This post ^ comes across poorly, it may not be your intent, so apologies in advance, but..
Quit tracking your shit stained boots across the carpet of whom we are guests.

JFC you can be annoying. Again, for as much as you like to throw around your claims of IT knowledge, you have an incredibly ignorant view of how IT stuff actually works. People are being smug to you because you're a dipshit.

High school tech guru? FFS man...

Xenforo would be a good switch. Really nice software with a very active and growing mod development community.

Dude has zero self awareness.

Constantly talks down to people, will ask a tech question and then call people dumbasses when nobody knows WTF he's talking about while he flaunts his own tech (adjacency) experience, is incapable of distinguishing between the dumbest of shitposters and those who really know their shit because we're all just idiots compared to him, far quicker assumes he knows everything there is to know about a situation so he can talk down to people than simply asking questions and assuming those involved have an IQ over 70, constantly projects his shitty behavior onto others.

....and then after all that over the course of years and thread after thread, is astounded people don't treat him with the utmost respect, like he's somehow a random target from internet assholes.

This place is finished.

I work at a data center and the way they spend money i'd have to imagine that host services must be pretty damn steep. No matter what the direction is, Sho's fundraiser idea couldnt hurt. Even if its just to keep the current set up. Could do something simple like a basic printful store. Complete hands off outside of designing a shirt or something. They print it and ship it. I use one for my drag racing page.

Firstly - I have zero technical expertise in this area and should probably be ignored
Secondly - I, personally, don't place a high value on the histories of this place, the old threads from 5, 10 years ago - even though I have hung out here for 20+ years.

Wildy uninformed proposal: Just migrate user names and info to a new platform and let the users create all new threads for the topics of interest. It would seem like that would be an easier transfer than all the threads, links, pics, etc. For instance, how often do people look back to page 10 of a 30 page thread? I know I don't.

Of course, there should probably be some sort of poll to gauge whether this approach is acceptable to the users.

I'll shut my ignorant and insensitive mouth now.

I deal with SQL tables every ****ing day for my job.

Do you realize how much manpower it takes to migrate from one environment to another? That's not even counting the hours of coding it takes by trial and error to figure out what works and what doesn't work.

On top of that, you're asking people who work actual jobs for a living to prioritize this over their work or to outsource (which leads to an entirely different set of possible issues with regards to security vulnerabilities)?

WTF

I'm not a software engineer nor a developer, so I won't tend to understand the technical aspects regarding migration to a new cloud or server, but I'd be happy to volunteer to help with any SQL related tasks (can write in MySQL/PostgreSQL).

I've wondered about it. Part of our problem is that we have a post table with like 15 million rows, and that gets accessed and sorted literally every time someone loads a thread.

But in theory, that SHOULD be a surmountable problem, and there's no question that the deep history of this place is part of its appeal. I'd be hesitant to just throw all of that out if we can get around it (and I think we can).

The good news is that (as noted above), there are migration tools that should make SOME of the transition a little easier. But as you alluded to, there are endless little snags you tend to run into along the way, and it doesn't help that this isn't even a "pure" install of vB 3.8 - it's been upgraded like 10 times starting with 2.1 (I think), so there's all sorts of shitty code lying around that could cause issues along the way.

In the end, it's entirely possible that Kyle will choose to just migrate to a new server and keep vB 3.8 as is. It's old, and it's shitty, but in theory just getting onto a new box that keeps the db on an SSD would take care of most of our issues, so if that's the easy path forward compared to starting from scratch on new software, it is what it is.

For the curious, our first version was vBulletin 1.1.4. ROFL

https://web.archive.org/web/20010223...m/BB/index.php

As DaFace already touched on... it's just not possible to simply migrate user names and info to a new platform. You guys underestimate what an incredibly complex undertaking something like that is. Since we're running a very old version of vBulletin, it's next to impossible to migrate the existing database to something newer without destroying who knows what and introducing countless new errors that users would then bitch constantly about.

This is just not an easy fix at all without trashing/changing most of what makes CP what it currently is.

If we just set up a new server from scratch, Xenforo or whatever, and had a cutover day where everybody is redirected to that new setup, isn't that enough? We could keep the old vBulletin 3.8 thing up under a different URL, and reference it as needed, but lock out all new posts. The old DB would stop growing, and the new server would be all new tech stack whatever and hopefully buy another 30 years. Maybe this has been proposed and shot down. I realize even this is still a project, but seems like one that is about as lightweight as could be hoped for.

That's a valid point regarding performance, though. For my work, we deal with billions of rows of data, and in order to free up some bandwidth on the server (deal with a Greenplum database currently), older data and tables are consistently deleted.

Not sure what infrastructure is supported on the back end (again, not claiming to be an IT expert I just happen to have to be aware of a lot of the back end stuff as part of my work), but may likely either just need to enhance the current state to keep everything. If not, deleting stuff might be the way to go.

Even if there is some form of migration on older software, you're still looking at hours which can turn to days/weeks of perfecting the migration with regards to getting everything up and running just by the sheer nature of the activity of migration. The timeline would be (understandably) pro-longed since this forum is maintained by people as a hobby.

Which is why I don't get scho's bitching at all.

No one said it would be easy. I don't expect someone to sacrifice their job for a side hustle/hobby.

I think the bigger issue is what stays and what goes during any migration.

Maybe Kyle can put it to a vote - he can propose a few things.

Examples
A. Keep everything the same - no cost
B. Keep everything and migrate to a superior system. Cost 20K and 2 months
C. Toss certain things and delete other very old stuff. Cost 10k and 1 month

With 1 million tables, there are a massive amount of old threads and data that may have little to no replies. Shit can them.

Photos: massive amounts and establish a cut off for them. Maybe no photos older than 5 years.

It's not really bitching about the downtime as much as all the time spent bitching about the down time and no clear path after years.

Maybe Kyle can just say, **** it. It is was it is, so deal with it. I got no problem with that.

He can ask for volunteers or donations or show a plan so we can all help.

I'm not sure what he wants to make out of a new site. Building a complete site from scratch? Plugging some holes? Redevelop current site?

CP members are nothing short of shocking when it comes to pitching in. Just ask and maybe he might be surprised at all the help he gets.