Ah well, not so fast.
The guy I contacted about converting this site to a different platform imported this site into the new format and set it up for me to take a look at.
Well, I noted a lot of deficiencies, just with the basic look and feel of the main page. I didn't really delve deeply into anything, well, because I have much bigger fish to fry in my life right now, but I felt my punch list of things I would need to be addressed would be enough to start the ball rolling.
So the guy comes back indicating that many of the things I would need done in the new platform would need to be custom coded at additional open ended hourly rates. Things like:
- A notice that displays indicating to viewers that they need to register to see some of the content here. But it shows for everyone and just says "Hello {username}!"
- Thumbnails for the classifieds are very small.
- Replies only show the date, not the time of the reply.
- Forum stats are not there.
- # of members in past 24 hours is not there.
- User accessible calendar for listing events is not there.
I has asked the guy to thoroughly analyze the current site to understand what you users are provided now, and I wanted the same functionality provided in the new platform. So when he quoted me a price, I think I was being reasonable in assuming he had done just that and the price quoted had this all in mind.
So not sure where this is going to go from here.
Quite honestly, with the stresses of Connie's cancer, I cannot expend much energy towards something like this, and certainly not put more burden on my shoulders of any additional stress. So it is entirely possible that I would just have to ride out CornSnakes.com AS IS until some hacker intrusion after the deadline of supported server level software leaves this site (and my other ones at all) suddenly having the plug pulled when the server techs have no choice but to remove my server from their facility in order to protect their network.
When might this happen? At least for not another year. I was told June, 2024 was when support was going to end for the needed server level software. After that, it would be the matter of whenever a hacker would cause an issue on the server requiring the excising from their network. Could be one day, or could perhaps never happen. Will I have any warning? No.
So there it is. I guess this site has been heading down the tubes anyway, but I was certainly reluctant to just give up on it. But now matters are out of my hands, it seems. I guess it is just as well, as most people have given up on this site anyway. So I don't believe it is out of order for me to just not have the fight left in me to stress over keeping it alive.
I seriously have more important things to worry about.