You know, I just had a thought, and obviously this is just an idea, but let me throw it out there anyway. The banner ad on the forum is obviously part of the Boardhost site, the service provider that offers the webspace for this forum. All free forums have a banner ad, and the only way to get rid of it (short of using an ad blocker) is to switch to a paid service.
I looked into this, and Boardhost offers several plans with different features. The cheapest one is $5.49 (~3.95€ or ~£3.20) a month. I've seen it on other forums or privately funded fansites that users rallied and collectively sponsored something that would offer a mutual gain for everyone. If 25 people all gave 2 Euros each, we'd have an ad-free message board for a whole year.
Now, I don't know if it's important enough to the forum members to have an ad-free forum that they want to spend money to make that happen. But if we did, one way to do it is to set up a PayPal account where everyone can give as much as they wish to spare until there's enough to pay for one of the Boardhoast plans.
Again, it was just an idea that occurred to me the other day. I'm perfeclty happy to keep things as they are, because I use an ad blocker, which works very well. But that might not work for everyone, so here's a possible solution. Of course it'd also have to be endorsed by our forum admin, since she's the one who'd have to handle all the technical bits and bobs...
Last edited by TeeJay (April 12, 2014 4:42 pm)