A change is coming.....

Just a heads up for the few of you who still hang around here.

I was alerted by my server guys that sometime in 2024 the server OS I have been running on my server in order to be able to run the older versions of PHP and MySQL that my vBulletin sites NEED to run on will be reaching end of life. Apparently there is no other option available, at least in a practical manner, to be able to keep on maintaining and running these old sites after that time. One major issue is that my server could become a portal for hackers to gain access to the data center's entire network. They just cannot allow that to happen.

So I am in the process of arranging to have the older vBulletin based message board systems converted over to a newer platform. It should be pretty similar in look and feel, but of course there will be differences. And some of the custom mods my programmer did for me here will likely not be ported over because of complexity and therefore added expense. Particularly any that have not shown to be pulling their weight or holding anyone's interest.

As for "pulling their weight", honestly this migration is going to cost a LOT more than CornSnakes.com pulls in financially. By quite a bit. If it were not for the fact that I am using this as a test run for the later upcoming conversion of FaunaClassifieds, the above mentioned impending doomsday would be just that for this site. This site does not, by any means, earn it's keep for me any longer. But it wasn't costing me anything much additional to keep it up and running.

And a dark side to this is that I fully expect that the different platform might just be enough of a change that those of you who do still come here might find the old familiarity is gone, and as a result, so will you. That could also mean the same thing for FaunaClassifieds, of course, so you can see what sort of rock and hard place I am now squeezed between.

Certainly, with the health issues of Connie and myself, this really is not a good time at all to be dealing with something like this that will likely be a colossal headache. But as best I can tell, the choice is to either do the migration, or throw in the towel completely with this internet stuff I have been doing all these years. And it is quite possible that things could develop, healthwise, that I would have to, without any warning, abandon it in the middle of the process anyway. And, unfortunately, that would be that. I doubt it has to be explicitly stated, but if I have to choose my time between taking care of Connie and taking care of this web stuff, this stuff WILL be gone without any hesitation. I am prepared to pull the plug on the entire server if things get really rough.

I don't know when things will start happening here, but most of it should be taking place in the background anyway. At some point this current site will need to be shut down to take a snap shot of the database to be migrated to the completed new platform after the bugs have gotten worked out of it (hopefully). But I suspect that the guy doing the development work might be using enough resources in that process to slow things down here somewhat.

So anyway, a pain in the ass this is likely going to be.