I definitely would never have donations earn in character title shots or anything like that, but I'm all for rewarding those who donate in any other way they may like. I've said before I'd give people a secondary custom avatar to go along with their profile if they want one, and I'd also be open to other ideas.

As far as $5 being a lot of money, or not being a lot of money... the reason I said "if everybody could even donate 5 bucks every few weeks or so" was because I'm aware that in some cases, some weeks, even 5 bucks IS a lot of money... of course the key words there being "some cases" and "some weeks." I myself have had weeks in my life where I don't have 5 bucks to spare, so I understand that... but I also understand that if I cared about something enough, I'd have a few bucks to toss its way every now and then. That's why a big part of this revolves around how many of you actually care about what features and things our site has. Some of you are ok with just using a basic board without features, which is fine, because this is only an e-fed anyway.

So far, the response in my other thread (the poll) is weighing pretty heavily in favor of keeping and continuing to improve our site, which is great.

So far, the response in donations does not support that, which again, is fine... but I just want to say once again how it falls on you guys as a whole. It doesn't matter if you see 1 person or 2 people donate large amounts; we are still looking at this on a case by case basis based on how much a person can spare themselves. If only a small handful of people donate, then I'm going to probably see about other ways of rewarding them specifically instead of using their donations to pay for an entire site's progress when more than half of the people have demonstrated that they're fine with not supporting the features and upgrades. There may be some options in the near future where I can allow special access to extra features and areas to those who donate, while keeping the very very basic message board features open to everybody. We may even be able to create 2 separate boards entirely, similarly to how we currently have 2 different layouts people can select from, and all the BASIC posts such as roleplays would be visible across both versions of our board while everything else would only show up in the donor version. If we go that route, it would actually help cut costs in many regards because only a small portion of the handlers here would be using those extra features which in turn may draw the need for extra resources from our servers. While some may claim that is unfair, there would be a way around it such as donating a small amount on behalf of your friend who you know can never donate, and we'd then give that friend the same access you as a donor have. We'd also consider those who help out in various ways behind the scenes, regularly, as donors since they are in fact donating time... which of course IS money, just like the old saying.

Thoughts?