@donnacha | WordSkill - I tend to agree with donnacha. Even if current traffic doesn't really necessitate a VPS, future growth will. I think that planning for a move to a VPS from a reliable provider in the next few months would probably be beneficial, if only because it can provide assurance that the site will be more responsive and offer a better experience for the current community, not to mention future members.

I think that Jeff's biggest hang-up with going with a VPS (and certainly with going to a really scalable option like Slicehost) is the unmanaged aspect. I can completely understand that, but I should note that there are a lot of good hosts that while they don't offer a fully-managed VPS, it's managed enough -- meaning that you get CPanel or Plesk already installed and can then download one-click installers and whatnot -- even if there is some more manual configuration stuff, some hosts do a good job of kind of trending that line between fully managed (and thus, maybe out of Jeff's current budget) and barebones like Slicehost.