Dear All,
Lately the boards have received a significant increase in traffic, which is great to see. In particular, I want to welcome any new members to the site. We really hope you enjoy your time here and find it useful too.
We've noticed lately that some posts have, at best, a weak connection to astronomy. Whilst we don't want to come across as killjoys or anything, we would greatly appreciate if we could all keep our posts a bit more on topic (me included!). Otherwise, it can become difficult to trawl through the website trying to find the posts which actually contain astronomical information.
I hope people here, in particular our new members, don't take this the wrong way. We still want you to ask those astronomy questions you've always wanted to ask but were afraid to. We still want you to ask for help when you've made some simple error or other. There's plenty folk here ready and willing to help. It's just that sometimes when someone really needs help with their latest astronomical gizmo or with learning the night sky, it can be difficult to see this post amongst the rest of the non-astronomy ones.
From a bandwidth point-of-view, we payed a substantial sum last year to upgrade our hosting package to cater for the increased traffic hitting the site. Never did we think we'd ever exceed our new limits but already we're at 95% of what the new server can take, so from now on, we have to keep an eye on it all the time. The next package up would involve another significant increase in our annual hosting costs so I'd greatly appreciate if we can all keep this in mind please.
Have fun & clear skies,
  