Tell us something.: I like whistles, flutes, lyres, cittern/mandolin/bouzouki family instruments, as well as heavy and nasty slap bass. Languages, linguistics, history (especially Migration Period and Bronze Age Europe), cuisine from various parts of Latin America, chili growing, bushcraft, and the works of JRR Tolkien also tickle my fancy.
Tell us something.: I'm a fiddler and, latterly, a fluter. I love the flute. I wish I'd always played it. I love the whistle as well. I'm blessed in having really lovely instruments for all of my musical interests.
Location: Unimportant island off the great mainland of Europe
I have been able to temporarily fix the problem. Here's my summary of what I believe is going on and what lies ahead.
This board runs on phpBB software, which was installed on our servers many, many years ago by Rich Lafferty, who maintained it for many years.
Rich bowed out quite a number of years ago and has not been able to help us, except on a couple of occasions when he was able to come in and help with specific problems.
The version of phpBB isn't the latest version.
In the meantime, our hosting service, Dreamhost, did a mandatory update of all their websites to the latest version of PHP, PHP is a server-side scripting language designed for web development but also used as a general-purpose programming language. If that last sentence sounds smart, it's because I copied and pasted it in.
Our current version of phpBB is not compatible with the new version of PHP. Thus the day just passed when the board behaved in very odd ways.
I have made a temporary fix (should take care of the month of March), which involves flipping a switch in the engine room that will allow the board to continue function via the older version of PHP. However, by April, that fix won't work anymore.
I believe what is required at this point is an upgrade of the board to the newest version. Because it's a big board, and the databases are old, and will require backing up and restoring the data....what could possibly go wrong?