I recently set up a forum for emotionally distressed people on proboards and that has given me a new perspective on what it takes. I'm amazed this site functions as well as it does and all the forums are ad free. That's a rarity in this world, or one has to pay a user fee, whereas pc is free and has no ads.

I'm not really sure what the business model that would keep the forums going long term would be. I once participated on a quit smoking forum that was attached to a commercial quit smoking site, but it just vanished from one day to the other. Of course, nothing last forever but I was wondering what is a business model that would keep the forums going as they are for the long term.