Support Austen.com

    There are several options for donating money to help support the site.

    1. For donating by US credit card, you can use the "Amazon Honors System".

      Just click on the pic:

      Amazon charges $0.30 + 2.9% on each transaction, and they are limited to US credit card holders and to $50 (but there's nothing stopping you from doing it more than once!)

    2. If you would prefer to use PayPal, or if you are not from the United States just click the PayPal button below and fill in the amount you wish to donate and your credit card information:

    3. Donate by check (in US$). Make checks out to "The Spring" and mail them to:

      The Spring
      182 Clover Rd
      Ceder Creek, TX 78612

      You can contact Paul Terry Walhus directly at (+1) 512/581-9617 or 699-4000, or by e-mail terry@spring.net.


    What do we need the money for?

    The webhost Spring.net hosts the all of the Austen.com portions of this website (TheDWG.com and Janeites.com parts are hosted elsewhere), in addition to the Spring's other sites. The Spring is run by Paul Terry Walhus, and is located in Texas--it is Terry who actually owns the "Austen.com" internet address. Austen.com is responsible for a large chunk of the bandwidth of Spring.net and uses a lot of disk space for the archives. As can be expected, the company he works with has increased its rates, and that needs to be covered.


    Here's how the site is organized and how it stays afloat:

    Austen.com and Spring.net:

    Austen.com (the name) is owned by Spring.net and The Spring gives us space on their computers and just about unlimited bandwidth—and here's the important part—they don't directly ask anything in return! But, The Spring's finances are always precarious.

    So, you can help to support Austen.com by supporting Spring.net.

    FYI: Spring.net is an internet hosting company and an online discussion community operated out of Austin, Texas. If you want to start a discussion on a non-Austen topic, this might be a great place to host it. Current hot bulletin boards there are "Drool" (for talk about your favorite hot actors (mostly Colin Firth)) and "Geo" for discussion of Geology and Earth Sciences. So, as you can see, they have a large range of possible discussion topics! If you want to start a new topic, go to: Porch: Proposed New Conferences (must be registered at The Spring) and make a request.

    Austen.com isn't the whole of the site, so things get a little confusing...


    TheDWG.com and Janeites.com:

    Observant Dwiggies will have noticed that Austen.com is not the only URL (internet address) used around here. There are two others (there used to be three with Friesema.com) that you will see as you surf around the site. There is TheDWG.com, where The Tea Room used to be, and a large portion of the story archives is housed. And Janeites.com, where the Library and some of the archives lives.

    Both TheDWG.com and Janeites.com are owned, operated and financed by Ann. TheDWG.com and Janeites are housed with the same service provider: ReadyHosting.com. They charge each of us $99 per year for 500 MB of disk space and unlimited bandwidth. The $99 per year cost at ReadyHosting also includes the domain registration fee, usually $35/year after the first 2 years. Which means that ReadyHosting is essentially charging us $64 a year for all of TheDWG.com and another $64 for Janeites.

    Thank you for your support!