We, webmasters and people who work online know it's not a big sum ;). $6 a year for a domain, $20 a year for hosting (yes, $20 a year for good shared hosting is possible these days; I myself have a site that I pay $12 a year for 1 GB and good support). So on average $30 a year to run the site, that's not too much I think.

I think it's a wrong conclusion. Throughout the last several years working online I conclude: The Simpler, the Better. It is always the case, and will always be. The more time people spend time online, the sooner they will realize it (that's the case also for younger audience who have daily Interent access nowadays).

The most things I've ever learned in my life was from reading plain black on white messages. And I'm still daily reader of same "old", "boring" forums which remain the leaders in their niche.

In your case, however, it may be a little difficult to satisfy all the teenagers needs, but those who are really valuable members will contribute on your "plain" forums, which will give you more and more valuable members in time.

If I start talking about economic situation in Belarus (my motherland) and how hard it for me to earn such small sum in 30$ in my 17, it will be off-topic, so let's not discuss this... at least here.

Either way, looking at your site and forum I like it much better than I would've probably liked yet another vbulletin forum so I'm sure you'll do just fine if you continue doing a good job. It seems you already have good traffic.

If you run it for 5 years I hope you'll get the right finance for it finally. Running and supporting something for 5 years just for pleasure is impossible.

I personally don't know what could happen with miniBB in the next 5 years :-) It's too long term to discuss in advance. I am spreading my plans only regarding this year, and in this year we already have much important plans than developing digging posts add-on.

Maybe in the next 5 years you will understand that unprofitable forums are not worth supporting at all and your young inspiration will be over.

Don't forget that by meaning $30 it is meant per year. We host miniBB for $15/month i.e. $180/year. You can host the forum for $2.5/month. I suppose it is much lower even than the monthly fee you are paying for your mobile phone.

I suppose even in Belarus this price could be considered as a milk money. I don't believe you can't earn more, specially in Minsk. My friends were in Minsk recently and they reported the prices there are standing closely to EU prices.

I hope it will be so too))Mmm... sometimes I want do just something for my soul, not because it profitable. When I was starting I wanted to share the information I had, nothing more, but running your own site appeared more interesting than I could imagine before. At first I know nothing about "how to run you site" and now I'm remembering how I found minibb, I think it was just by chance and if I had known different web-details at that moment, may be I would have chosen another forum software. But I don't regret now.
Let's hope that it will be prospering ;)
It's exactly what I pay per month for my mobile phone. I need to pay for the Internet too - it's nearly $22 per month.
Minsk... Paul, if I'm not mistaking you were born in USSR?.. Practically nothing has changed in Belarus since these times. The Republic of Belarus doesn't differ much from BSSR: beginning from our national symbols and ending our standards of life. As far as I know flats in Minsk cost the same as in Berlin. But we don't live better than the German. Prices are high, salaries are not too low but not too high. I everyday see many people that live much worse than me and for them it's like survival. I can afford everything essential that I need for living but nothing more. Moreover I even can't start do for a living, because there is no part-time job for people who are younger than 18, it's just not exist.

However I'm going to bye CAPTCHA add-on in a few weeks or months, cause I'm tired of deleting user accounts. It's really essential add-on)

It just appears I am paying much higher price for mobile phone, Internet, hosting and other things than you, and you are still offering to work for free :-) Yes I was born in USSR but I don't support USSR's practice when you should work for free. I need to get something instead of my work, it couldn't be just money, it could be food for example or trip to Minsk :-) But working for free is really annoying, specially when you are not motivated.

Basically money is not the question you should ask me. If you need any kind of add-ons, but can't get them from me for free, why not to ask your users? I have learned programming from scratch, and I was even older than you when I've started to do this. I suppose in Minsk there are a lot of boys who are interested in programming - so why not force them to program add-ons for miniBB which you want?

Look from my side at yourself and you will see a boy who is whining about new features just because it is requested at his only forums where we are not even participating. Ok, I would agree to work for free if I would see the profit of it, not obligately the money, maybe something else... but in your case - why could I be interested?

Stop whining, suggest your ideas.

Khm... We are speaking about different things. Try to read messages 19 and 20 once again and may be you will understand that your answer is not for this. I've stopped my attempts to persuade you that this add-on is useful on the first page of this topic ;)
So it means that you are tired of me.
One more suggestion and I will leave.
I saw some topics here about templates for newest version of minibb. It's not profitable for you to make some templates. May be it's good idea to hold an competition?.. and make a prize for a person who will make the best template. So you will get some amount of templates practically for free.

We already thought about the competition and as soon we've got some free funds, we'll definitely do it. As well we will announce the miniBB logo contest probably soon. Thanks for advice though :-)

I am not tired of you at all because I can flood forever. Any discussion can be based only on arguable sayings, so you if you have nothing to say against, we could just close it.

I could say you don't get the idea of open source program as well, because any open source could be developed by other users too, not obligately its authors. We are still wondering why having so opened architecture for add-ons and a simple code, miniBB can't be extended by other people at the same quality level as we do. Maybe I will need to publish some kind of article on how to program the add-ons and then they will be developed more actively :-)

At the same time, even if some add-ons are developed by 3rd party, they are mostly not supported by their authors in the future, and it's bad because then we need to support 3rd party code, which is often ugly and doesn't correspond to the code we program. Or even worst - we should then fix the bugs and errors in it... not an exciting perspective I must say.

So we are always trying only to support which seem really important for us.

But as soon we get the suggestion like yours, and we can't support it currently, we can offer only our custom job services. We can't support every suggestion, and there is nothing personal.

It's very important for us what do you think and what do you suggest; but still, developing of such add-on requires a lot of time and testing, and having only one opinion, as I mentioned, doesn't mean we should start the work immediately.

Let's see what other people have to say. Maybe sometimes your dream of digging posts becomes true ;-) No promising still.

Yes, it's good idea. As far as I remember there some clauses about developing minibb in manual. So may be there is not much information and people need smth more descriptive. I have never tried to make an add-on, because I don't know PHP at all. If I learn it, may be I will do it by myself. :)