I think its a testament to our community how we are continually growing. One of the effects of this has been the consistent growth and exponential increase in the size of our database for all our posts, users, and stored information. And unfortunately this has caused an increased level of strain on vBulletin.
So we had to look for ways to help minimize this without sacrificing anything essential to our community. The result was we decided the best way to go about it was to archive all topics (and posts in them) from 2007 and older that have not been touched since then. That means if you had your favorite regional topic that was created in 2004 but everyone still posts in it it will remain active. In addition post counts will NOT be affected by this archiving and will remain the same.
Majority of the archiving should be completed by now with the rest finishing up by this weekend.
If anyone feels a topic was inadvertently archived and should not have been (Stickies that were closed are likely the only thing that should fall under this category). Please post in the discussion thread what it was and what sub-forum it was located in and we will restore it from the archive.
All this should reduce our database size by roughly 35%, leading to a more stable and speedy experience for all. In addition, everything will be archived and I hope as technology progresses/our server farm expands/and mainly VB improves itself to restore it at some point.
In the meantime thanks for understanding that this was a concession we had to make and the best possible option.
So we had to look for ways to help minimize this without sacrificing anything essential to our community. The result was we decided the best way to go about it was to archive all topics (and posts in them) from 2007 and older that have not been touched since then. That means if you had your favorite regional topic that was created in 2004 but everyone still posts in it it will remain active. In addition post counts will NOT be affected by this archiving and will remain the same.
Majority of the archiving should be completed by now with the rest finishing up by this weekend.
If anyone feels a topic was inadvertently archived and should not have been (Stickies that were closed are likely the only thing that should fall under this category). Please post in the discussion thread what it was and what sub-forum it was located in and we will restore it from the archive.
All this should reduce our database size by roughly 35%, leading to a more stable and speedy experience for all. In addition, everything will be archived and I hope as technology progresses/our server farm expands/and mainly VB improves itself to restore it at some point.
In the meantime thanks for understanding that this was a concession we had to make and the best possible option.