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)

[ClayPerrine]

How about we keep the existing site as an archive, as it is. No mods and completely read only.

We setup a new site with new software and port all the logins over from the old site. Once we cut over to the new site, we can have a search link to search the old archived site, and be able to link back to it.

I am a professional sysadmin, and I will donate all the time it takes for server setup and installation. I can even help with the software setup.

I definitely don't want to lose all of the contributions of Howard, Slits, Lapuwalli, and all of our friends that have passed.

And @gregamy , I think IPB is setup to use MSSQL for this board not MySql. Ether way, we can port the data over.



XENForo charges 195 for the license. I for one don't expect Andy to pay for the software license out of his pocket. And I don't know what the hardware requirements are for XENForo. So we may end up paying for new hardware too.

I do migrations and server capacity planning for a living. So I know this stuff. We have to CAREFULLY plan it out or we are going to be suffering withdrawls from 914World while the server is down.