As outlook for the road ahead: we can do the migration itself quite quickly now. DNS zone has prepared to propagate changes quickly for that task. Which is fancy pants words for saying the TTL on all entries is now 300 seconds, or 5 minutes. This enables a very quick transition from old IP address to new one.
Unpacking all files takes about 2 minutes, populating the empty database is about 12 minutes. I don't know how long backing up that stuff takes, but probably around the same.
Sending mails out aka SMTP delivery needs to be configured, one way or the other. On here it is using the infrastructure of the hosting provider. On the new home running a local Postfix instance for that should do that trick including properly setup SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Because without it email will never through to Outlook.com, Gmail and other biggies. And without a working mail connection nobody ever will receive notifications by it, so we do need that.
The license itself only checks the domain name it is running on. The same will most likely apply to the addons. The software itself will be totally happy and purring after the switch under the domain name virtualverse.one. Also the license itself is a lifetime license, the forum will just continue to run with 2.1.1 until eternity. So just running as is is not the problem.
There are though major problems, which we will need to address after the switch happened: lifetime license does not mean lifetime access to new versions and security updates at Xenforo. A lifetime license only grants you 12 months of feature and security updates. After that you will have to buy an extension fee, which is $60 for another 12 months.
Also several paid add-ons are in use here, some of them run on that model as well. So in order to run this in a sane and safe way this means reoccuring, yearly payments.
The problem this installation has got is that it is horribly, horribly outdated. Xenforo 2.1.1 was launched at 2019-03-12. The new host is based on Debian 13 (Trixie), which comes by default with PHP 8.4. I had to downgrade PHP to 7.3 to make Xenforo running. PHP 7.3 had its end of life at 2021-12-06. Yes, this forum is so horribly outdated it is giving me major headaches.
On the bright side I ran some malware checks on the forum files. There was no malware or other funny stuff detected, which is a small miracle but its great. I don't mind, let's keep it that way shall we.
As conclusion running just as is is no option: the forum engine itself has got almost 7 years of no security patches and PHP almost 5. Which makes all these moving parts exposed to the internet a security nightmare.
So we will definitely be busy sticking our heads together on how to improve this after the switch. The easiest way would be just to renew the licenses and then update all software components to its modern status, which most likely will mean having to buy them first. We would the definitely need to review which paid add-ons are still worth keeping, and which one are done anyway since nobody has been using its functionality in years, like e.g. Raffles (last used in 2018 for reaction buttons).
Even if we are able to jettison some add-ons nobody has been using since years the initial upfront cost will be a mid range 3 digit number.
To give you an impression on the obvious stuff anyone can see and loves:
| Name | Price tag |
| Xenforo 2.3 new License (incl. 12 months of updates) | $195 |
| Xenforo Resource manager (heavily used here) | $70 |
| Theme House UI.X 2 Dark Theme (which everybody here loves) | $59.95 |
| XF2 Moods Add-on (lifetime license) | $74.97 |
| Discord integration add-on | $30 |
| $429.92 |
And that's just a fraction of the functionality installed here, but which are add-ons I am certain are crucial to the user experience. We got lots of more commercial add-ons installed here, so the potential price tag is probably much higher.
Please note: I am not disclosing these numbers here to ask for donations. I just want to highlight - for now - as a rough idea what keeping this running as is in an updated, secure and sane way would mean. To me running such a platform in the most secure way possible, which means always being on top of the most recent updates, it a top priority and nothing I am willing to compromise on.
This amount is not set in stone, nothing is decided yet. It can go up or down. But it's a good starting point to showcase what the rebuilding the functionality from scratch most do love and enjoy would cost us in the initial payment. The following years renewing licenses would be cheaper, but most likely still in the low 100s.
So overall it's not a cheap solution.
Currently our top priority is making the switch. After that though this will be for sure our next discussion as admin team on how to move on with the platform, and then you can expect more on that.
-- and includes that very important subscription mode that automatically handles recurring donations. It's a little machine that poops out money on the first of the month with no further muss of fuss. By way of comparison, I pay Amazon the printing cost of my paperback books or the "distribution cost" (per Mb) of the Kindle editions PLUS 30 or 40% of the purchase price. Sounds steep, but I never ship a book, I never have to talk to a customer about a return, and I don't have a garage full of boxes of unsold books, so it is worth it to me.
