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]

I have seen sites go the fb route, it's easy. Turned into a mostly younger group that lost the experienced contributors. It was never the same. I have also seen some sites that sold out. There is a big corporate group that goes around buying and converting popular sites. Then they start selling ads to pay for the site. None of those sites are ever the same again, look and feel gone, people leave in droves. Offshoots spring up but never match the old experience. It's not an age or ease of use thing for me, I have worked in IT most of my life, I make different choices.