It's probably like 40-50 bucks a year. 10-20 for domain fee and the rest for webhosting.

So divided between just 8-10 people, that's about 5 bucks each. I know that's still asking an awful for having your favourite forum running for a whole year.

You'd still need to hire a tech to iron out any programming issues. I know my old forum tries to raise about $150 a month to cover expenses. Where all that money goes, exactly, I don't know.

I suppose the thing to do is start a poll to ask who'd be interested.

Oh, look! I did.

I think I could do tech and I'd assume we also have others here who know their way around web applications and the like?

How huge is your old forum?

Perhaps your best bet would be to look into the actual figures and see what it would cost. There's not a lot of point saying it would be say 10/20 dollars a month and then realising it's twice that; that's a sure way to get people looking down and shuffling their feet and hoping you don't see them moving away.

A full proposal, as such, laying out what we get and how much it costs, with, insasmuch as possible, all contingencies covered, might change people's minds or at least spur some to action ( or inaction). Also, I would suggest an actual forum hosting we could use, not some vague example. So you have "look guys: we can get Honest John's Friendly Forums Which Is Definitely Not A Scam for x amount today and we get this. Plus he'll throw in a free piece of jewellery for everyone, a 9.99 value."

Fairly big. A lot bigger than this one obviously. I think it may still be the largest writing forum on the internet but they do have competition.

Eliteweb.co is supposed to have fast servers.

Price for a dot com domain: Get a .com for just $9.99/yr

Price for their most basic hosting plan:

cPanel Hosting that’s easy, reliable and lightning-fast.

$1.49/mo

Includes:
1 website
30 GB storage
10 email accounts
Unmetered bandwidth*

Price for Phpbb (forum software): 0 (it's free)

Maybe we'll use another forum, but phpbb is popular and loaded with features and themes, etc. so it seems like a valid option

9,99 + (1,49 × 12) = 27.87

So there you have it. However, it's not uncommon that there's a hidden fee or special pricing for the first one or two years. Anyways, you get an idea.

As an annual figure (30 dollars?) doesn't seem at all bad. I don't think I'd necessarily have a problem with that. The issue is twofold though: a) how many people want to deliberately move now, as opposed to waiting till something happens (ie how many are happy here now and happy to stay) and b) of the former, how many are prepared to put their hands in their pocket? To be fair, I wouldn't really be into the idea of subsidising a new forum for a bunch of people (even friends from here) who were happy to move, but not to pay. I think I would draw the line there. None of us are, so far as I know, registered charities.

I mean people leave here all the time even for just a few months, but some for longer, and get replaced by returning members or the odd newb. If we move many of those returning members are probably gonna miss whatever stickied post we leave up, and the new faucet will be shut off if we leave a forum at the top of a Google search for "music forum".

What do?

It is a valid point. Like leaving forwarding addresses, how many are going to bother? Also, I feel older members (look at Bulldog for instance, and Queen Boo too) had they come back and found MB gone and some sign pointing thataway, might not have bothered. For a lot of people it may be the familiarity; they know their way around, know where certain thread/areas are, and finding their way in a new place might be a bit too much hassle.

Add in having to pay to join then and, well, you know...

But then, as you say, you have to either decide to stick with the handful of remaining members we have, or try to attract new ones to a forum which at that point nobody will know about. I mean, look at Music Collector, for one. A lot of new members are just finding their feet here (clue: they're on the ends of your legs, guys! There ya go!) and trying to get to grips with a whole new, paid forum might be asking too much.

There are without question advantages in having our "own" forum; it's just a case of how many people think it's worth it, both in literal, money terms and in terms of going to all the hassle of moving? Hell, some of the people around here are hard enough to wake up, never mind get on their feet and pack a bag!