Trust me, the ads aren't to annoy you
At the moment its my back pocket which pays for all the upkeep of the site and such
As far as hosting is concerned, I host it. I own all the hardware (Server, etc). All I pay for the the electricity (which is quite a bit), and the ISP costs! Plus whatever it costs to replace hardware when it reaches its end-of-life or just dies...
I had far too much grief with all the 'paid-for' hosting out there, so about 2 years ago now I actually bought a server, built it, set it all up, and since then it's been running the site 24/7. Only had 1 major hardware failure which took the site down for a week, but that was unavoidable.
This is one reason why we try to push PVS so hard, as it makes me feel all the effort is actually worth it! We got screwed over by some ex-members around 4 years ago now, basically while I had issues getting online, caused alot of poo with a few members, nearly broke the place
, and then buggered off to there own gay thing which has now ceased to be
. I kept this place going though, even through the bad times (we were lucky to have 5 people online in a day after all the crap), and now its building up again to how it used to be. See, it's all well and good having a site where people can chat and such, but its more the events and local banter/meets which I want to get going more.
Ok that turned out to be much more of an essay than I originally planned