Originally Posted by Indian Chief (Post 17326654)

You're going to have to stop eating out for lunch.

Originally Posted by Lzen (Post 17326640)

DaFace,
I know it doesn't get said enough but I (and I'm sure many others) really appreciate what you (and Bearcat and others) do to keep us going.

This site is darn near a quarter century old. Crazy to think about it in that perspective.

Originally Posted by DaFace (Post 17326601)

From my perspective, the main issue is that we're on software that was written in 2008, and it's so old that we can't even be on the newer versions of PHP and MySQL, so even the backend kind of sucks.

It's compounded by the fact that it's really difficult to "right size" a server for our use case. It needs to be able to handle gameday traffic, but normal volume is only about 10% of that level, so we've got ad revenue* that's about 10% of what we'd need to support peak usage. So it's a lot of duct tape and bubble gum to keep us moving along.

But as you alluded to, I've never claimed to be some sort of IT guru. My only superpower is being willing to spend the time trying to fix things as best I can. AustinChief has far more knowledge than I do but far less time.

In the end, the "right" solution is almost certainly to move to a new server and new software, but 1) it's an astronomical amount of time to do that and 2) the "look and feel" of ChiefsPlanet would change dramatically in the process. We probably just need to rip off the bandaid, but that's easy to say when you're not the one who has to put the hours into it.

*As a note here, I don't actually have any visibility into our ad revenue and costs - that's all AustinChief's territory. I'm just guessing.

Originally Posted by kccrow (Post 17326754)

Rip it off and go to vB 6

Originally Posted by scho63 (Post 17326791)

1. If it's an incredible amount of time to complete, supply a time table and put a fair price to it.
2. If it needs a new server too, let's price that out as well.
3. Let's come up with a number to see if we realistically could raise the money or have a donated server.

We have been talking about this for at least 6-7 years with no parameters.

Maybe some CP members want to be investors in Chiefsplanet.

Maybe create a LP to get this shit finally fixed.

Originally Posted by scho63 (Post 17326794)

How many "real" members do we have that are truly active on the site?

Originally Posted by DaFace (Post 17326816)

Tell all your own clients that you need to postpone their projects for a few weeks while you work on your hobby Chiefs forum. See how that goes.

Originally Posted by dmahurin (Post 17326831)

Just looked into it a bit out of curiosity, has anyone looked into "vanilla" or "flarum" as an alternative to vbulletin? They are both free and open source, are more modern builds that can handle updated mySQL versions, and in the case of Vanilla, has an import tool already built that could bring everything over pretty easily. Without seeing the current db and code I can't say for sure, but it might be worth playing around with on the downtime server to see if feasible. If it works out, could convert the main planet site over and there would be a full backup on downtime from testing. Bring over all the user and role info, basic forum and sub forum structures, possibly even the existing posts if wanted. Might make sense to start fresh on the new one and leave the "historical" posts on downtime.

Originally Posted by Frazod (Post 17326843)

At the end of the day, it's Kyle's world, and we're all just living in it. If he needs help, he'll ask.

Originally Posted by DaFace (Post 17326816)

Tell all your own clients that you need to postpone their projects for a few weeks while you work on your hobby Chiefs forum. See how that goes.

We typically see around 1,000 active users per day.

Originally Posted by DaFace (Post 17326845)

The software is a minimal cost compared to the hosting.

Originally Posted by scho63 (Post 17326858)

Then see if you can outsource it. Argentina is cheap.

Jesus Christ I've never seen more excuses or smug ass answers on trying to execute something. :harumph:

If Austin Chief doesn't have the time, try to hire someone.

How about a high school tech guru?

Originally Posted by dmahurin (Post 17326866)

Absolutely but if he could save 3000 a year and have a modern db and site better optimized for the growing user base and traffic, could be a win win. Both of the free options I posted are PHP/mySQL based so shouldn't much in way of a learning curve for anyone working on it if they work on it currently. Hell, if someone wants to send me a copy of the database schema with no data in it, I'd play around and see if I could get something basic working as a proof of concept.