Hello people,
It is with great regret that I need to announce the death of our beloved forum. It lived a good life and died (mostly) peacefully of old age this past winter.
It stopped functionning after the hosting service cut support for older versions of PHP needed for vBulletin to work. I have spent a fair amount of time trying to move it elsewhere, be it to a cloud provider or even my own home servers but wasn't able to get it to work.
I had to accept the reality that a 10+ year old software will stop working at some point and that my proficiency with the technologies involved didn't allow me to figure out a way to keep it working.
I have also looked at alternatives in the past to update to a current version but couldn't find a realistic way of moving forward, especially considering that my professional life is keeping me extremely busy, leaving me with not much time and energy to rebuild it from scratch. I tried, a lot, but couldn't get anywhere.
All this to say, as far as I'm concerned, the old board is beyond repair. If anyone is interested in trying to work it out, I have kept a full backup of the site and database. Just reach out and I will gladly pass on the torch.
Otherwise, I have created this subreddit a few months ago. It isn't our old home, but it is a place that can fill the void. Actually, a whole bunch of forums around the internet have closed and moved their communities on Reddit. Give it a chance, it just might work. Dot org is a community more than it is a website, or so I always felt.
Final message, anyone intersted in helping moderate the subreddit, please do reach out.
Peace
Your Janitor,
Marton