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.