Officially locking down the old AFN forum this weekend (to the best of our ability.)
And I think I have a game plan for the old site.
I am working on a plan right now to reduce the overall file size of the old Xenforo site (with attachments, it’s over 1.5 TB, which is huge.)
Here’s my tentative plan:
- Panic.
- Take a deep breath.
- Be okay with change.
- Either take the hopefully much smaller Xenforo backup and either privately host it, or inquire about a reduced cost cloud hosting option for the site since we don’t necessarily need the same bandwidth as an active forum.
- The old Xenforo forum will exist as this address:
autoflowernetwork.community.forum
This is actually how you access the forum if there is no URL attached (kind of like how this current Discourse URL is.)
6. As long as we can keep the costs down to a minimum for the old forum; we could keep it cloud hosted as a PERMANENT (as long as the bill is paid) read-only archive.
You wouldn’t be able to post. But you could still log into your existing accounts. Have access to your private messages. Have access to all your old threads.
We would -potentially- not have to delete threads (right now, the only thing I’m hyper focused on deleting are the massive amounts of 100 mb video uploads, that is KILLING our file size (I actually can’t even download the backup files right now, the link to download times out before it can fetch.)
If we do need to delete threads (I cannot promise anything here, but we can be logical,) but the idea would be to start from the back going forward, from 2011 onward. Who the hell is reading 10+ year old threads? And I would start from the threads that are in the “Archive” subforum to begin with (which some of you probably doesn’t know even exists, which bolsters my point.)
There will be some added cost to do this on top of us hosting the new Discourse site. With that in mind; I am working out a “paid vendor subscription” for new potential vendors/breeders coming on the forum.
This wouldn’t apply to our existing breeders or affiliates that have been here through the thick and thin (that would a dick move on our part and we are VERY GRATEFUL for the continued support.) But I’m building out an “incentive package” for new companies and entities moving forward, where we’d be building out a basic subscription package for them to be able to advertise and network here (emphasis on Cultivators Club!)
And I’m sharing this because I want there to be a level of transparency on how things work and are funded around here. I trust you guys. I want you to trust us too.
We’re going to be pushing a bit more with our affiliates (of which right now are @The_Vault and @MultiverseBeans.com ,) and if you like these places, please use our discount codes so we can take a small slice of the pie!
One step at a time!