Thanks Xander - that's definitely the sort of lines I was thinking along.
Quite a few people like to upload pics / photo's etc... and it's one of the things that gives a lot of problems so it would be nice to be able to offer this facility but unfortunately I could not afford to do it 'for free' as it would (I think) take up too much space and bandwidth.
It's important to stress though that the forum would remain free as a resource - anyone could still register and post etc ... and it would just be access to additional, costlier to implement, features and posting limits that would be provided via a donation or subscription.