Is there any reason you couldn’t partially fund the site with ads?
I get that they add some clutter to the site, but I feel like it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
If you are worried that users would be pushed away, put it up to a vote.
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We already do:
The issue is while the ads actually started out quite promising (around $350/month when we added them in 2021 when we where at a fraction of what we are now. But due to the crackdowns and how ad unfriendly stuff is in general even though I think we are 3x bigger then when we started the ads have dropped to just over $100/month currently and drops a bit more each year.
If we hosted ads from the community it could be a bit more sustainable but the process to do that on the forums is painfully manual atm; so would require me to setup a custom system for it so its not likely going to be achievable in the immediate future.
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Perhaps something to add for any future fundraisers, the BoardGameGeek forum recently started their own annual drive:
You can click the banner to see more. They’ve run this successfully for years, and like WG have managed to stay independent since inception. That’s tough for a website in 2025, it could be worth following some of its example.
Edit: They also run ads like WG does, but as a patron I get them removed.
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Ya I am considering maybe implementing something like that in the future. I am not very familiar with discourses plugin system so just would require me to do some digging into it. I would need to setup a new server to retrieve the data from patreon (and store the data if I bring in kofi since they only have webhooks) but I think I could run that easily on a $2.50 droplet.
Just want to double check, are you still seeing ads here? I assume you are just saying you don’t see ads on there because you are a Patreon there but I just want to make sure you are not still seeing them here as they should be disabled for all Patreons $1 and up.
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Ah, sorry. I’m not seeing any ads here when logged in, looks like it’s working 
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Other places seem to function relatively well with ads though…
For example, I recall f95zone being self-sustaining, despite (on paper) needing even more ressources to run.
Perhaps there’s either an issue with either the hosting method, or with the ad network you’re currently using?
I’ve heard that Discourse (our current system) is supposedly quite heavy to host compared to other forum server software.
This, combined with the fact that we do both image and general file hosting on the website, definitively does not help with reducing costs.
And about the ads, we seem to be using adchoices as our network here, but wouldn’t it be a good idea to go shop around?
Plus, as others mentionned, you’re paying quite above typical for hosting a forum of our size.
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I was around when the ads were initially asked about and added to Weight Gaming. The community asked Grot to keep ads limited and to reject certain ones such as scam, hard-core porn and pop-up ads and he listened and agreed with the general sentiment. So that’s probably the big factor here
Thats’s true. But… Maybe it’s possible to think about their summ like about an “emergency ration“ for some extra situations? For example, if you need pay for forum, and have only 2300 of 2400$ in your pocket. Or if you want to hire a new master to construct main site ASAP. Some stash is always desigion.
Sadly, but not anyone has acess to Patreon payments or can donate every mounth like an alarm clock. But they still want to help and be part of common goal. So, IMHO, such stash is needed both for forums and for such good Samaritan. Not ATM - yes; but maybe such view should be thinked about?
(And yes, if someone’s about to say, that such thing should be advanced long ago: like many others, I didn’t know, that situation is SO bad.)
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I upped my monthly donation and will keep it up as I will always do, but I agree with the sentiment echoed here, a fundraiser is a temporary short term solution, long term I think weight gaming needs to get some more ad revenue and cutting cost. Having an annual fundraisers could help, but getting the site to a state where it supports itself would be the most wise course of action and should be the top priority in the coming months.
You may need to put on your sleazy business suit and make some tough decisions to make this happen, it may mean more ads or monetization of site data. You also may want to consider marketing the forum to more people and bring in more users. But hosting cost certainly aren’t going to decrease, going to a more basic forum with less features that is less expensive to host may also be an option you may want to consider. We can buy you time grot, but like someone else has said this feels very “kick the can down the road” to me. Large course correction will be required.
My skillset is not very technical and I wish I could help in a larger capacity other than just sending you more money. Please keep us in the loop if things change for better or worse, I would hate to see this site shut down and I can offer some additional temporary financial support if required.
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I am not using addblockers of any kind but have never seen an add. Could that be an issue with my location?
Anyway! I can not update the post but 4/5th there!
EDIT: I should have written sooner…
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Because I’m curious - have you looked into other hosting, just to see if you can get a better deal? Figure it’s probably been stated, but, like. Just to throw it out there.
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Its very possible, I use google adsense and its possible that due to the content of this site it just chooses not to serve ads in your location.
Yes, I have and the answer is no there is not a better deal that will work with our current setup.
We actually moved from AWS to GCP because they had the better deal when I calculated it which saved us ~$200-$300/month compared to AWS.
I really like DO and they are fairly low cost but we are just a bit to big to run on them directly anymore and since their K8 clusters need dedicated workers their compute is slightly more expensive then GCP since we use a feature called autopilot which helps us cut our compute costs over there.
I do use DO to try to cut costs where I can like with the redis cache but this isn’t really a great setup for simplicity, security, and performance reasons so I usually use DO for independent low traffic applications like our build server.
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Foundraiser reached 9/10th!
It looks up! Yay!
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Just 170 to go for this month 
I will say though, with the projects getting temporarily shuttered regardless next month, maybe consider raising the limit of 250 donations to 300 for next month. I Feel like it might be more difficult to fundraise during that time otherwise, but it still keeps the original intent of cap in place.
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I think we will be fine overall. Also, we are not shuttering it fully, we are just stopping any new topics from being made in it while we get our moderation issues sorted out. Existing topics are going to remain untouched for now.
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We are so damn close, Fingers crossed we end up 50ish over the line so we have a buffer
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