Megachan.net Imageboards

Yep, Megachan is a year old now. Well, a year and 6 days. And it’s come a long way.

When I started this site I didn’t think it’d come as far as it did. I actually thought that the site would be a lot quiter than it is. And while the boards are generally quiet, the site sees quite a lot of traffic per day. I may do a blog post on it, if anyone’s interested in webstats and stuff like that, lol. Also, I’ve got a rudimentary FAQ up (and suggestions would be helpful), and there’s a new board called Sandbox, which is solely for people (especially people new to imageboards) to mess around with to learn how imageboards work. No overall theme, no rules other than keeping things Safe For Work - it’s just there for people to learn/experiment

Anyway, on with that I want to do with this site…

One gripe I’ve heard on the boards (and in some emails) are the NSFW boards. Initially there was only /e/, as my host at the time didn’t allow adult content so it was pushing things. When I moved over to the current host I decided to add the niche boards /pai/ and /u/.

However, recently I started to reconsider having them. Not only does it make Megachan ‘unfriendly’ to many as it’s now not for ‘all ages’, someone has to pay the hosting fees. Unfortunately, my current financial situation means that this site was a liability as it doesn’t generate any money, so it can’t even cover the hosting costs. I began looking into various ad programs (Adsense, Adbrite, etc) and having adult content on the site is almost universally against the Terms of Service. Hell, same goes with a Payal donate button (and PayPal isn’t even supported in my country properly…).

Thankfully, I should be starting a new job next week, and thus have a little more cash at the end of the month. What this means is that I will be able to afford a second hosting plan. What I will be doing then is to move all NSFW boards to a different site completely, and decrease the current hosting plan to a cheaper one (seeing how the current NSFW boards eat up most of the bandwidth, lol). This will allow me to have advertising on the site, in order to try cover the hosting bills. Luckily with the Dollar/Rand exchange rate being as crap as it is, I wouldn’t actually need that much to cover hosting for a year for both sites.

And an added bonus? More trial boards People have been asking for them, and I don’t see a reason not to try them (especially as no one else has them).

So there, that’s what the near future holds. Any queries, comments?