Pat on the back (get him off then !)

[petevick]

You know, its just occurred to me, I've subscribed to quite a few forums in my time, and I can honestly say that this has to be the best I have ever been on. New posts are answered very quickly, even if its a "I don't know" answer. News about F2S has always been up to date, the site itself is well maintained and very easy to navigate.

So, may I congratulate you Justin and all the F2Support team for a most excellent web site and forum, may you live long and prosper (God, I can't believe I just said/wrote that )

[kmount]

Heh.. Thats cool to hear, and Im sure like me most agree this is definitely top.

[Justin]

Thanks guys, but we're not nearly finished yet, got a few features that are being planned and are up and coming as we speak, when you will see them I'm not too sure, but rest assured we are working on making things even better all the time

[Ralph Bacon]

What I don't fully understand is how you (Justin) make any money doing this.

After all, you seem to be there 24x7 answering posts like this one, upgrading your MySQL server versions, implementing speed tests...

Are you a secret lottery winner just indulging in your hobby all day? And are you really only 20 or was that a little jest in your profile?

But I must echo Pete's sentiments, this site is really nice.

[Justin]

We don't make any money, thats the thing, and we're not in it for the money, though believe me, if I said it cost us hardly anything to run this place I'd be lying.

The vBulletin License costs us $85 (yearly), whilst we paid $59.95 for the Java Chat Applet (One time fee) that isn't at this moment working, $10 (Per Month) on hosting (Soon to go up to $15 as I've ordered extra bandwidth due to the speed test). On top of that we have 4 domains (Well 3 now..) which cost us about $8.99 per year each and any other things we wish to invest in for the site.

Don't get me wrong I'm not moaning or asking for contributions, I'd thought I'd just outline it to people in case they are interested, I can afford to pay at the current rate without a problem, but hence the reasons I have restricted the speed test to freedom2surf users only, if it became well known and everyone started using it, the bandwidth bills could be massive.

There are a number of web projects I do earn a decent sum from, and more or less the money earnt from them tends to go into ploughing resources into Freedom2Support.

Oh, and the server upgrading by and large is not done by us, it's done by the guys at United Hosting, who have been great to us, as we did have a period of trouble with a couple of our old hosts, but since being with them since March 2003, they've been great.

The chances are I won't be anywhere near as active on the forums from later on this year, I do tend to visit a good number of times a day during the week, however if you've ever noticed at weekends, I'm nowhere near as active, normally check only once or twice a day, I do have to have a social life too