Uncertain future for these forums

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#1

Hey guys I’ll cut to the chase,

These forums are running on software that is over a decade old. Piece by piece functionality is being either exploited by spammers, or being deprecated.

For example the captcha system this forum integrates with has ended, making it harder to keep spammers out.

The next risk for this forum is an upgrade in the php version. This forum runs on an older version of software, and Hostmonster (the people that run the servers) are moving all its servers to the new version of PhP. This might break the forums.

I don’t have the time or money to go through a whole upgrade process to be frank so that leaves two options.

  1. The forum experience slowly degrades, and one day breaks entirely
  2. Someone else takes on the forum and performs the necessary upgrades and migrations

If anyone has other suggestions do let me know, I would be all ears.

And lastly I did want to say, I love these forums, the community we’ve created here, and all the things I’ve learned from each of you. Despite the upcoming challenges, the history and people here are, and have always been, a fantastic bunch. Thank you for choosing to be part of the group.

#2

So what do you need to keep it going? Is it an option to migrate to free and up to date software?

#3

Oh wait, you lack the time as well … Would hate to see this forum die!

#4

There’s no free alternative that’s very good. Even this forum was $300 dollars for a license when I bought it a couple years ago.

The best current option is one called discourse but its quite expensive. I haven’t priced it out entirely but it seems to cost around a 1000 dollars a year, which is much more expensive than what I’m paying for now

#5

I would be willing to donate some money. I’m sure others would be to. Maybe you can start a go fund me for the page and see if you can get enough money

#6

Above all, thank you so much to still give us the possibility to share here our opinions and for putting Q&A that often are important in order to have suggestions to improve our work (at least my works, because I got many tips from everybody). Why don’t you do a survey to understand where the forum can go in the near future? You could also decide if doing a crowfunding, if the forum will migrate to another server.

#7

Canyon, can you send me your email by private message? I don’t have time to keep build up this community any further for now, but I have time and some budget to sponsor to update the forumsoftware to keep it running for at least another year. it has been a bit slow here lately but I’m sure most of us wan’t to keep this place in the air, even just to read all the knowledge which is posted already.