Hello,
I have had this thought for a few years. Wouldn't it make sense to migrate the forum to the Discourse platform?
Yes, it's not easy. This is a big forum.
There are pretty much only advantages in switching platform, it's pretty much time, but there are risks in the migration also.
Pros:
* finally modern mobile experience
* much better readability for the forum
* improved engagement with younger audiences (!!!)
* way better search
* Ability to easily leverage managed databases such as digitalocean's ones which I personally recommend
* Lower resources consumption
* faster website
* improved engagement with the many tools discourse provide
* ease of moderation, discourse forums are mostly self-moderating requiring only limited oversight
* modern features like modern editor, better emojis, social login,
* way way way easier management and upgrades
Risks:
* broken link during migration. new and old website could be scanned and data compared to check for broken links before migrating. The discourse importer includes generation of all redirects required in theory.
* miss of custom functions?
* grumpy users complaining
* SEO issues - this should be ok with the redirects working.
* users need to reset the password