Hi Cruisers,
YIT has moved to a new membership based system. After 5 years of operating as a donation only service in conjunction with Gulf Harbour Radio, YIT has decided to become a separate entity. To counter the rising costs of the YIT servers and especially the software providers such as Google and WindyTY, who have moved to user pays, YIT has decided to move to a totally separate membership based system. ( Googles 3000% price increase is a prime example of a users pays system where arms and legs are the currency )
This move towards memberships will future proof the site and allow for development of necessary functionality such as the new free App currently under development, for mobile devices, for all new membership types.
All current members have been migrated to a trial membership which lasts for 30 days. Members are encouraged to upgrade their account before their trial membership expires so any updates sent in are not effected. If you need more time, or are having any issues at all please do not hesitate to contact me ( mike@yit.nz ).
Memberships page:
https://www.yit.nz/memberships
Those cruisers that have generously donated towards YIT this year will have their memberships upgraded automatically. Also those that have contributed heavily to adding locations such as anchorages, or testing of YIT functionality will also have their memberships upgraded.
All questions and comments are welcome in this thread.
Thanks,
Mike ( Site Admin )
New YIT Memberships
I'd pay extra to not have the windy map. Since you've implemented it, the map is so hard to use now on a mobile device. If I want to look at windy, it's just not that hard to go to their website or their mobile app.
I'm glad to pay for a membership to support your wonderful service but I'm afraid that going to a membership model will eliminate some of the stingier in the fleet. Its great to have as many boats contributing as possible, even those that are right on cash. Couldn't there be some kind of free membership level?
And again, how much will it cost me to NOT have windy?
New YIT Memberships
Unfortunately I had to default the homepage to windy to suck up some map impressions. With the homepage default set to google, it pushed YIT into the new google map price range of $1200 US / year. I just can't afford to pay that on top of the other costs. And now with windy charging $750 US / year from November going forwards, there really is no free option unless I swap the whole site out to some similar/slightly sub standard mapping service which will take quite a bit of work. You can click the google logo to turn it back to google at any time.
Unfortunately the free option could be the most popular and I would alas be back to square one. There are not enough of the generous ones out there to pay for this increase in mapping fees, for the amount of people using YIT. So for the price of a good pizza you can get a years membership. That is practically free.
Also by not having a free option, it really reduces the amount of work for me involving spam registrations. I also run https://www.nomads.world (essentially a yit copy for campers) which has the same model as YIT but with web enabled registrations. The amount of spam registrations was a nightmare, even with Google anti spam Captcha installed. I had to turn off registrations in the end.
I'll add a windy homepage default setting into the supporters membership. That way you can choose if you want windy as the default map on the home page or not. I find the windy map, for me personally, as somebody watching yachts cruising at the moment, very interesting for what wind they have, the anchorages shelter etc. You are right about the windy app and site, very useful when you want to get weather.
The fate of YIT is no longer in my hands. If YIT is to survive it needs the support of its members.
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