In the next few months there will be some foundation work that needs to be done to the site.
- The web server software is up to date to the latest release 2.4.54 and our hosting company keeps this up to date automatically so there is nothing for us to do there.
- Our Database, MariaDB, needs a minor version update from 10.3.x to 10.6.x. Support for 10.3 ends in May. This should be a simple upgrade, but requires downtime to backup the database prior to the upgrade, just in case something goes wrong. 10.6 is supported until July 2026.
- PHP which is the language vBulletin is written in was updated to the latest stable release 8.1 last week with a hiccup in the graphics processing extension that took a couple of days to clean up. 8.2 was released 3 weeks ago. The PHP versions are supported for a year after each release so these updates are more frequent. We will upgrade to 8.2 as time permits and when our hosting provider supports it.
- Last, vBulletin is at version 5.7.0 which is one micro release behind. Version 5.7.1 only had foreign language fixes that don't affect us. 5.7.2 will be released in the next few weeks and I'll upgrade that during the same downtime for the Database upgrade. This should occur sometime in January or early February assuming no issues are detected in testing. vBulletin releases occur about every three or four months and we usually apply the latest release after two to three weeks of testing.
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