The Gist
Love you guys, but #off-topic is starting to burn a hole in the wallet: To host Discourse (this forum backend) on a VPS to get the quality you see, it costs me $106~130ish/mo to maintain these forums:
As these forums have been up since 2017, that’s roughly $3,600 spent~
Since #off-topic is mostly treated like realtime chat, such as:
This is bloating up the VPS, messing up trust levels, breaking search priorities, and overall realtime chat should really be in Discord instead of here ~
The Plan
- We’re going to create a Discord ( https://discord.gg/tol ) #fol-off-topic channel for a familiar feel of faces.
- #off-topic will either be locked, deleted, or hidden.
- Optionally, #off-topic can turn into a Thronepass-exclusive section - let me know if you want this. If server costs are being held up, no problem.
Alternately…
-
Here’s my bill this month (below) - this is pretty much bare minimum:
If our Patreon meets this monthly goal (we won’t calculate Patreon % fees), I’ll reopen #off-topic. As of this moment, we’re at $54/mo. -
Later, I may be able to experiment with ads only in #off-topic , which may work, too; but have never experimented with ads before. Maybe after every x scroll you’d see an ad.
Thronepass
Our Patreon sub gets you perks, too. Custom titles, special colors to stand out (with dark+light theme support), and even Discord stuff, too, so it’s not just a 1-way street 
Learn more here:
TL;DR
Forum’s expensive! I’ve been paying it for 3 years, now ~ need some help 
#off-topic seems to bloat the servers more than any other, so we’re porting this section Discord ( https://discord.gg/tol ) with it’s own channel.
However, we can unlock it if we make a group goal that equals+ my monthly VPS bill via Thronepass (Patreon). If you support us via Thronepass, don’t forget to use the same email as here!
