MediaSmartServer.net has been an active Windows Home Server community since July 2007. During this time we've had numerous requests from members and visitors asking how they can donate or in some way say "Thank You" for one of our Add-Ins, tutorials and guides in the Wiki, or for some other extra support they have received from us directly or in the forums.

Many of you are tech enthusiasts and do a lot of online shopping. Simply clicking these links to get to your favorite sites before you order is the biggest and easiest way to help. When you use these links MediaSmartServer.net gets credit regardless of what you buy and you pay not a penny more. These are all places that I shop and have always had very good experiences.

• www.dell.com (Home and Small Business)
• www.amazon.com
• Newegg.com
• Newegg.ca
• eBay (worldwide)
• B&H Photo Video
• HP Shopping
• ThinkGeek.com
• Roku - The Little Black Box That Streams 100,000 of movies

Your support of this site helps recoup my expenses associated with hosting the site, maintaining the web server, and paying for bandwidth. Any extra allows me to spend time writing more articles and getting more hardware and software to review, all with the intent to help you make the most of your connected home.

Thank you for your support!

Newegg.com


B&H Photo Video


HP Shopping

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins?

Cool! Any way to get this site (and your great work) credit when shopping on .ca versions of these sites? I do plenty of shopping on newegg, tigerdirect and amazon, but all on the .ca domains... I'd love to give this site some credit/support, but without paying duty if possible.

Great question, I've added both Amazon (CA) and Newegg.ca links in the text above.

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins?

Will those links work if we book-mark them? Or do we nee to actually click on them from MSS.net?

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

The links may update occasionally, it's best to click from the site.

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins?

Since you don't recommend bookmarking them, is there a place in the banner area where you could put them? I really like the idea of supporting you via this method but I doubt I will come to this site, find the link, and then go to Newegg. Having an easy to access link would make me more likely to take that extra step.

_________________
HP MSS EX490, Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300, 1TB System drive, 6TB Storage pool managed by StableBit DrivePool

Or, maybe better, a link in the banner area that opens a single page that has all the current links?

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

I like that idea and would definitely take advantage of this to help the site. God knows how much money I've spent on Amazon and Newegg and God knows how many times this site and it's members have bailed me out of troubles.


DCT

_________________
EX470 w/ 2GB RAM + TR4M: 4.5TB
EX490 w/ e7500 + TR5M: 9TB

Good feedback, when you guys say "in the banner area" do you mean the navigation menu (ie the News/Add-Ins/About/etc)?

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins?

How about centering it on the same line as the "View unread posts"? This is a line that is immediately visible on entry to the site and is available when reading any post.

Any convenient place at the top will probably be fine actually, even as another tab. I would recommend you NOT add any lines to add this though -- for me there is already too much white space at the top. (And we will complain if it isn't!) The important thing is to have a very convenient link.

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

Please do place these somewhere easy to find. Wish I would have known about this before - I've spent a couple grand at Newegg just in the last month building my new server and a new i7 desktop. All future Newegg & Amazon purchases will enter via this route.

One question - does any Amazon purchase made through the link qualify, or only computer stuff? I live on Amazon.com, and would have no qualms about detouring through here before each purchase.

_________________
MGannon
DIY WHS "NorthStar" - viewtopic.php?f=22&t=6517
Intel E5200 Pentium Dual Core
2 GB RAM
19.25 TB Storage

I would put it on the same line as the RSS Email icons (with an appropriately coordinated icon) or in the area to the right of the main MediaSmartServer graphic.

I don't like the idea of the link leading to another page since that is just one more click. Once I know about it less clicks is better. On the other hand, a separate page does give you the opportunity to explain "how it works".

_________________
HP MSS EX490, Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300, 1TB System drive, 6TB Storage pool managed by StableBit DrivePool

ANYTHING you buy through any of the sites here will benefit this site, buy your socks, coffee machine, printer ink, books, music downloads, anything.

TxDot, I hear your point about wanting simple and few clicks, but I do feel like I need a page that explains how this all works. I've debated for a long time about how to present this, and this forum topic was the first step to test the reception. I'll need to think and test a bit about best placement and verbage, so give me a little time to get an easy one-click solution.

Thanks for all the feedback!

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins?

If you place the banners at the top to the right of the MediaSmartServer.net logo. I don't know if it's possible, but it would be awesome if you could somehow link it up with Bing cashback as well.

I'm not familiar with the Bing cashback, I think it works just through their search and don't know if it works with affiliates, but I can look into it.

I've added a link to Buy.com that should work for both US and CA customer.

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins?