Donations Policy

Thank you for your interest in making a donation towards Motorway Services Online. The website takes pride in the fact that it has managed to exist for many years without needing to resort to floods of adverts, distributing spyware or compromising the neutrality of its content. It has managed to survive like that as the costs of running the site are relatively low, meaning I have been able to fund it entirely myself as a hobby and have not seen it as a source of income.

Motorway Services Online is now far bigger than I ever envisaged it being, and it's growing faster than ever before. As it grows I'm becoming increasingly concerned that we're going to outgrow our current setup. If this happens, I estimate that the monthly cost of running the site will increase by 1000% - far too much for me to cover myself.

My plan is to build up a pot so that, should the site end up in that position, I will be able to get things back up-and-running as soon as possible. I will then assess the financial situation and look for the best way to carry the site forward.

Motorway Services Online is grateful for anyone who has contributed to the site, and in return the donations received will be used to keep the site running and not taken as profit (in fact, I'm not actually expecting enough money to make the site self-sufficient, just enough to lessen the potential strain on me).

Donations of any size are welcomed and the easiest way to do this is via PayPal:

Questions

I thought the site was powered by MediaWiki/phpBB/Site5?
MediaWiki and phpBB are free software which this site uses to help display its information. You can donate to those projects and find out more about them by visiting their respective websites. The cost aspect of running this site comes from taking that software and our knowledge and putting it all on the internet, which we do by paying Site5.

What will happen if you don't have enough money to run the site?
Although a number of options would be considered, if none of them were viable then ultimately it would have to be shut down and you would all be directed to a certain other website about motorway services. That's a long way off yet though - you'll be able to tell if it's about to happen as my pleas will become increasingly desperate.