- PHP dropped support for 5.3.x in August of 2014 and the entire 5.x line at the end of last year.
- The latest version of vBulletin is 5.5.1, while you appear to be running 3.8.0.
Please stop using outdated software. I realize the forum upgrade will be difficult because of the custom theme and other customizations, but there's no reason to continue running software that's been out of date for 4+ years.
Hi there. I assume you're the person who emailed me anonymously the other day? I replied, but I also assume the address was a throwaway, which is why you've registered to say it again.
Re: PHP. Yep, I'm aware. But I'm not sure there's a terribly compelling reason to upgrade. It's stable, it works, and the last server I use that upgraded PHP (without informing me) broke a bunch of stuff. I've yet to come across a technical issue that has required a newer version of PHP to solve.
Re: vBulletin. I'm not sure how familiar you are with this software, but it became a completely different piece of software shortly after the version I'm running. The entire architecture (and entire development ethos) changed there, largely because the product was purchased by a larger company and most of the core software team left. It is, in my opinion, a wildly inferior product now. In fact, I found out years ago, after I'd come to this conclusion on my own, that a handful of other vBulletin owners had made the exact same decision (stopping the upgrades at almost the exact same version I had) for the exact same reasons, and were banding together to support it as best they could. If I were to upgrade, I'd switch to XenForo, which is the piece of software run by (largely) the same people that left vBulletin.
I should also note that the "customizations" you refer to are substantial. I realize there are a lot of lazy (and non-technical) forum owners who put off upgrades simply because they don't want to re-apply style changes to new templates, or something like that, but that's not the case here. I've written scads of custom scripts that interact with the system.
I don't know if you have some connection to me or this site, or what. If you're just a developer who dislikes lazy forum owners, fair enough, but if that's the case, please rest easy knowing that a lot of thought was put into all of this, and it isn't just the result of technical inertia.