A Note From The Community Director
Welcome to the EE newsletter. Here you will be able to find articles written by the EE staff and members, regarding news, and events here at EE. The first few editions of this newsletter will be released through the forums mass mail feature, but once EE 2.2 is released, we'll have a dedicated newsletter area, as well as the ability to view the newsletters online past and present.
This first edition is being released late, when I realised this was a couple of days late, I decided to hold off releasing it until the EE Donation Campaign was fully underway, that way I could provide you all with all the relevant info about the goings on within EE this month.
The Community Newsletter is still looking for and Editor-In-Chief, if you think you are up to the task, please contact me on callumjackson@earthelite.co.uk.
~C. Jackson, EE Community Director
Earth's Elite 2.2 Development
As some of you may be aware, the Earth's Elite Development team is hard at work developing version 2.2 of the EE website. The 2.2 release will see the release of the VA System, division name change updates, a 24 hour events dashboard, birthday integration with the EE calendar, and a private live chat system.
Due to unforeseen issues with the Earth's Elite servers, the development team has been forced to turn their attention to these issues first, the Venture Radio website, our community radio, was lost during these issues and is currently being rebuilt from the ground up, this has caused delays in the EE 2.2 release.
I hope to be able to continue work on the 2.2 release very soon, but the Venture Radio website still needs some work, once that is all signed off, we will be back working on the EE release.
The hoped release date of October 1st will have to be revised, we are now looking at a potential release of quarter one, 2017.
~C. Jackson, EE Community Director
Earth's Elite Servers & Donation Campaign
As you are all likely aware, Earth's Elite has been having issues with the EE servers, well, now, server. This has led to us having to shutdown a couple of servers, as we simply can't run them. Enterprise, as is, can no longer sustain Earth's Elite, we must upgrade if we want to continue the way we are. This decision was made a couple of months back during a Senior Staff meeting, we found a suitable host and upgraded, unfortunately, when EE encountered an issue and attempted to get support, they terminated our service (I guess that's one of fixing an issue....). EE is now having to look at alternative hosts, but they are far more expensive.
Earth's Elite needs £96 by the end of this month (September) ideally to upgrade our servers, we have a lot of changes planned for when we get the new servers and for if we don't. The reason I want us to have the new servers by the start of next month is to allow EE a month to get everything setup and tested before having to switch over and put the new servers into live service and rely on them completely. Though a full migration of the EE services would be possible within a 24-48 period, but this would not allow for any testing and we'd be risking all of the Earth's Elite services if we did this.
We are currently running an extra donation campaign this year to help fund the upgrades, the first of which is now underway. We are currently selling a limited edition Earth's Elite branded mug, you can purchase one for £10 here - http://teespring.com/ee-mug. Earth's Elite's return on this is fairly low, roughly £2 per mug, but £2 is better than £0.
Our second event will be on the 30th of this month, the event will start at 12 Noon Community Time, with me doing a normal 6 hour stream, at 6PM, we'll head into an EE 24 hour Stream Until We Dream event, for every £4 donated to EE, we'll add another hour onto the event. Currently, myself and Shoot are participating as 'Officers'. Officers are those members who must remain for the full event or until the time runs out, if an officer leaves early, they pay a forfeit, currently set at £30 (subject to change after consultation with Senior Staff). There will be rewards to viewers/members if you donate certain amounts during the stream, the amounts will be £5, £10, & £50. There will be 2 £50 challenges, 4 £10 challenges, & 5 £5 challenges. The officer to perform each challenge will be selected at random during the event.
If you can't give to EE yourself, then this is, potentially, the best way you can help support the community, by participating as an 'Officer'. Note, to participate as an officer of this event, you do NOT need to hold EE Officer membership.
If EE is unable to raise enough funds to upgrade the servers, we will likely scale back the community, which I am against currently, but it will be our only option. The Sandbox division will drop the Minecraft server, and may have to drop the GMod server (if this happens, Sandbox will be shutdown indefinitely), Ace of Spades will be scaled back to just one game mode, all of Role-Play, Holomatch, and MMO will be unchanged. It will be a shame to see the most popular servers of EE lost, but if we can't upgrade, we must scale back.
If you are wanting to donate to EE you can do so 2 ways, either use paypal (paypal@earthelite.co.uk) or you can use our donations page (EE pays a fee on this one, but is the easiest for you getting your donator perks) - http://earthelite.co.uk/forums/index.php?action=treasury
~Callum, Community Director
Amazon Affiliation
Earth's Elite has been an affiliate of Amazon.co.uk for just under a year now, this is a great way for EE to earn a small referral fee, every time you make a purchase. We have just expanded to include Amazon.com (so now UK & US). All you have to do us update your bookmark for Amazon so that it uses our referral link, your browsing experience of Amazon will not change and your products will not cost more.
If you'd like to help us out by making this small change the relevant links are:
Amazon.co.uk (UK) - http://amzn.to/2cIVVzN
Amazon.com (US) - http://amzn.to/2cnXpuI
~Callum, Community Director
Promotions & Awards - The Big One
We're only 2 months away from the November Promotions & Awards Ceremony. We will be picking the 2016 member of the year, and dishing out almost 400,000 Promotion Points. This is a call to all staff and members, send in your recommendations for promotions and awards to the senior staff BEFORE the closing date Friday 18th November 2016 @ 23:59. You can send in your recommendations by emailing the Senior Staff on senior-staff@earthelite.co.uk or by going here - http://earthelite.co.uk/contact.php
~Callum, Community Director
Star Trek 50th Anniversary
Whilst Earth's Elite is no longer primarily Star Trek based, it is still part of us. We couldn't let Star Trek turn 50 without our own celebrations. We're a bit late, but it's the only days the most of us could do. Earth's Elite is holding a 24 hour Star Trek themed 50th Anniversary celebration event on Friday 16th September starting at 7PM Community Time and a weekend full of events. Full details can be found here - http://earthelite.co.uk/calendar/index.php?view=event&id=44
~Callum, Community Director
Got something you think the community should be aware of, just want to write an article for the Community Newsletter? Then send in your articles to the Editor-In-Chief by emailing editor@earthelite.co.uk.
