School & Chat

I'm thinking of installing a donations mod. Then I will change Registered Users' permissions and in order to access certain features, they have to donate. That might raise activity, or lower because some might think 'why waste money on a forum that's not even active?'

thoughts?

A few thoughts:

1. A donations MOD would require a merchant account to be set up with a payment service, like PayPal, which, given your age, you may not be able to do.
2. There are a lot of "features" now, and yet most members don't return after joining, I tend to think needing to pay for certain "features" would discourage more members rather than increasing activity.
3. Keep in mind the board is mainly aimed at school age people, who will have limited access to to payment services, and often even more limited access to funds.
4. Before charging for services you'd really need to move the board to paid hosting for increased stability and speed. Having the board crawl along for hours is likely to be totally unacceptable for paying customers.
5. You'd also have to fully test any further MODs before adding them to ensure the board isn't offline at all - people are likely to become very annoyed if they can't access something they have paid for.
6. Check your terms of service with your host. Do they allow income generation from free accounts?