Ok to start I was having a bad day. So sorry to any one that I may have affended. Now with that said there is no need to point out how frustrating wpmu can be to a new user. The forums offer a little help but is over run with non relavant info. I don't have the time to search 1000 vague and irrelevant post. Sure it is nice to have user's do alot of work for you but it is in the way you set it up that makes it affective. You like to make plug ins why not make a plug in that allows user's to rank post. Get the good post out front and the links to it will increase wich is another affective way to rank just ask google.
You are losing interested user's to the basic installation wich is just bad business. You leave your self open to intrusions from other sites that are glad to get a user up and running in return for there loyalty. It is only a matter of time before this is exploited. If you wanna sit around and wait for it and than play catch up thats fine.
You want me to send you money well thats fine but you better prove that you are worthy, user friendly and affective. I don't see it so I don't believe it philosophy is dominant. You got to show effectiveness for free and what better way than getting people up and running?
Now for you andrewbillits you are not the only one with plug ins and the ones I am interested in can also be served by static pages. If you are interested in cheap programers I suggest one of the many auction sites like ScriptLance you post a project with a budget and programers bid on it. There are large asian and east indian firms that use this method to find work. As for the $50 dollars a months I find it against my better judgement to send money to a site that fails to prove it self to me. It seems irrogant to say the least and when it comes to support irrogance is a killer.
As far as dedicated server's go I am lucky to be Canadian because we had broad band phones before the internet was invented after all it is a Canadian invention. I am on a broad band network that will allow me to run my own server with minimal investment when I am ready. Shared hosting will suite my purpose until I am up and running as I do have other interest that don't require a dedicated processor. For those that arn't sure why you need dedicated hosting you will see a clause in the shared hosting that excludes you from useing more than 1% of the server's resources for more than a minute and this is not a problem with static pages but wpmu page is in pieces and most use the processor to be put togeather. So the future in hosting may no longer be judged by band width and disc space but by available ram and processor time if all goes well for the blog.