A MAMMOTH TASK

[Dissident]

Hey all

The forum is slow. It's old. Like me. Like most of us.

The biggest issue is that the forum was installed and setup over 21 years ago. The version of PHP it runs on, is 5.6 which was released in 2014 and was supported until 2018.

I can't just "press a button" to upgrade the PHP, as the forum itself ONLY runs on that. I need to upgrade the version of the forum from 3.0.14 to the latest 3.3.x version BUT that's upgrading a bunch of times, and things break - the forum could stop working, data could be lost, and the massive hours of customisations I made could be deleted.

BUT it is what it is. So I need to plan for it.

The size of the database at the moment, the age of the PHP/forum software - is not sustainable.

Please be prepared to go backwards in order to go forwards

I've spent the last week researching, planning and running through upgrades on test data to get to a poiint where I can probably make most of this happen.

So, please be ready for a change - both good and bad, in that things won't look the same straight away but hopfully will be quicker and in theory better as I'm sure the new software has good positives as well.

The customisations are an issue, all the visual effects I made, all the addons (likes, etc) could be gone. But really, there's no choice

I'll keep you updated.

Thanks

[Brodlach]

Love your work Diss

More than happy, like many of on here I’m sure, to contribute to any cost involved

This site has given me many hours of entertainment over the past couple of decades

[dedja]

Understand the enormity of the task, but 3.3.x is now 6 years old, and as you say, the customisations are one of the big issues in upgrading.

Admire and appreciate the effort to do this, but is it really worth it?

Maybe it’s time to call it a day or just start afresh with a completely different platform if the demand is there. Yes, history will be lost (or preserved in a legacy time warp).

Perhaps also think about introducing a user contribution model to help offset costs, it won’t help the effort involved if you proceed with the upgrade/rebuild, but may help if a new clean platform is introduced.

Cheers

[Dissident]

I think t's worth it to at least try.

PHPBB latest vesrion was released maybe two weeks ago, it's still being actively developed. the 3.3 root version was a few years ago, but it's still solid.

If you want to try out what I'm doing and do some testing, please email me on

david
at
murrin
dot
net

[carey]

Legend mate

[amber_fluid]

Love your work Diss

More than happy, like many of on here I’m sure, to contribute to any cost involved

This site has given me many hours of entertainment over the past couple of decades

X 2

[locky801]

Love your work Diss

More than happy, like many of on here I’m sure, to contribute to any cost involved

This site has given me many hours of entertainment over the past couple of decades

X 2

X3

Site cant die before me