forum.vdsworld.com

[ShinobiSoft]

I realize that the recent changes to the forum were necessary, but now it's
impossible to say hello to anyone. At least in my mind, I've made a few
friends here and really liked the ability to at least say hello in real time
instead of having to to send a PM or an email.

Don't hate me please. Just needed to voice my opinion on the matter.

[PGWARE]

I understand, the problem was the forum was so heavily modified it became next to impossible to update it. Having that many modifications means updating the forum requires heavy knowledge of phpbb and a dedicated group of people here willing to make updates the manual method. Leaving the board insecure also leaves the server vulnerable to being hacked, and recently it was causing the entire server to crash several times a day due to incompatibilities between the forum and mysql 5.

The forum was running a version of phpbb almost 7 minor versions old; which was roughly around 1 - 1 1/2 year old build with many security holes in it. We tried multiple times during that time period to get it updated but each update would fail due to the heavy modifications.

It cost me around $130 to get these updates to the site finished, and I made the decision it would be easier for future updates of the forum and website to make the forum as seperated and barebones to allow future updates. Please remember I and the rest of the site team here do not make ANY money from this website whatsoever. The site causing the server to crash results in hosting customers becoming angry or leaving, as well as time I must take out to constantly fix the server crashing which is time that can be used developing software and earning a living.

The decision was either to turn the site off completely and allow the server to operate as it should, or try to get the site fixed and prevent this situation of leaving the site/forum vulnerable in the future again. It was a very easy choice to make; yes there's somethings that will be missed, but the majority of the site remains intact and the ability to communicate with other vdsworld members still remains.