Site Help & Support - Donations & HPC:Factor

When we started the site, it was always under the mantra that we would never force banner adverts or pop-up messages onto our users in the name of generating revenue. We want to ensure that continues.

From it's inception and up until 2010, the site has remained entirely self funded and self administered, including the hardware, software, bandwidth and development time that goes into making HPC:Factor the site that it is.Over the years we have had a number of changes in hosting arrangements, and aside from a 3 month window, the site has been hosted using the services and facilities available to its owners through involvement in IT services which has allowed the site to be subsidised in many areas.

Throughout the course of 2008 and 2009, the Handheld PC community has shrunk in many respects, and many users have moved on to new interests and gadgets. Despite this shift, the Internet traffic generated by the site has increased exponentially over the same period and continues to grow relatively speaking into 2010.

Partly due to an increase in demand for our downloads as a result of discontinuation by Microsoft, partly because of increased SPAM activity and largely due to selfish hot-linking activity, by Q2 2009 the traffic load being generated by the site was becoming to much to sustain and we had to take measures to reign in the scope of the site, and the cost that it was incurring.

While introducing the Download Centre as a way to control downloading and get a grip on the high levels of hot-linking, for the first time we started by advertise for donations on pages within the download centre.

With the gradual retirement of our facility in Florida, for the first time in Q1 2010, we have been forced to actively ask the community for help in keeping the site running as we need new server hardware in the UK.

+ Subscriber Status

+ Subscriber status is given to any registered forum member who donates £10.00 or more towards the running costs of HPC:Factor.

+ Subscribers receive:

• Receive a + Subscriber badge on their forum posts and in their forum profile
• Can store up to 200 messages in their site Private Messages (PM) inbox
• Can upload attachments to forum posts of up to 350 KB instead of the default 60 KB
• Will be offered access to any beta testing for improvements to the site before ordinary users are given the opportunity to view changes

+Subscriber status will last for a period of 12 months from the date you made your contribution.

How to Donate

Financially

We have a ubiquitous PayPal donate link. If you would like to donate to the site, you can simply click on this link and it will be up to you how much you donate.

Please Note: From recently experience, we have observed that if you donate £1, PayPal will take 25% of it for themselves because of the low transaction figure. Donations of any size are of course very welcome, but we would rather that PayPal didn't get to profit so well from the experience.

To donate, simply click on the Donate button below, or the donate button that is located at many points around the website.

Mirrors

We may be looking for mirrors in the near future. Please keep an eye on the forums, as if you have a server and some bandwidth, we would be very interested in talking with you when the time comes.

Can't find what you are looking for?
If you cannot find information on how to use an element of the site, or have a question on HPC:Factor itself then please contact the HPC:Factor Webmaster with details of your request. We will do our best to find a solution to your problem.
Please Note: Technical Support requests will be ignored over email at the discretion of the recipient staff-member. HPC:Factor does not offer Technical Support over e-mail.