Websites cost money. There is no simple way around it. Right now, in my life, I have much more time than money. I don’t think it is a waste of my time to build these forum communities on the Internet. If the communities fail, then perhaps my time was wasted, but the risk of that is fine at my age. I am willing to take more risk right now, only because I have more time than money.

I run a website design and development business. My professional experience in website design gives me an advantage of not having to outsource the work that I do. When I build a website and a forum, I am using my time to build it, to improve it, and to administer it. I am thankful for the volunteers who help me moderate it. I am gracious of the support that we receive from the members of the community.

Even with all this support, some people have called website forums ’sinkholes’ because of the constant drain of funds. Let’s not mention the amount of wages that are lost when my time is spent working on the forum versus working for a paying client. Let’s not mention the decline in my social life because I have to deal with forum issues, from site drama to site maintenance. You want to make a great site, and you become emotionally attached to it as you invest your time and life into it. We are not even talking about the actual dollars spent out of the pocket. The actual dollars spent out of the pocket are considerable, dependent on your perspective.

The obvious is the purchase of the domain names from the registrar, but don’t forget you have to get other associated domain names to prevent future competition, so a collection of domain names can add up as they are paid on an annual basis.

Obviously you need a computer to store the site, so a huge financial hit comes with the purchase of a server. Expect the server to only be good for two to three years, dependent on how the hardware can handle the increasing capacity and growth of the forum. As the forum grows in these time spans, another server must be purchased or the forum is likely to suffer.

Once you have a server, the operating system is usually free but the backend software is not. Licensing fees are associated with that. You can either lease the backend license on a monthly basis or pay a much bigger lifetime licensing fee. The backend is very important as it allows you to manage a server without having to login as the root user and performing everything via command line syntax.

Then you need to pick a datacenter, one that you can trust and is reliable. The datacenter is where your server sits and is connected to the Internet, bringing with it three cost factors that are paid for on a monthly basis. Your server takes space within the server room, so you are paying for the amount of rack space your server is using, essentially you’re renting the storage space. In that storage space, your server is connected to the backbone of the Internet, so you’re paying for your bandwidth to allow the incoming and outgoing connections to and from the server. For protection of the server, the cost of a server appliance to handle the server’s security also comes with a dedicated server. Security appliances are extremely expensive and is one thing I recommend be leased over time. So once the hardware is setup, there is an initial setup fee to get everything going, and then monthly fees from there on out.

Throwing in a forum community brings with it more costs. Forum software is leased on an annual basis. The high cost comes with the first year, and a moderately low cost continues on at an annual basis. The forum software is used to run the forum. The way they give it to you is primitive looking at best. I will not even get into the cost of giving a forum a unique look and feel, from having graphics work done to coding to programming to specific site wide features and doing everything that needs to be done to make a forum user friendly and high quality.

In addition to all that money spent, you have hidden costs. I had one issue where I was held liable and I had to pay exuberant legal fees to handle the situation. It comes down to paying a lawyer to take care of it or the forum is left closed. You don’t have too much of a decision at that point.

You have the time spent doing everything I just mentioned up above. Time setting up the server, software, updates, administering, handling constant security issues, resolving bugs, customizing, and oooooh the programming. If you are doing the administering, you will feel you have a doctorate degree in PHP and MySQL.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of the time and costs involved in a forum. If there were two icebergs, the second iceberg would be the actual running of the site from the front end, from handling forum politics, site issues, disgruntled forum members, catering to the community. You start these things with a focus and you ensure that focus remains, but don’t forget administering can take away from your involvement in a community where you would rather just be a member and not spending so much time in the backend side of things.

I am not complaining. I love what I do. I enjoy it. The reminder of that is when I see others contributing to the forum because a value has been created. The value is within the community. If the focus is kept, a community can be a good thing, but what you give to it and take away from it can be even better.

I think it is safe to say, that I am emotionally attached.