I think that looks like a good option.

And we need to make sure Jon has the same access he has now.

As long as I can get FTP access, I'm good.

Here's my tentative plan:

Since my dreamhost account has all the unlimiteds (pretty much like what we'd get), I'll try and migrate a copy of here to a subdomain of my backup account there when I get my assact together. I'm not making schedule promises right now, because I've made some other web dev promises to myself, but it's second on the list.

That's a good plan. Is there tedious stuff that shmoes can do?

Wanna go over the code and make sure it's up to PHP 5 spec? I can guarantee you that's going to be tedious.

Any reason we can't just use php4?

[link] suggests the upgrade might be fairly involved.

Because Dreamhost doesn't have it. Neither does Hostgator. I don't think many good places will be advertising having it. PHP 5 is almost 10 years old.

Involved, yeah, but that part's a bit more necessary than adapting to the cloud requirements.

We could install any version of PHP we wanted on a vps. It's only on a shared hosting account where we have to take what's given. And I wouldn't think we'd want to go back to a shared hosting account given that the trouble we had with it led to the dedicated server in the first place.

So I recommend transitioning to a vps where we can install all the same components the board depends on (or at least the same major versions) and get it running again. If there's a desire to do a php5 upgrade that can be a second effort.

"I wanted simple, I wanted in-and-out, I wanted easy money."

From where I'm standing, the maintaining our own versions of infrastructure components is the complicated option, and the cleaning up the code to be in line with a language that came out 8 years ago is me stopping being lazy.

If there's a rush to leave, it is quicker. But I don't think it's long term wiser.

Fair enough.