Doug,

A long time ETS follower here.

After read your post, I sniff on the data transmitted between your server and my PC a bit. What I find that forum "forums.equipped.org" is using the Apache server. Though most likely I can fingerprint the underlay OS from here, but to avoid causing any alarm on the hosting company's IDS as a hacker, I use the information provided by "netcraft.com": The server OS is Linux.

Apparently the forum is using UBB BBS software. According to http://www.ubbcentral.com the basic requirement are PHP 4.3+ and MySQL 4 or 5 ,these two software packages are standard components provided by most hosting companies these days, especially those offer Linux server hosting.

Though the existing server probably is a high-end dedicated server using mirror hard disks that makes it still running even one hard disk already dead. But based on the 3GB data and the concurrent users shown by UBB software, I would said that other IT Pro in here would agree that, with the available server power now, ETS does not need a dedicated server, rent hosting space. from hosting company is enough. Which is much cost effective.

To simply the transit, keep using the UBB software is the best solution, unless some drawbacks on this software has already been noticed. If the current system administrator really have no time for the last help, and none from here can stand up to take up the task of server migration. It looks that UBB authors charge $150 to do the job, so the one time investment probably are the $150 + $139 for another license (probably???), then here is the annual hosting fee which probably $300 - $400 for a year. Now we have two votes to pair.com, so it is a good candidate.

Rising hosting money each year can be considered, the members who contributed can be put into a special member class, such as: honor member. I think a few IT Pro could step in as part of the system administrator group to assist at least the transit period and planing.

email service is bundled with most hosting plans, or it also can be moved to such as paid google mail service for the better spam filtering.

Thanks for all the offers of support and contributions. Dave and I are going to discuss this tonight and will decide what strategy to take and how best to implement it. I'll let you know once we have settled on something and figured out cost and all that.

Again, I sincerely appreciate the offers.

I need to ask, does ETS have a complete and robust backup strategy? Hard drives are cheap. The data they contain (the accumulated knowledge from this website over the years) is worth much much more.

If comprehensive backups are not currently the routine for ETS, I suggest implementing that as the absolute first priority. It tops buying new hardware or moving to other hosting solutions. Especially if "one drive is dead, the other is flakey".

If never have a full backup on hand, the first priority is make a full backup immediately, 3GB of data is easy to handle, just stop the web server and UBB software, so that able to put the MySQL engine off-line, copy the whole database and web documents to off-line media, such as a high speed 8G USB fresh drive, it can be done in less than half hour, in case someone can access to the data center. Of course it would be better to have another copy in different media to avoid become a victim of Murphy's law. It better be done before replace the hard disk, as a new disk putting back into mirror stage, it put a lot of stress to the old hard disk.

The database and web document are most important things inside the hard disk, other thing can be rebuild, but not these information.

We have backups.

A good reminder for me to donate to ETS foundation. Thanks for all the hard work Doug.

The hard drives have been replaced. Dave has a deadline Friday on one project and again next Friday on another, then he'll have some time to seriously look at where we move to and how.

The plan is to move the all the web sites to a hosted UNIX server/cloud.

In the case of ETS, that means we have to change one significant "program" we use, the PLB FAQ is running on a uniquely Windwoes script/program and that will have to be transitioned to new UNIX FAQ software. Anyone here that's technically inclined and cares to offer suggestions on how best to do that with least pain, is welcome to offer a solution.

Thanks much, again, for all the suggestions.

What software is it?

I am not familiar the FAQ software, hopefully others in here may have better suggestions than me.

I have take a look on that FAQ pages, if seems all the questions are listed within one page. It is using "Ocean12 FAQ Manager Pro v1.01" running at another Windows server or A Linux server with asp.net support. A later version of "Ocean12 FAQ Manager Pro" is available for $9.99 now:
http://www.ocean12scripts.com/products/faq/
but it requests access to a Microsoft Access Database, so probably needs a Windows server or at least a Linux server with asp.net support with a Microsoft Access Database back-end for the hosting.

In view of above situation, I came up with 3 alternatives so far.

1. Using other FAQ software which can running under Linux server, a google comes up some freeware:

http://www.phpkode.com/projects/category/php-faq-system/

A few software probably need to short-listed and put into the trial use, and then select the most suitable one to use as the replacement. This probably the cheapest run for long term.

2. Convert the current FAQ into the static web pages, since there are only tens of questions listed, even a non-professional web programmer can easily convert them into some static pages without trouble. The drawback is the updates onward would be a bit more difficult, but still doable by any one who can handle the normal static web pages.

3. Buy a current copy of "Ocean12 FAQ Manager Pro" and hosted it to another Windows Server, this is probably the easiest way for transit, but since another Windows Server hosting is involved, the yearly running cost might be almost double.

Ocean12 FAQ Manager Pro v1.01