Important! They removed my account on 17dec2016. So please ignore everything on this page. Check the thread for more info. Thanks to everybody donating!

• No ads on the whole site while signed in!
• Optional feature to auto-skip the page with the GET FILE button when no captcha is required. You'll just start watching the embedded flash immediately. Remember that there's always a link for saving the flash below the embed.

Pledge $5.00 or more per month

• Can watch 30 flashes on swfchan.com before another captcha must be entered.

Pledge $10.00 or more per month

• Another 45 flashes per captcha (so 75 total watches between captchas).

Nothing jaw-dropping but it's a little something to show my appreciation. Naturally higher tiers include lower tier rewards.

Note 1: I plan to have some kind of Hall of Fame list for all supporters at some point (all reward tiers on the same list). I'll implement it if at least the 256 USD/month milestone is reached.

Note 2: Normally you can watch 6-10 flashes per captcha but it can go all the way down to 1-2 if a lot is being watched the same day. When signed in it's always 30 or 75 if you pledge 5/10 bucks, no matter how many flashes you watch per day.




+ USAGE

The money will be used for costs related to running the server (domains, bandwidth, electricity, file mirror), upgrading the server when need be and of course also work as a carrot for me to continue maintaining the site (making sure everything runs smoothly, fixing problems when they occur, implementing new features, moderating uploads and posts, scanning new places on the Internet for flashes and filenames (have done manual custom-made scans on over 100 different sites so far) and creating various services such as swfloopmaker, GifShooter and SwfH264).




+ ABOUT ME

What else is there to say? Suppose I can tell you a little about myself. I was born in Sweden, where I continue to live to this day. I made my first homepage in 1998 and have been interested in the web ever since. I learned HTML by checking the source code of other people's web pages in Internet Explorer. Registered my first domain name in 2002 and have used several since then and changed my sites appearance, content and purpose many, many times. I still make all my sites in Notepad, including swfchan.

I've saved a lot of stuff over the years and always liked to share them with others. I saw a lot of other people also doing this but they tagged stuff with their own brand. Over the years I grew to hate watermarks, I can't stand sites that brand stuff in any way (unless they themselves created it of course, as long as it's done discreetly). I hosted several HD videos on my sites for people to download before YouTube supported HD and one of my happiest 4chan memories is when I stumbled over someone on /r/ requesting sites similar to mine that also supported HD.

Flash has always been interesting for me, I first heard about it around 2000 while watching some taped show on VHS where they talked about how tweens worked. However only since 2006 when I first visited /f/ on 4chan have I started to appreciate what an ingenious format it truly is. I honestly think it's a damn shame when people talk poorly about flash when it has done so much for the web. Imagine where the format would be today if only YouTube had allowed swf files to be uploaded. There's nothing like it.

Since 2006 up to 7sep2015 I've created ~726 flash files, nearly all released on /f/ first (around 15 of those can't be traced back to me and were released in secret, though naturally all of them were posted anonymously). Can't give an exact count because my oldest flashes are on a HDD somewhere in my wardrobe... Might have made a few new ones after this was written.

In 2007 I came up with an idea of archiving threads on /f/ along with their flash files. It was just something I noticed nobody else had made. I built a working system but it didn't have a way to present content to visitors. I got stuck and the project was put on ice. I still have a bunch of archived threads from 2007 in a RAR archive somewhere on that old HDD I mentioned.

Some months later in March 2008 I felt up to the task again but couldn't really work with my own old source code, it was too messy. I started over from scratch and two months later swfchan went online on the 5th of May 2008. At that time there were no threads being archived, only flashes. The system for archiving threads was completed five months later.

Since then things have been rolling along. The site grew and new features such as searching and the actual imageboard on .org was implemented. Eventually the site outgrew the server and it had to be replaced. A mirror to speed up downloading was needed as well.

And that, as they say, is that. If you think I deserve a few bucks or if you want to help out in making swfchan ad-free or simply ensure that it stays online please become a patreon today. Enjoy yourselves, all things might end in a flash!




+ ANONYMITY

I should mention that you as a donor can be Anonymous on Patreon in the sense of using a fake name for your account and by not using your primary e-mail. You can also hide your pledge from other people. However, as a "creator" I will be able to see both name and e-mail of your account since you're one of my supporters. None of your payment information is available to me though so I won't know if you have a different PayPal e-mail or what your non-Patreon name is. The only thing I plan to use your Patreon e-mail for is to create a salted hash value which will tie your supporter account here on swfchan with your identity on Patreon (this process is automated by the swfchan server).

Patreon will of course know who is giving them money but they seem to have a strict policy about privacy and probably won't leak information to anybody except government officials if they receive a specific request. I asked them about this and according to their lawyers Patreon takes "thorough measures" to ensure that people requesting information are who they claim they are and actually have legal authority to do so.

If you're wondering what a "salted hash value" is it means that your e-mail and password will be stored in swfchan's database like this: "4f62d57390a874dfab69...236fce51623a891a68c9". That way if someone somehow hacks the server they will only get 128 random characters instead of your actual e-mail and password. Even I won't be able to read your password either.




+ ACCOUNT CREATION

When you pledge 1 USD or more an account will automatically be ready for you on flash.asp within 30 minutes if Patreon says you have an "ok" status. It'll stay active as long as you're a supporter. All you need to do is visit this URL and create the user name and password for your account. Use your Patreon e-mail address at the top of the form, that's the only time you will need to enter it.

When it's ready for use just enter your user name as the flash width and your password as the height in order to sign in. A small control panel will appear at the bottom, allowing you to toggle the auto-skip on/off or to sign out.

Note: The automatic system that handles Patreon on the server is down right now. It just means that I have to do initialize things manually, otherwise everything works as it should. If you want to create your account faster you could let me know in the discussion thread. Otherwise it might take a while before I discover that there's a new Patreon.




+ MONEY RECEIVED

On paper a total of 92 USD was pledged at the end of September 2015.
A total of 18 people were patreons at that time.
But two people failed to follow-through and one were not charged at all for some reason.
So at the end of september 15 people donated 74 USD in total.
Actual funds added to my account (after fees): 65.08 USD
After transferring these to my PayPal account: 65.08 USD (no additional withdraw fee)
When finally arriving on my bank account: 523.78 SEK (1 USD = ~8.05 SEK according to PayPal)
But actually 1 USD = ~8.25 SEK according to 8 different sources (PayPal took a 2.5% fee)

In conclusion: If you pledge 1 USD I will receive 0.85 USD on my bank account.

So if the Patreon page say I receive for example 200 USD per month I actually receive 200*0.85 = 170 USD per month (there are 15% fees all in all). Except I've noticed that that isn't necessarily the case since late pledgers aren't charged for their first month.

And apparently Patreon sometimes (wtf?) doesn't automatically remove people that fail or stop to pledge from my list of Patreons. Unless I manually go and delete these non-existing Patreons they will still add to the shown total amount of supporters and total amount of money I receive every month. Even though they will actually never donate anything... Pretty strange system if you ask me but there you have it.

Update: Nowadays Patreon shows the amount that is actually added to my account on my public profile, not the amount that is actually pledged. So if it says that I get for example 117.21 USD per month that is how much I'll get, no fees should be removed from that amount (except PayPal's USD to SEK conversion fee). The total fee is still 15% though.




+ ETC

Feel free to talk to me in the Patreon discussion thread.