Invision Power Services (our host and provider of the software EF uses) sent me an email last night to the effect that IPS no longer provides the Legacy hosting option we've been using since 2006. Because we have a website (the wiki) as well as the forums, we don't have the option of upgrading our hosting package because they now only provide hosting for communities (forums only). They were very kind to provide us with the option of migrating to a company with which they "have a relationship" — but at the "discounted" fee of $99 for a software license we already own. (The new license would actually be for the unencoded software so we can be hosted by another company, but I think it's disgusting that they're forcing us to move and then charging us for the privilege.)
The email also states that we have only until January to find an alternative option, and according to at least one person on their support forums, the migrations are happening next week. I don't want to panic anyone (especially at this time of year), but this doesn't give us much time to assess our options and make a decision. The wiki is thankfully ours for the taking regardless and, at this point, I think our best route is to find a new host and convert our current database to a free software.
I've posted this topic not only as a warning that things will be changing, but as an opportunity for you to have some say in what happens next. There are a couple of decisions we have to make:
- Do we take the discounted offer to migrate with an unencoded version of IPB? This would mean the work would be done for us, and we wouldn't have to acclimatise to a new software or lose anything in the process. However, it would mean that I'd have to ask for donations — which I'm loathe to do — because I can't afford the $99 up-front fee myself any more. I'm also leery of paying IPS any more money given the atrocious way they're treating us.
- Assuming we decide to find a new host, does anyone have any recommendations? Someone on RPG-D has suggested Mystic Moon Hosting: Does anyone have any experience with her?
- Which software would we convert to, if that's the route we decide to take? I'm leaning toward SMF myself because they've been providing a solid, free software for years. It's rumoured to be on par with IPB; a little more difficult to skin and customise but easier than phpBB or the like. (I have had experience with phpBB 2 and 3 and they were pigs on both scores.) Of course, conversion will mean familiarising ourselves with a new system, and there are some concerns with modifications (see below).
- How would we adapt to the loss of modifications? For instance, we won't be able to take the bank mod with us (SMF has its own version but I don't think it will import data from the current bank to the new one), so we'll lose all the data regarding cash and likely all the custom profile fields as well. While I can try to get around the latter by taking screenshots of member profiles and then manually re-adding them later, that doesn't help with the bank and it's a lot of work to get through. Would an alternative, such as offering a "start-up fee" for the new forum (eg. ζ500 for characters with less than, say, 200 posts, and ζ1,000 for characters with more than 500 posts, etc), suffice? Would you prefer that I manually copy the funds (and awards) everyone has? Would it be better to have people reclaim their stuff after the migration (essentially making members responsible for their own personal conversion)?
- Would anyone be willing to help me with some of this work? (There may be an alternative to the screenshotting that I haven't thought of yet...) While I'm hoping that we do have more than a week to get all this done, I'd rather not take the chance and have EF whipped out from under us before we can save everything.
- If you're interested in the technical side of things, please take a look at the modifications on offer for the new software (SMF here, phpBB here) and see if any interest you. The best time to install them is during migration, and I'll take all suggestions under advisement. With SMF, I'm already thinking of the bank, awards, and the subaccounts mod.
(Regarding the subaccounts mod, which will allow us to link accounts and switch between them without having to log in and back out: Would you like to have a purely OOC account? We could do that with the subaccount mod, allowing us to keep our characters' lives and our OOC activity completely separate — as well as member achievement/awards versus character awards, etc etc.)
I realise this is an awful lot to take in, and it's a very bad time to be bringing it up. Unfortunately, this is a time-sensitive issue and we have a lot of decisions to make in a very short period, so please bear with me.