Traffic Surge / Server Upgrades / Donations for Monthly Server Fund

A moment just to update everyone on the situation with the unexpected surge in traffic we have been experiencing over the past 24 hours.

We have been hard at work optimizing key areas of our platform as well as caching areas that we feel are currently receiving the brunt force of the spike. What else can we say, it isn't like anything we have have ever seen before! There is just so many of you hammering down on the front page and if we disabled the invite system we would end up being consumed in a matter of seconds. While we are thrilled and very excited to let everyone join the Snapzu community we must stand behind the difficult decision of keeping the service invite only but online and available to those who are currently our members.

Over the past few hours we have been pouring over a half dozen server specifications and concluded that we need to setup dual database servers with a load balancer to handle the MYSQL database side of things as well as a powerful new front end server to more effectively run Apache. The total monthly cost for these servers will go up from our previous 134 dollars/month to a new total of 368 dollars/month. Which brings us to our next subject.

Ever since we soft launched Snapzu in 2012 we have always maintained that we can come together and afford to pay for the hosting as we grow and expand our platform. As a team of passionate people we have always believed that if we just work hard enough then something great will happen. Today is a confirmation of that work ethic and we are very excited at what the future may bring.

We ask for anyone able to contribute to our monthly server fund of 368 dollars to do so now. All donations will go towards our monthly quota and any leftover funds will be used for next month's funding goal. Those of you making a donation, please be sure to include your email or username so we know you are for future functionality. Thank you!

Paypal Donation Email: donations@snapzu.com - Snapzu Bitcoin Wallet: 16ziiUD2vK5Kn7t4Kbk4GNgyd9bqvKwAtd (first time using bitcoin, hope this is right!)

Update: 61.60 / 368.00 raised thus far! We are in awe of such generosity coming from total strangers. Truly inspiring!

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Update 2: WOW! We have already surpassed this month's funding goal in less than 24 hours with a total of 489.40 / 368.00 donated across Paypal and Bitcoin! We thank each and everyone of you for being so generous, you folks are truly amazing! There was a suggestion of creating a kickstarter style funding page so we will look into that as it would surely take the stress off if we were able to raise enough funds to cover the server costs for a full year and even use a part of the funds towards a dedicated server admin. Moving forward we consider all options and figure out what's best, but at this point we are just ecstatic that we can setup powerful new hardware to make this place go fasterrrr!