Admin status: myself with 18 yrs exp and chief admin thru out; assoc admin with all boxes ticked (our obit expert & one retired but possibly available). Finances ALL go thru my credit card.
If & when I die, questions will arise from my classmates: 1) Who takes over as Chief admin and takes responsibilities to run site and make key payments? 2) How will Class Creator help us handle these and other similar issues?

Now....to the current situation, contractual updates, and how far ahead should we pay for services.

1) CC subscription just rewewed - exp Feb2030. CC fears inflation so won't give any longer commitment. Understandable but limiting. As of now, 5-6 additional years seems our limit.

2) Secure Certificate - exp Apr2031. Plans are to renew for 5 yrs. (Currently $35/yr x 5 = $175)

3) Domain name exp Aug2035. How much we renew for depends on how critical it is to keep such under our control. Need feedback on this so I can present a plan for this to the class.

4) ID Protect good to Jul2036. Unless given a good reason to do otherwise, will now renew further when this expires.

FYI For the most part, we are 76 years old. Individuals reaching 76+ years old have an average remaining life expectancy of about 10.5 more years for men and 12.5 more years for women. Using that survival rate, the website will probably be on oxygen-support by the time 2035+ rolls around.

Message Forum has 920 pages, 22989 comments. The last 10 pages represent 5 years worth of comments - obits become the main topic; the first 325 pages represent a one-year of stories, fun, and love. The Forum is a warehouse of treasured memories.

Thx CC for helping us keep our past so alive.

I'll address just one point. If no one becomes the root admin when you pass, when your subscription expires, your site will not suddenly disappear but will revert to "Free with Ads" and retain that status perpetually.

Thx. Still, we are fully aware of this proviso and want to avoid that road for as long as possible. Specifically, we want to at least keep subscribed until we're 85. The only area holding us back is the subscription limitation. Surely, 5 more years at current rate will not suffer such drastic inflationary issues over such a short span.

Dylan Thomas:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

At your 60th reunion, why not solicit donations to extend your subscription? We have done that, along with using donated money to pay the banquet fee for a few classmates who cannot afford it. Our classmates are quite generous for these endeavors.

1) There is no plans for a 60th Reunion.

2) Money is not an issue. We already have a core cadre of staunch, even eager members willing and quite able to finance the website. If there is no admin alive to do so, then how does the site make the needed payments to extend subscriptions??? And how can I even extend a subscription that I just extended a few weeks ago?!

3) I am working on additional admin but so far only one person is willing to be trained to handle the admin duties for the site. (Mostly learning the steps one must take when a classmate passes to mark their new status and get entered into the In Memory pages, etc.)

4. With all due respect, I need something more than the default answer (just accept ads) and the lack of an answer as to what to do when the admin dies (or does Just Accept Ads remain the stock answer here, also?).

The devil I face is in the details. Default answers are not guaranteed to work in such climes. I am willing to work long and hard to find answers and appreciate any such effort on your part.

I will push the envelope to find a solution which allows our site to function without resorting to ads or abandoning administrative duties.