Has this covered the costs of set up? What will be the running costs?
Yes, the initial set up costs are covered, thank you all! Iminei will publish everything by the end of the month.
The running costs are a little bit up in the air. There are a number of things we want to / should look at. The chat and gallery add ons are free versions of the respective software and we may want to upgrade to the paid for versions to get enhanced functionality.
We are also looking at SSL - encryption. Currently your browser probably tells you that "this site is not secure". That's not inherently a problem - we are not a bank, don't hold personal details and don't take payments (paypal does that on our behalf). However we don't want people to be put off by the browser messages.
It will also be wise to keep a contingency fund in case the servers we are currently on run out of steam and we are forced to upgrade.
However, the forum is financially secure, not something we thought would be the case after only 1 week!