Hi folks,

Thanks for all the compliments, and the suggestions.

I'm still uncomfortable with any "donate" and "paypal" or any similar donation links/systems. Don't get me wrong, I'm always touched and humbled when someone offers it, and it makes it all worth my while knowing our site has helped someone, somewhere. And I occasionally do get similar offers by emails and PM's.

What I prefer to do is make the site self-supporting. For example, we allow links to low-carb stores, books and products we like, trust and have a good reputation, and we turn down a lot of questionable advertisers, magic pills, casino and gambling banners, easy cash stuff and the like.

With our latest move to our dual server setup (I'll add more details to the original post later, as it is a milestone in terms of our growth and increased popularity) our cost has increased tremendously. You may remember from last December and early January this year, we had experienced a lot of server problems due to increased traffic, and things got worst after Dr. Atkins appeared on CNN on January 6th, and most of you got the error "server too busy". Since then we just realized our old dedicated server can't handle it any more.

So I decided to try a new idea to help the site, without requesting donations. I've always liked it when my favourite sites offered T-Shirts and mugs and these little gadgets with their colourful logos, URL's and cute slogans. So I thought we can try that and make our own site/forum T-shirst and mugs, and many of our members might enjoy wearing them and showing them off.

The only problem I have is that I don't have the graphical skills to come up with anything really attractive to be printed on these T-shirts, and I've tried, and I don't have any really good ideas for slogans and the like. I did come up with some half-decent designs, but that's not good enough, it has to be really good, attractive quality designs, or why bother?

For this reason we have announced our graphical design contest last week:

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthre...?threadid=85243

in the hope that some of our artistically gifted members may be willing to draw some for us. So if any member can help in that department, we'd certainly appreciate it.

I'm thinking of some ideas for a prize for the winning designs as an incentive, I think I found a good one, but the details are in the works.... stay tuned!

Wa'il