Move forum to new hosting provider

[mathiascode]

Since hopefully everyone involved is active on GitHub, this is an attempt to get a discussion rolling regarding the forum.

@sphinxc0re has previously mentioned on Discord that he wants to move the forum away from the current hosting provider. I believe he was also willing to continue hosting the forum (correct me if I'm wrong). @bearbin Is this fine with you?

Migration shouldn't be too difficult. We need the current forum files and a backup of the database. There are most likely instructions available online.

I've had FTP access to the forum for many years, mainly for updating the forum software. I'd be willing to continue doing so.

[bearbin]

I'm happy with the concept of migrating/updating the forum. I'm happy for SphinxC0re to host the forum, I'm also happy to host it as well (I have more than enough hardware).

I think we should also reconsider whether we want to keep MyBB as the forum software in the longer term. Lots of other forums I'm members of have moved across to using Discourse, which is definitely a lot more modern and usable (mobiles etc).

[mathiascode]

I think we should also reconsider whether we want to keep MyBB as the forum software in the longer term. Lots of other forums I'm members of have moved across to using Discourse, which is definitely a lot more modern and usable (mobiles etc).

I don't think there's any urgency to change the forum software, but if/when we do:

• Carefully consider the alternatives. Go for something popular, to reduce the chances of having to migrate content again. No vendor lock-in.
• Ensure everything is migrated properly, including attachments and likes (if possible, it's a custom plugin). No mangled post formatting, etc.

Changing the software should only be considered after we've moved the current forum to another hosting provider, in my opinion.

[NiLSPACE]

I wouldn't be against migrating away from MyBB, especially if we can get better anti-bot detection. I do agree with @mathiascode points though. We shouldn't migrate to something just because it's the current popular thing. Also, in addition to likes, the tag to format code in forum posts ([shcode='lua']...[/shcode]) is also a plugin which would have to be migrated. The [spoiler] tag is a custom bbcode.

If possible it would be nice if we can migrate to something that uses Markdown instead of tag-formatted posts. That would mean we'd have to convert all the posts though, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is a tool already to do that.