Within the next 9 days this site and all the Club 1000 members sites (yes, all three of you) will move from a shared hosting environment to a dedicated server.

I was given notice from the hosting company yesterday that this site is now using too many system resources to be housed on a shared server and needs to be moved onto its own server, so my options are very limited. Move up to dedicated server or find another host. Pretty clear to me what has to be done because finding another host is a massive exercise for a site that has gotten as big as Nikongear. I have been quite satisfied with my hosting company thus far.

This is effectively going to increase my hosting costs about 20-fold per month and we don’t have full coverage of recurring subscriptions throughout the year yet, so I would like to make an appeal to anybody who has a supplier business in the photography realm (or knows somebody who does) for possible monthly sponsorship of the site.

I have a few options that I can present to sponsors and I will keep the rates very reasonable. I’m not interested in affiliate marketing (or Google Adsesnse) because nobody here (except Lew) ever clicks on the B&H or Adorama links when they buy their equipment from those guys. I need a sponsor or two who will be happy to have a button on the sidebar, or a banner in the forum and a link line in every email notification that gets sent out by our server, for a fixed monthly cost. If anybody is interested in this please get in touch with me ASAP.

Of course donations are also always welcome from members whenever they can afford them and if you have your own website why not consider signing up for either of our current Club memberships? Once we have moved to the dedicated server I will be creating a month-to-month hosting product for members who prefer not to be tied down to longer term hosting commitments. That would go a very long way towards closing the gaps in the subscriptions calendar.

Regarding the move: there may be some downtime as a result of the switch over to a new server. It will be pretty much the same thing that happened a few months ago, where some forum posts get lost if I don’t shut it down during the transfer. Club members shouldn’t do any major updates to their sites during the switch-over as they too may become lost in transit. I will keep everyone posted in that regard, both here and on the Nikongear Facebook page.

Growing pains hurt, but I am 100% committed to this project and I now view it as my full time job, so even if I have to take it on the chin in the short term, I am happy to do that. I see a future here.

We had a great braai last night, much beer, steak and other foods - lots of pics, which we will hopefully be able to upload tomorrow. Just a small headache when my alarm woke me at 5.45am this morning.

All I can say is this: what a fantastic bunch of people have joined us on this adventure! Wow! Meeting the folks has been a surreal experience for me. I still can’t pronounce Bjørn’s name quite correctly, but he has been patient with me.

This morning Pepe and I collected the gang from the B&B and we set off on the road, me driving the Toyota Quantum with Michael, Bjørn and Ann as my passengers, while Pepe drove the more adventurous lads in the K-F. First stop was the Inyoni indigenous forest at Eshowe. We walked along an elevated gangway through sections of the forest looking for birds. There is a tower one can climb up and get a good view of the forest canopy.

This was the first chance that everybody had to bring out their missile launchers. Pawel (Psilo) has the biggest out of everyone - he’s toting the new 600mm f/4 VR. Damn! That thing is huge! Everyone else, except for Jakov and I have the 200-400mm f/4 VR. Bjørn was not interested in the birds but spent a fair amount of time examining the flora and literally photographing my nostrils with Erik’s 8mm fisheye. Expect some bizarre imagery soon!

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Greetings faithful readers and welcome to our brand new blog based front page.

In the future we will be using this blog to keep you abreast of what’s happening with our site, trips we’re planning, stuff happening on the forum, and of course our monthly newsletters. From time to time we will have guests post to our blog and also publish articles that we will keep organised in a menu to the right of the page.

You can follow the RSS feed from Nikongear’s blog in your favourite reader, or nowadays even on your iGoogle page, which is a great way to keep up to date with what’s been happening on your favourite sites without even having to go to them.

If you have any suggestions for the blog, please let us know!