Earlier this week I was informed that the support for a specific part of the server software (required to keep things running) is ending in just a few weeks.
I had the choice between upgrading to a newer version or paying monthly for legacy support.
Obviously upgrading is the better choice... especially since it would be much more secure and also faster than our old environment that was hosting the SWAT Portal. The speed benefit is about 10% while processing the website (excluding the static data -> images, vids, etc.) compared to before the upgrade.
Unfortunately Lancersreactor is hosted on exactly the same server and also had to go through that upgrade. As it turned out Lancersreactor was 100% incompatible since it still was based on an old Forum/Portal version. That is why the website was offline a few days.
After various tries to make it compatible somehow I eventually came to the point where I simply decided to re-build Lancersreactor based on modern software. I am still at rebuilding the data but it seems like I am making good progress. What I wont be able to rebuild instantly are the downloads. I might redirect to the SWAT Portal filebase until I have a bit more time to work on this stuff (maybe in January).
I think that it is important to keep lancersreactor running as a source of knowledge and a website old players might remember and return to. With +180.000 registered members it always is worth keeping such a website up and running. The upgrade done now also will improve the overall performance and security on the web server, which isn't too bad considering that in the past weeks somebody tried to DDoS us multiple times (most likely utilizing lancersreactor due to its outdated software).
The risk of further attacks is minimal now. These attacks started when being active on a specific new Discord server and stopped when leaving that server again after asking for the removal of all links to the SWAT Portal and Lancersreactor. I am not neccessarily happy about how all this turned out but I am also not in a situation where I have any regrets.
Sometimes clear decisions for or against something are the best approach.