914world is showing its age Options

[SirAndy]

914world is showing its age (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

The recent outage was not due to some cyber attack or malicious plotting from the darkest depths of the interwebs.

It was simply due to the forum software being overwhelmed by the amount of data stored here combined with the amount of traffic we're receiving.

Fact is, the software we're running on is more than 20 years old, written at a time when the internet was a much different place.
It was never meant to run for this long or handle the amount of data we have accumulated.


So what are our options?

- Keep going until everything crashes and burns into a pile.

- Start over fresh with a new server with new forum software. We'd be losing everything we have.

- Try to fix some of the issues by re-writing parts of the software, reworking the database and changing the way uploaded images are stored. Maybe even update the server itself while we're in there.


While the last choice seems the obvious one, the problem is that i do have a day-job that needs my attention and my time is limited.
It would also mean i'd probably have to shut down the site for a longer period of time, maybe a week or two, and maybe more than once.
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)

[NARP74]

A previous favorite car site of mine was in a similar situation. The site had crashed, the admin had moved on. I was at the meeting when new people were voted in, and they asked about the site, the vote from the new president was to trash the old and start fresh. They assigned new IDs, new passwords and moved on. I was an admin and a moderator. All of history, conversations, photos, information was gone. We lost information with people that had passed away, all just thrown aside to be bits and bytes in some scrap pile somewhere. I never used my new login to that site, never went back and moved on. Maybe that is what moved me to 914s and this community.

Please try to save and maintain access to the data and history of this great community at all costs. I will be glad to put my money where my mouth is. Get volunteers, hire people, whatever it takes. Come up with a plan and a budget and publish it and let's try to meet those goals. Use the knowledge and experience of the group and get it done the right way.