Forum server move - considered - on pause
The host we currently have was selected by Chris a LONG time ago. The company he chose was bought once or twice since then. It's fairly costly but it is a vBulletin specific host.
Small cracks have popped up with add-ins breaking as the server had upgrades (PHP and/or MySQL) over the years. Mostly, the issues have been minor enough that we have let them be.
I recently toyed with the thought of moving to a different hosting service to lower the costs. I asked a host to evaluate our setup and they came back and said - your site would most likely not function on our server as it is on your current host. Our servers run current PHP/MySQL versions and we do not support the old versions your server offers. They politely said - you should consider upgrading your forum software. That day will come - but for now I'm leaning towards running as-is.
In related news, I am working to have credit card donations to be an option. I have a low cost (no monthly fee) credit card service (web page process, no physical card terminal) subscribed but I need to create the web form (a fairly trivial process - I'm not going to highly modify their form - basically just add our name or logo).
Once CC donations for the forum is established, I'm considering changing our new member sign-up process. I might change the "anyone can process a registration at any time" to "donate $5" and in the donation notes include your sign-up info. Donation received, I'll then create the account and the new member could complete their intro post. The goal here is to eliminate the spammers and focus on people who are willing to jump through a small financial hoop. My thinking is that if a person is willing to make the step for a small financial donation they'll also be more interested in being involved. Aside from eliminating spammers it would likely reduce those who could be legitimate members (have a 4x4 and live in the front range area) but never get involved.
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