Admin Group
Joined: 05/06/2004
Location: AustraliaPosts: 5051
| Posted: 07:49am 05 Jul 2019 |
The forum code and database is getting old. It was first fired up in 2004, making it 15 years old. It's written in "Classic ASP" which was popular back then, and uses a Access database as the back end storage. Its been heavily modified my me over the years to add security and features.
Been written in ASP means it can only run on Microsoft web servers, which is ok, but not cheap. I've looked at moving to a different forum software system for a few years, preferably in a language with more support and cross platform compatibility, like PHP. But I've not found one that would meet my criteria.
1. I need to import all existing posts and members details.
2. I need to be able to read and modify the code.
So I've kept the old forum and database kicking over. But recently the database is starting to struggle, so something has to happen.
My solution is to write my own forum code from scratch in php, using MySQL to store the data. I've been using php and MySQL for a few years now and its a good combination with more power than ASP and future proof, plus it will run on both Windows and Linux servers.
This will be a slow project, as I earn my living writing code and I can only do a few hours each day before my brain starts to go fuzzy, so the paying jobs come first.
The plan is to build a forum that behaves more or less exactly the same as the old code. Editing posts, uploading images, etc, will be the same. Then once this is done, we can look at adding some features.
At some stage the forum will change to the new code. First thing you will notice is you need to reset your password, as passwords are stored as hash in the database and cant be retreived or copied to the new database. Some features will be missing, like the messenger service or email notifications, but these will all come back online as I write the code. Your old messages will still be there.
When you get a chance, please check the email address in your member settings is correct, you will need this when you reset your password.
Glenn
The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now.
JAQ