Shining force Central has been around in one form or another for almost 14 years, and my other Shining sites started out way back in May of 1996. They've become a big part of my life, and I understand the forums and other areas of the site are equally important to a large amount of users.
Over the years the sites moved from host to host, originally at no cost to me. However, with revenue being harder and harder to make online, free hosts always seemed to be increasing the number of advertisements displayed on their hosted sites. Eventually, the number of required ad banners and pop-ups became more than just an annoyance, and coupled with various server issues with my host at the time, I decided to opt for a paid hosting service for SFC.
What does this mean for you? Well, it means you won't be bombared with adverts every time you visit these sites. From time to time I may opt to include a few select advertisers on SFC (but not at my other Shining sites), but only if I feel their products are likely to be of real interest to SFC's visitors, and the adverts will not be 'in your face' everywhere you look! Paid hosting also means there should be less downtime, and less errors at the forums.
To give you an idea of how much this site costs me to run, the yearly hosting fee comes to around US$300. That may not sound like much to some of you, but to a housewife with a mortgage, it's a pretty hefty sum!
If you'd like to help cover my cost of running this site, there are a couple of ways you can help:
