As many of you will know SMF hasn't been updated in a very long time. SMF 2 does not work with modern PHP versions. ( 7.2 or higher and has major problems on 7.0 & 7.1) SMF only reliably works on PHP 5.6. Now PHP 5.6 becomes fully end of life in December 2018 with no further security fixes, so continuing to use it carries extremely high risks as new exploits are discovered or previously unreleased ones are released.
I am not prepared to take the risk on this server.
I am going to try a different forum software
https://vanillaforums.com/en/software/ and see how it goes
I am not 100% sure when I will install the new software & then move everything over
Hopefully there won't be any major problems in doing it, but there is a risk of the forums being down for few days while it happens.
There will obviously be some changes, but hopefully existing logins & passwords will transfer over OK
I will endeavour to let everyone know before hand
What I will probably do is create the new forum in a subfolder & get it working with existing posts & membership details, once I am happy. I will then put the existing forum in maintenance mode & do a final export and then redirect the domain to the new address.
Don't worry if you see error 500 or other errors, The new software only works on PHP 7.1 and higher and SMF 2.0 sometimes crashes or refuses to work on php 7.1, so beqar with me please