SHARETRADER.co.nz - Thanks for fixing the database. Should we talk?

[blu3]

Being technically inclined by trade, when the forum had a glitch some times ago, I remember trying to offer some advice with a genuine intention of helping out, only to end up being welcomed by a fairly inflexible admin. In fact I can't even find that discussion in my post history anymore, maybe was the thread deleted? Anyways.

Unfortunately, software don't always age as well as some wine do, and it turns out that this forum runs on vBulletin, which despite being still actively maintained, was introduced some 22 years ago. To not help, the current version being used by sharetrader is vBulletin 4.2.5, which was released in 2018, meaning that we're probably missing out on various optimization and security updates that may have been introduced since then, probably caused by the admins not being confident in being able to update to the latest version 5.6.7 without taking sharetrader down in the process, which I can understand.

Just to make it clear, I'm really grateful for the admins' time and effort in running this forum so by no means am I trying to put any blame on them—some technologies can sometimes be more difficult to harness than they really should be and we shouldn't be too demanding on admins, especially in the context of a free forum.

What I'm trying to say is that, nowadays, it should be possible to find an alternative modern forum software that not only would require less CPU/RAM resources to run but also less technical knowledge, if any at all. I admins had any interest in continuing to run this forum, I only wished that they would be open in considering such an option for everyone's sake.

[BlackPeter]

Interesting ...

Just wondering, whether this leads us back to the third stake holder (i.e. whoever provides the funds).

Admins are always resource constrained and an upgrade might cost more (e.g. in terms of $ and / or time) than their current budget has on offer. Doing a major upgrade might not be an option for them.

This would lead us to the following questions:

How much should it cost to run a forum like this based on modern SW?
How much does it currently cost to run this forum?
If there is a cost issue - is there anything the users (or potential sponsosrs) could do to contribute to them to narrow or close the gap?

[blu3]

After one week, would it be fair to now assume that the admins' answer to your question “should we talk” is a resounding “no”? Disappointed but not surprised

How much should it cost to run a forum like this based on modern SW?

You can get an idea of what pricing look like with these offers:
- Discourse: https://www.discourse.org/pricing
- NodeBB: https://nodebb.org/pricing

Note that the pricing for both includes hosting on their own server and support from their teams. It's also possible to use these software for free if self-hosting them, which would probably be much cheaper, but then this would likely come with the same drawbacks as we have been experiencing with sharetrader: performance issues, unresponsive admins, admins not tech-savvy enough, ...

Also note that some sort of migration from one forum platform to another is usually offered, as a way to attract existing users.