I poked at the board hosts to find out what we'd have to do to get to PHP 5+ and PostgreSQL 8+ as has been discussed in the past. They suggested a new server, naturally, with a new version of Plesk, at $10 more per month.

Is this market standard? I do remember the last time we had this discussion the Plesk upgrade wasn't on the table from them, but PHP 5 at least had been out for quite a while.

I'm searching through the thread, and it looks like this is the normal time for my annual CAN I HAZ POSTGREASQL?

Of course, now that I've bumped into Ruby on Rails it's become apparent that my ancient maiden aunt could code the board in her sleep, but there you go.

Nothing? From no one?

I feel that we're locked into a cycle that to get anywhere near today's versions of software we have to commit to more monthly money.

As is, I think we're locked into a dedicated server. It will take some re-architecture to free us from that. Thing is, I'm averse to that re-architecture in yesterday's tech. PHP 4 has been end-of-life for a year or so now. There are other improvements it seems silly not to address while in the code, silly to wait until next time.

Unsurprisingly, all I can contribute to the tech side of things is, "Whatever you all think is the best plan," and "I'll happily contribute to support whatever is needed."

Yeah, I'm all "Well, I have a job again, so I can probably afford to send a little money if we need it...um....go team?"

PHP 4 is actually end of life now, so isn't being maintained. This forces your hand - if you want to stay alive, you gotta upgrade as sooner or later you'll have a security breach or some such.

That said, if you go for Ruby on Rails you're severely limiting your hosting options. A vast, vast majority of hosts won't touch it.

I actually use nearlyfreespeech.net for hosting nowadays. It's pay-per-usage, clustered FreeBSD hosting. Really, really good.

Oh, the Ruby on Rails wasn't a serious suggestion. It's something I might work on to teach myself but that's not this thread's business.

I think we might already have RoR on this box anyway. And I know I have it on my two main web hosts. But that's tangential.

We're wedged into a corner, and we're going to be wedged into a corner every time one of the versions of the legs of LAMP goes EOL. I'd at least like a shot to code out from behind that, to get a more flexible and forgiving data model working. For $10/month to start.

I can't really help on tech, but like megan, I can contribute a little to whatever expenses will help us get out from behind our current problems.

If I understand correctly, you're saying that our regular expenses will be going up, if we do what you're thinking of doing?

We're wedged into a corner, and we're going to be wedged into a corner every time one of the versions of the legs of LAMP goes EOL. I'd at least like a shot to code out from behind that, to get a more flexible and forgiving data model working. For $10/month to start.

does anyone else feel like they're watching Charlie Brown and the teacher is speaking?

Succinctly put, we're stuck at this version of the OS, PHP, and the database for this cost. Whether or not we ever change any code, this is so. Once these softwares go end-of-life there will be no more updates or patches, and our vulnerabilities will go unclosed.

ah, I see. So, we need money, to switch to something that will have more flexibility?