The way I see it, there are pretty much two options: More money for a better server or less demand so we can use the one we have.

In terms of money, I think the best way to generate that is ads. I know many have long been opposed to ads on the site, but I, personally, have no objection, and I think they may become needed to finance it. And hey, if Kestas starts to turn a profit, I'm not going to complain. I know he turned off Plura and is paying for this out of his own pockets, which I guess means he's paying the mod salaries out of his own pocket too, since they don't get their plura checks anymore...

Anyway, in terms of reducing demand, this would most likely require a significant amount of coding work. I could see where limiting the site to one or two active live games at a time would help - or setting a cap on registration, since a continuation of the influx of new users that we've experienced over the past year (?) may make the site untenable.

Another thing, and I don't know if this is even possible, is to limit a user to accessing a new page or refreshing once every, say, 15 seconds. I know I commonly will constantly refresh during a live game, which I'm sure is terrible for the server.

Alternatively, if we could incorporate some form of live updating, that would eliminate entirely the need to refresh, making the problem disappear entirely. Of course, this wouldn't work if it created more of a load on the server than it eliminated.

So what are your thoughts? What are good ways to address the issue, and what are we, as a community, willing to accept in terms of ads, etc.?