Hi Dan,
Just found this bit, so haven't donated so far. I build web sites, sell domain names and host sites, so I'm glad you have changed your host - you were being a far over charged for the service. I also notice quite a bit of advertising now, which will bring in a reasonable amount of revenue.
I know what its like changing from doing a site for recreation, to running it as a commercial concern - there's a sticky bit in the middle when its costing more money to do, you need to get an income from it, and you don't want to put people off. The free php software for bulletin boards is handy these days (how did we survive without them?!).
We have a residents site where i live - with a bulletin board (forum) - that i run, host and generally 'sort out', yet is free at the moment although it personally costs me £40 every a year to do for hosting it and the domain name, plus my not inconsiderable time. We don't have advertising yet on the site, but that's my next move to generate income.
How about a small optional fixed price subsription? On the forums, you could have 'subscribers' along side 'free', or 'guest', users - so it would not exclude anyone. You can make some areas of the forum accesible only to subscribers. The 'free' users would not be able to access the subsription-only areas. For example, the seed-swap area is a prime topic to be available only to subscribers.
Just a suggestion.
