What's your estimate on how much it costs to run this website?

I was looking at the IPB website today and buying the forum software costs $249.99 (forum and blogs) and that doesn't include the $25.00 renewal cost every 6 months or renting space and bandwidth on a web server, and how much bandwidth do you think we generate in a month? (that would be $10 - $30 a month). I remember him talking about how MSSQL was causing the problem with the website crashing so we probably have the $60.00 MSSQL Driver for the forum as well. Then there are the advertisements, I wonder how much money those generate. So that totals $479.99 a year not subtracting the advertisement money and assuming we use the least amount of bandwidth. The amount of money it costs to keep this site online really adds to the appreciation of what Salmoneus is doing, don't you think?

Domain Registration: $9.29 from NameCheap
Hosting: $9/month with Netrillium
Forum Software: $250 and $25/6 months

The website was started around Feb 2004. Since cost only include what you are paying for and not at all your revenue, we cannot include any advertisements or monetary donations. With the information that i found, here what I came up with:
9.29
+(9*47) [47 months including December]
+(250+(50*4)) [This is x 4 years because we are already past the first pay period and are into the second, which ends in Feb. 2008]
=
9.29
+423
+450
=882.29

So my guess is about $885 since Feb. 2004 until and including Dec. 2007. I'm actually kind of interested if Sal has kept the financial documents and can give us a more accurate answer even if it's not the exact.

Hosting is alot more than $9 a month, we have a dedicated server which is probably around $100. Also, Sal has another hosting account which is around $5 a month. The forum software has changed price since Sal bought it - when he bought it, I think he would of paid $70 - then $70 for the renewals until IPS changed their pricing a year ago. Also, we use mySQL not MSSQL. Since then Sal would of paid $25 every six months. Sal has more than one domain, he has salmoneus.net and santafish.com - so around $18 a year.

Theres too much guessing to work it out, Sal might not of renewed the forum for a month or so after it expired (perfectly legal), and he has changed hosting, so the price has probably change. However, my estimate is $1000+, probably getting onto $2000 if not exceeding it.

Even a dedicated server with Netrillium is only $60/month and that's for 10GB of space which I am positive this site doesn't need. So to replace the host to be a dedicated server host, my new estimate is $3279.29. It equates to about $70 a month. If we were on a dedicated server for 47 months, it would cost is alone $2,820 up to this point.

Salcast is actually on santafish.org. Within the About page, Sal says that he got the domain for free and is using Dreamhost as a webhost who only charge $5.95/month. I didn't include the Salcast because I had actually forgotten about it. And since the last salcast wasn't put out since May 16, 2007 and the site hasn't been updated since August 15, 2007, I think it is safe to say that the project is closed and therefore shouldn't be counted. It'll probably shut down next May when the domain is up.

Edit: Where did you get your information that says this site uses more than 200GB of bandwidth? On the netrillium website, it says the business package offers 20GB space and 350GB bandwidth while the Basic package inclused 10GB space and 200GB bandwidth. I don't believe that Ricjustsaid Inc. is a real business but more of a made up name.

It isn't just about space, you have to consider server specs and bandwidth. The $60 server wouldn't be enough for this site. Sal consumes more than 200GB bandwidth.

Maybe someone should PM Sal, to see if he can drop a post here.

You can't be serious can you..? 250$ and then 25$/6 months?

Is this why everyone uses vBulletin? Because it's like 125$ for a software key (or something) and it never expires, and you get free updates and such (as far as I know, may be wrong).

I wonder what the advantages of using IPB are. I'm sure they have to be really good for Sal to spend a lot of money on it. If I made a forum, I would go the cheap way and use SMF. It doesn't look any different from other forums except it's free.

It used to be $70 per year, but then they changed it to $150 and then $25 every 6 months. However you don't have to pay the $25, it is just to get the latest updates and support. If you don't pay for it, you can still run IPB.

With vBulletin it is $85 per year, and after that you must delete vBulletin if you don't pay again or $160 and then $30 every 12 months.

So the pricing is similar, but the licensing is different.



Sal's was using Invision Free, which is an earlier version of IPB. When the site outgrew it, Sal decided to buy IPB, I would imagine because it is the same software as before and everyone is familiar with it. Personally, I prefer IPB to vBulletin myself anyway.

Well, you could ask Sal now, because his online
Anyway, I wonder how many people donate to the site too, and how much?
I remember someone on the chat said they donated $50
-Ming

Here is the contributors page: http://runescape.salmoneus.net/contributors.html but like I said, we are just talking about the costs, not the revenue nor the net revenue so anything that makes money like advertisements and donations don't count.

It'd be interesting to see how much they make too though. Not sure if Sal would want to release that info (some site owners don't). But there has been 136 donations (if I counted right ), so if each one was $5 each, thats $680. I'd imagine the adverts would probably make quite a bit too.

$680 - $0.01

I donated a cent because that's how much I had left of a visa gift card.

June 2005: Crankerboywp, Anonymous, FumetsuNeko

The day before my first post. Oh lawl.
I remember that. Sal forgot to put my name up.

I bought an IPB license for my site years back. About several months ago, I would pay $75 a year. Now, it is $25 a year. And I feel ripped off.