeed, it's likely that I might migrate the system to an entirely new software base. So, it's also likely that I might retain the services of paid consultant(s) for some of the more onerous development work, should that be financially feasible ... or else, I'll just slug at it solo--most likely taking lot longer to achieve the desired upgrade goals.

For more reasons to support Able Muse / Eratosphere, see the sticky here. Or, feel free to skip all that and go straight to the donation page here.

Thanks!
...Alex