What if your forum software shut down?

[Cedric]

I was thinking about something that could happen to any of us, whether we're running a large webmaster forum or just a small community site. What if your forum software shut down? It could be due to a variety of reasons, like the company behind the software going bankrupt or deciding to discontinue the product. Regardless of the reason, it could be a real nightmare for anyone running an active forum.

So, let's discuss this scenario. What would you do if your forum software suddenly shut down? Would you try to find an alternative software and migrate all your data to it? Or would you consider creating a new forum from scratch? How would you communicate the situation to your community and keep them engaged during the transition period?

Personally, I think it's important to always have a backup plan in case something like this happens. It's a good idea to keep a copy of your forum's database and files, as well as to have a list of alternative forum software that you could use if needed. It's also a good idea to keep your community informed about any changes or issues, so they don't feel left in the dark.

So, what do you think? Have you ever experienced something like this before? What did you do? Let's discuss and share our experiences!

 

[capnsquarepants]

I would find a comparable forum software and migrate there. Never had to deal with it as I don't have a community but I imagine that's what I would do. I could also "take over" the software and add my own changes/updates to it, but it would be a lot of effort.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I would definitely migrate my community to a platform similar to the one I'm already using. Most of us here already had to deal with Zetaboards, and I know many people either just started from scratch or they were able to get their community up and running by running scrappers to get their posts.

 

[Arantor]

So this really depends on whether you're in a hosted space (Jcink, ProBoards, Zetaboards, IPS Cloud, XF Cloud, Circle) or you're in some form of self-hosted space (everyone else where you have some kind of hosting)

In the former case your best hope is that you learn about it before it happens and have some opportunity to get a database backup - Jcink offers you this, and you can absolutely migrate users + content to another setup using this. Other platforms vary.

In the latter case, this is where it gets interesting. Especially because this is a real situation that some people are debating. In any case, in the self host area, there are two broad situations you can talk about - the open source and the not open source/mostly pay to play communities.

Self host + open source
This is your phpBB, MyBB, YaBB, YaBB SE, SMF, PunBB, FluxBB, Wedge, XMB, MiniBB, Flarum etc etc arena. More than one of these platforms (and this is by no means comprehensive a list) already had what we could call a death (though it may have had a jump start later) - you always have two options: take over maintenance yourself, or migrate to something else. Taking over maintenance yourself is not trivial and you have a deep dark pit of unknowns with respect to hidden vulnerabilities in the underlying code, not to mention that the maintenance burden is quite something if you're not really used to it.

Closures of these platforms have happened - YaBB SE is a prime example; it stopped being developed in 2003 when all dev effort went to SMF to build something from scratch, though it was absolutely done with the mindset of bringing users along from YaBB SE, and a lot of effort was sunk into making that as least painful as possible, even down to porting the default theme from YaBB SE over to SMF and bundling it as a theme for years.

The key takeaway is that you own your data, and you can get at everything so you certainly have choices about handing it over to someone or getting someone to help you do a migration to something else. Different platforms are more or less good at doing this.

Self host + closed source (whether pay to play or not)
So, this is your vBulletin, IPS, XenForo, Woltlab situation. But it also potentially includes software that isn't open source, where taking it over isn't an option. It's still on your server infrastructure so you still have all the data, content etc.

In some cases - vBulletin, XF I believe, though I could be wrong - the licence would theoretically permit you to modify the software to keep it running in the event of a shutdown and no further patches from the developers. In the case of vBulletin, this is a real consideration since vB 3.x and 4.x are no longer supporting most recent PHP versions - they cap out at PHP 7.1, so your choices are: stay on unsupported versions and hope no vulnerabilities are found; stay on unsupported versions and try to find + patch vulnerabilties yourself; move to something else.

As you have the data, you can plug this into something else, and make that migration - and there are resources in most cases to help you do it. If you're coming from a fringe software, there's always the option of a custom migration - it's not usually that hard to jangle it together.

