We aren't archiving the forum because of maintenance - we're archiving it because it's all but dead. The current iteration of the sites uses the forum as its user data source which tied our hands for a while. The new version uses an entirely in-house user system which gives us a lot more flexibility so the forum just isn't necessary any more. This forum is as up to date as it gets, we use very few plugins, and I'm using this version of PHP because it's what's currently available directly from the OS repository. I imagine we'll update PHP next time we do a major version update on the web server itself.
For the record, I also prefer a forum experience over Discord but forums simply aren't coming back. We're not closing the forum in favor of Discord (they've run side by side for nearly a decade at this point) but we will be redoing the wiki (with a completely vanilla install of MediaWiki so we don't run into issues like we had with this one where old plugins prevented us from updating) so that will address web searchability and resource sharing.
The offer is appreciated but this decision isn't being made due to a technical limitation or a lack of experience/knowledge - it's just time to move on, unfortunate as that is.
Edit: Wow, talk about timing. It looks like MyBB 1.8.39 was released 10 hours ago. Looks like I have an update to install after all.
For the record, I also prefer a forum experience over Discord but forums simply aren't coming back. We're not closing the forum in favor of Discord (they've run side by side for nearly a decade at this point) but we will be redoing the wiki (with a completely vanilla install of MediaWiki so we don't run into issues like we had with this one where old plugins prevented us from updating) so that will address web searchability and resource sharing.
The offer is appreciated but this decision isn't being made due to a technical limitation or a lack of experience/knowledge - it's just time to move on, unfortunate as that is.
Edit: Wow, talk about timing. It looks like MyBB 1.8.39 was released 10 hours ago. Looks like I have an update to install after all.