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.
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[Nogoodwithusernames]

I see the option of keeping this site as a "read only" archive tossed out there a few times, and while certainly better than letting all the info disappear I think it will also basically kill much of the old info being in a separate "dead" site. I think all this existing info being transferred over to a new site would be important to keep everything connected and alive, to be able to revive a dead thread/build with a new question for example.
Obviously this would incur MUCH more work/cost but it seems there is enough support to make it happen, and would be the ideal solution, if feasible.

I am now 30 so I'm too old to be up-to-date with modern tech (maybe I just don't care enough) and too young to be able to ignore it entirely (IMG:style_emoticons/default/blink.gif)

Just my $0.02 for what that is worth these days.
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