What I do foresee, and what was recently argued at great length and anger elsewhere, is whether Invision Community/IPS shelves their self-hosted edition. They have committed to it for the next couple of years, but they admit it is a shrinking proportion of their revenue, it has a significantly higher cost to support than the cloud edition and that realistically at some point it might disappear. This will mean anyone self-hosting on IPS Suite will have to think about a migration either to another platform, or to the cloud (with quite a cost implication; pricing starts at $89/month for all but the basic IPS forum package, and anyone seriously staying will want the CMS module, I think, so they're in the $89/month camp immediately)

Migrating to the cloud of course comes with a loss of control - there are things you just can't do with it (like conveniently running a WordPress front end to the forum on the same server as one example), though for many this isn't the headache this sounds like.

tl:dr; if your platform closes, you've usually got options for how you deal with that which can see you take your community somewhere else and give it a new home to continue. Some of these require more or less work and more or less cost financially or practically - but there are always options.

 

[Sarah]

We were with Zetaboards when it closed and migrated over to tapatalk, so we tried a few different platforms but settles for jCink.

 

[Arantor]

I do wonder how much life Jcink really has going forward. John's been at it a while now, and while I'm sure it pays decently well, the technical cost of keeping 20 year old software running is not going away (and is getting harder and harder each year as PHP itself gets more strict about what is permitted). I wonder if there is a point at which he'll say 'had enough now'.

 

[Cory]

Since all I've ever run mostly were resource boards for that particular software, I would probably choose not to go elsewhere and just become a lurker of other users' forums. At the closure of ZetaBoards, my original community was pretty much no longer active, so I didn't really have to give up much. I could always create a resource board for another forum software, but I think most decent forum software already have a bountiful amount of resources available to them that there wouldn't be much of a point to migrate over.

Then again, I may try using a different forum software but turn away from resource boards and pursue a forum for a different hobby I'm into.

 

[Arantor]

but I think most decent forum software already have a bountiful amount of resources available to them that there wouldn't be much of a point to migrate over.

I actually think you'd be surprised. All of the forum platforms would benefit from fresh perspectives on themes and addons.

 

[Cory]

I actually think you'd be surprised. All of the forum platforms would benefit from fresh perspectives on themes and addons.

That's true, there are really no limits to the types of themes and addons you can produce.

 

[Arantor]

Especially when you're not limited to 'whatever you can do in the frontend' because you have access to the entire backend. I say this as someone who's built portal addons, helpdesks, galleries, storefronts etc. on top of forums.

 

[Kyng]

Yeah, this happened on ZetaBoards. I was based there from 2009 to 2018, when the service shut down and migrated to Tapatalk.

In the end, we decided to switch to MyBB (which was not *too* far removed from ZetaBoards in terms of look and feel, but crucially, gave us access to our own data). But we spent about a month building the new MyBB forum before we officially made the switch - which meant that: a) we didn't have to do all of our learning in public, and b) when the move was made, the board was reasonably complete (it didn't feel like home yet, but it did at least feel like a house, and not a construction site).

Still, I guess we were lucky that we had plenty of warning before ZetaBoards itself shut down!

 

[Shortie]

I have never experienced anything like this in the past but I would be super sad to see Xenforo close down if it ever did. I would hope that we would have plenty of warning that the software was closing down so that I could make arrangements to move to another forum software. I would more than likely move to MyBB if Xenforo was to close down and see where I went from there.

 

[Oblivion Knight]

I'm heavily invested in our current software, with over 100 add-ons and many of which are premium.

If there was some announcement that the software was to be discontinued, my first step would be to consult with our community. There's no chance that I'd pay to migrate to an alternative platform and try to keep a like-for-like setup without financial help.

 

[Jason]

I would hope to have some social media platforms or platform connected to the site where I could explain what was going on. Besides that, all I could do is communicate to the hosting company for solutions. One nightmare situation that comes to mind is a DDOS attack.