Ok so I am prepped for the onslaught of complaints (not the word i’d like to use 
)
I was VP of an ISP when FAOL entered my life.
I became more engaged than I had planned, but my life was enriched by its members. No regrets.
FAOL hasn’t been a viable business in … well a couple decades.
Failing economy, Old age and the inevitable passing of key individuals has taken its toll.
I have kept the site running for you. But FAOL is hosted on one of my personal servers at Ionos that I pay too much for, and FAOL has prevented me from doing security patches etc due to the VERY OLD vBulletin that hosted the forum.
I have other needs for that system and it had to be updated. So maintenance after about a decade was in order… no … a necessity.
Options:
- update vBulletin and keep the look and feel. (one I never liked… fyi)
So I tried this option, but vBulletin never got back to me, and it would have been about a grand out of pocket from what the website said. - Migrate to phpBB - its free, fast, lightweight, maintained but still php
- Migrate to discourse
Why discourse?
copy / paste of images in a post - no more external images
a phone app
security - better and is maintained by our membership
modern - it just solves lots of issues
platform - php is great… and has issues python/ruby is better
more features including chat and things that died on the vine before.
and … well if i’m paying for it, I might as well get SOME say in how it works.