Future of 914World, Just an update for everyone. Options

[ClayPerrine]

This is an update on the future of this forum.

I have been working on a new BBS for 914world.com that will carry over all of the threads, posts, and pictures. I have a copy of 914world.com that I got running on a isolated server here at home, so I can test migrations without affecting anything here.

It is a daunting task. I found out that since the initial inception of this place as the other name to the time I cloned the BBS, we had well over 3.1 MILLION posts on here. Right now my test migration scripts have been running for 3 days. Here is the current status:

49% of threads processed.
10% posts processed.

So thanks to all you post whores out there, it is going to take a while. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/poke.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

The good news is all the user accounts and passwords came over without an issue, and the forum layout matches the old one. So it should feel kinda like a remodeled house (OK... garage) the first time you login to the new version of the forum.

I still have a LOT of work to do. Like getting all the images into the threads.

But I thought you deserved an update on the progress.

FYI.. this is what is keeping me from getting my 4.0L 914, and Betty's 914 back up and running. I am spending all my spare time on the computer.

[JamesM]

Curious about the motivation for the redesign?

[ClayPerrine]

Curious about the motivation for the redesign?

This board is approaching 25 years old. The hardware needs upgraded, and the OS is old and needs a new, clean install to insure future stability. The BBS software is out of date and completely unsupported by the vendor. The latest version of this BBS software are cloud only. For financial reasons, moving to the cloud is out of the question. Nobody wants to have to pay monthly fees to cover the hosting costs. Also, the BBS version we are running would have to be upgraded before it could be migrated to the cloud, and that would require purchasing a license for the upgrade version. If you can find one. The vendor doesn't sell them anymore. The site does not support SSL pages, and email doesn't work because of it.

So an upgrade is way overdue. I do this type of stuff for a living, so this is just another challenge to overcome. And being a pro, I can make sure this happens with the least amount of downtime for the board. I don't want any of you to suffer withdrawal symptoms.


The development costs are my time. I already have the virtual server hosts here at the house, so there is no cost to me to setup multiple test systems. Like working on my 914, this is something I enjoy doing. And this place is very special to me. I want it to go on another 25 years. By then I will be 86 and I will let someone else do the upgrade.

The new BBS software is open source. There are lots of themes and plugins for it, so if we want to do something new, we can. I intend to keep a development copy of the site up and running so we can test improvements and patches to it.

@SirAndy has done a remarkable job keeping everything up, running and stable over the years. He deserves all the kudos we can give him.