Fall Plans
Yesterday, 07:55 AM
(This post was last modified: 9 hours ago by StrangeAutomaton.)
This fall, it is my sincerest hope to migrate Save-Point to a new platform that is better maintained. Currently there are two possible platforms in my test environment, Simple Machines Forum, and PHPBB. SMF is the most likely candidate for the cleanest transition. While I know this may effect what features are available on the forum at first, I will endeavor to replicate any of the important ones that are found to be missing after the migration. This also means that the themes will likely temporarily go away as MyBB themes will definitely not be compatible with either of these platforms.
The only other viable platform is vBulletin, but that will add almost $200 in licensing costs to host the site. I'd rather avoid that - not to mention to migrate I'd have to use a 2 major release out of date version in order to migrate the board. It's less than ideal.
The reason for these two forum choices over the many other platforms available is that these are the only two open source platforms that have a large enough developer base working on them to actually be up to date with current best practices and security concerns. MyBB is lucky if they get one developer committing to their repository a month. That is not a recipe for long term stability. They are currently targeted at PHP 5.4 which is so out of date as to have been EOL for 9 years now. While to does technically work with current PHP, it's just barely and is the source of many of the issues this site has been having with it. In any event, it needs to happen if Save-Point is to be stable enough to stick around for much longer because as time goes on it grows increasingly unstable. At some point, it may stop working altogether, and I can't wait on their dev team to catch up.
Also, thought this would be a great time to remind you of the donation buttons at upper right of the page. All funds will go towards server costs and my time in trying to maintain it. While donations are not required, this site will always be free to use by anyone who wants to provided they respect the boards policies, any contribution is appreciated.
The only other viable platform is vBulletin, but that will add almost $200 in licensing costs to host the site. I'd rather avoid that - not to mention to migrate I'd have to use a 2 major release out of date version in order to migrate the board. It's less than ideal.
The reason for these two forum choices over the many other platforms available is that these are the only two open source platforms that have a large enough developer base working on them to actually be up to date with current best practices and security concerns. MyBB is lucky if they get one developer committing to their repository a month. That is not a recipe for long term stability. They are currently targeted at PHP 5.4 which is so out of date as to have been EOL for 9 years now. While to does technically work with current PHP, it's just barely and is the source of many of the issues this site has been having with it. In any event, it needs to happen if Save-Point is to be stable enough to stick around for much longer because as time goes on it grows increasingly unstable. At some point, it may stop working altogether, and I can't wait on their dev team to catch up.
Also, thought this would be a great time to remind you of the donation buttons at upper right of the page. All funds will go towards server costs and my time in trying to maintain it. While donations are not required, this site will always be free to use by anyone who wants to provided they respect the boards policies, any contribution is appreciated.
![[Image: KoFi_Click.png]](https://www.save-point.org/images/Kofi/KoFi_Click.png)
Do know:
PayPal charges me 3-5% per successful transaction. ( 2.99% domestic US, everywhere else it varies - although AU seems to be more like 1.5% )
Stripe charges me 2.9% + $0.30 per successful domestic transaction. More for people paying from outside the US
Stripe charges me 2.9% + $0.30 per successful domestic transaction. More for people paying from outside the US
With the average donation size, Stripe eats up about 30% of the donation. Please only use it if you have to, and if you
do, please consider a larger donation to make up for transaction fees.
do, please consider a larger donation to make up for transaction fees.