okay. it's okay you brought it up again.
my options:
a) buy a new server with more power, donations are pretty high and should easily carry it on (yet there is no better one currently... I am waiting for it to be released in september...)
b) I already have programmed (for another admin in brazil) a "visa-login" which works like a premium login... a visa-holder can login at any given time, regardless of the userlimit. (yet... I think it slighty "unfair" as it directly affects other users... once the visa-holders are logged in, they count as players... which means others have to wait much longer until the can login. That's why I am hesitating to develop it further. Also, it might be a thought that moderators may login at anytime. And visas can expire, i.e. you can buy 20 days of "always" entrance or 20 logins via the privileged login...)
the best option is surely to wait for the new server offer and then make 1 server for SQL and one for apache/php (the new one)... so it should work out. Monthly costs would rise to about $300 to $330. (the newer server costs also EUR 150 per month, also there may be a RAID controller added which costs extra) (though the configuration would be *cough* truly high-end.) if donations decrease and the current "warchest" is reduced to 0, I could downgrade to again 1 server only.
I see the current problems. Most people (50% about) voted for 100 maxusers. Some others for 140, some for 110.
Yet, when all 100 are active, the pages get slower... as the load is really pretty high. According to the server statistics, this happens about 5-6pm east coast time. the rest of the day it's not that big a deal.