Since Norm Roulet created Realneo in 2004 many, many people have put thousands of hours of their volunteer time into producing quality content, and many people have made donations of time and money to pay for and maintain the machinery which operates Realneo.

I will give just one typical example of what it takes to keep a web site operational: At one point about a year ago the url for Realneo expired. No one noticed because no one was notified because the old email in the whois for the url contact was dead. Eventually Realneo.us went dark because the domain registry extinguished the url. To get Realneo back on the web we bought the Realneo.org domain and temporarily used that url to redirect Realneo.us traffic to the servers. But all the Google links to Realneo.us were dead.

It took me a week – 40 hours – of international telephone calls (the Realneo.us domain had originally been purchased through a domain re-seller in Toronto) and of back and forth emailing and calling to our server host (in British Columbia) before the Realneo.us url was finally made available to us again.

During the renewal adventure I received a lot of help and tech education from Jeff Schuler – who I had recently met through another Realneo mutual friend.

If you consider that it took me a week of volunteer time to JUST get back the url, then you can see that Mr. Schuler puts in a heck-of-a-lot of volunteer time because he is the person who does all of the following tasks which allow all the users and readers of Realneo to communicate:

• site back-end -- upgrades, communications with our hosting provider, database maintenance, performance, reliability, backups, domain/dns, evaluating new hosting and content storage and delivery options
• user support -- account issues, helping new users, helping with posting, cleaning up posts
• managing Drupal system and module updates, and attending to the many post-upgrade issues
• functionality to the site -- evaluating new modules, new views on data, spam protection
• slowly tweaking the site layout -- new web-standards-compliant theme coming soon
• involved in expansion plans -- vertical (sub-groups for neighborhoods,) then horizontal (...)

PURPOSE OF THIS FINANCIAL SUPPORT SOLICITATION:

The open source software which operates Realneo is Drupal, originally developed by Dries Buytaert. Between March 4 and March 7 the annual Drupal Convention (DrupalCon) is being held in Washington DC and Jeff Schuler has already purchased a $250.00 ticket to the three day convention. On top of the ticket cost, there will be costs for travel and accommodation.

As an avid user of Realneo, and a long time user who wants to see the site technically improved and expanded, I am making this public request for financial support to help cover Mr. Schuler’s out of pocket expenses for DrupalCon. Our investment to help support Jeff Schuler’s trip to Washington DC will reap many direct returns for all of us in North East Ohio. The value of everything that Jeff Schuler learns at DrupalCon, and all the industry connection he makes there, will be returned to us here on Realneo and to the larger Drupal community in Ohio as well.

Please join me in helping send Jeff Schuler to DrupalCon - to afford Jeff the important opportunity to learn more about the software which operates Realneo.

You can either send a check or postal money order made out to Real.Coop to PO box 20046, Cleveland, Ohio 44120 (please put Realneo/ Drupal or Realneo/Schuler in the subject line) or use the Paypal button on Realneo (again put Realneo/Drupal or Realneo/Schuler when you click through to pay with PayPal -- before confirming the payment -- there's a place to "Add special instructions to merchant.")

Thank you for your help in advancing our Realneo community by supporting this funding request.

Sincerely,

Jeff Buster