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Poet

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  1. Flying home to Norway might be what you meant but it is by no means the most obvious interpretation of what you wrote: Following such an uncharitable interpretation of why he might be living in Pattaya (whose wider area is the largest destination outside Spain for retiring Scandinavians, and where he is the secretary of a society for Scandinavian expats), the obvious interpretation is that you think he should "call it a day" by topping himself. If that is not the case, perhaps there's hope for you yet. It would not hurt, however, to express yourself more clearly when slurring other expats.
  2. Says an ex-bar owner who had no problem profiting from his customers. What an astonishing thing to say to another human being. You are quite a piece of work.
  3. You must surely realise that thousands of us here in Thailand earn our entire living from the creative industries, in particular various forms of writing? Simply do what writers have always done. Sit down and write. You are not taking a job from a Thai, and no value is created until a book is actually sold. That financial event will happen outside of Thailand, so, it has nothing to do with work permits. It falls into the same category as earnings from assets you have outside Thailand, such as rent from an apartment. If you are publishing through Amazon or whoever, and simply bank the money abroad and bring it into Thailand after one year, no tax is due, but it counts as having been through legitimate tax system. That extremely handy loophole applies to any money brought in from abroad. To be frank, no one ever seems to ask for proof that the money has actually been in your possession abroad for an entire year. Just make sure that Amazon pays the money to your bank account outside Thailand, then transfer to your Thai bank whenever you want. If, on the other hand, you get Amazon to pay directly to your Thai bank it becomes taxable. It is a phenomenal time to get into selling writing. There are terrific forums sharing advice on self-publishing, both the creative and business aspects. If you write fiction, innovations such as Kindle Vella are opening up entirely new audiences and provide a low barrier to getting real market feedback on your work and starting to build your fanbase. Good luck!
  4. Actually, on a recent suspension from ThaiVisa, I took the time to check out the competing forums and was pleased to find that there are now some fine options. ThaiVisa has the advantage of having been dominant for so long, and size does matter when it comes to forums, but a recently emerged competitor is showing signs of being active enough while also being a far more pleasant experience. Talking of branding, your username is terrific ????
  5. Frankly, this is somewhat unfair on Thailand. Few nationalities tip as much as Americans.
  6. It is in no way beneficial. If your primary domain has a hyphen, people will forget the hyphen, losing you traffic and emails to the owner of the unhyphenated version of your domain. If your primary domain does not have a hyphen, no one is going to misremember it as having a hyphen. When choosing a domain for an actual business, always pick a .com and avoid hyphens, numbers, international characters, and any unobvious spellings. Pick a name that you would not need to spell out if verbally discussing it with a friend - that is one of the reasons why the name change to ASEANNow is such a bad idea. ASEAN is not a word that most people are familiar with, most will mishear or misremember it as "AsianNow". ASEANNow is also a good example of why your domain should be something that will still make sense in 10 or 20 years time - it is highly unlikely that the successor organisation to ASEAN, in a few years time, will still be called ASEAN. The predecessors to today's EU changed name about five times. Also, it is possible that some countries that are currently members may leave ASEAN, particularly as China continues to flex its muscles in the region. As a political entity, ASEAN is far less cohesive and stable than the EEC was in the 80's and early 90's. Never compromise on your domain name. Obviously, everyone wants to save money, especially when starting a business, but if you launch with a problematic domain it will end up costing a lot more money in terms of lost traffic, misdirected emails, lower credibility, and less effective marketing. It is also one of those things that cannot really be changed later. Only an utter chump would change the domain of an established website.
  7. No. Read what I wrote. It takes time, lots of time, to build a community. You could actually run Discourse on 2 GB but I am suggesting 4 GB to deal with spikes of usage when you might have a few hundred people online. There is zero reason to increase that to 6 or 8 GB until you are dealing with significantly more users and that sort of growth is not going to happen overnight. People who don't understand servers always make your mistake of wildly overestimating how many users they will have on Day One. The reality is that you would be lucky to get more then a few dozen visitors per hour during your first few months. When you do need more RAM, you press a button. Simple. Absolute nonsense. You have no idea what you are talking about. Your lack of clue is amply demonstrated by the fact that you are focusing on the price of the server rather than the resources. Prices vary wildly depending on supplier. No one with actual experience of running servers would ever measure their capacity by price. Sweet Jesus.
  8. I presume all the moderators got glassed within a week of opening.
  9. The main cost in setting up a new forum is time. Servers are now essentially free and excellent forum software is also free. Starting from scratch, you would have the advantage of being able to use more modern, more cleverly designed forum software such as Discourse. It allows your contributors to build their reputation in an enjoyable, gamified way, and has a lot of small features that make it easier for them to add content and encourage engagement on your forum Discourse is free if you install and manage it on your own server. Cloud servers start at €2.49 per month for a cloud server with 2 GB of RAM but you would be better off starting at €4.90 for 4 GB of RAM, to give you more headroom. Increase the RAM as you gain more users, but it will be a while before you need to do that. You can also rent a managed version of Discourse for around $100 per month with they run for you on their server, you simply login with your admin username and password. Personally I think that is wildly overpriced, but it might be worth it if you are uncomfortable with the technical stuff and just want to focus on building your community. There are, of course, many other types of software forum. The point is to find one that will make it as easy as possible for your users to become engaged. The really old types of forum software, such as vBulletin or the IPB sofware used by ThaiVisa, have been updated over the decades but, at heart, they are dinosaurs. They only survive because big forums don't have much choice apart from sticking with the software they started with.
  10. "And today's prize, for making a thread that has nothing whatsoever to do with Brexit, five years after the Brexit vote, somehow connect to Brexit, goes to repeat winner bannork".
  11. There have been occassionally active sections for at least Cambodia, Vietnam and the Philippines. They shouldn't be starting from zero.
  12. So, screw that guy. He and his select few buddies will have a lovely time together. There are hundreds of other farang groups, both public and private. The main reason why the big groups get big is because the moderators value their users. Egos are a competive disadvantage.
  13. I have no love for Zuckerberg but, thanks to their sheer variety and healthy competition between them, Thailand expat Facebook groups tend to be far better than the forums. You can almost always find a group whose tone suits you and, in general, the moderators tend to be less ego-driven, leading to far more interesting discussions. If you do come across a power-crazed moderator, simply follow other members to a better group. It is a much better experience overall.
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