Dear 8er friends,
the server hosting this forum has become a little stiff in the joints over the years and a software update has been overdue for a while. The current operating system Debian Lenny is no longer supported and the forum software vbulletin and the adjoining content management system has just received a major revamp and upgrade. Initial bugs have been taken care of and we are now ready for the upgrade.
Technical background of this site:
The current virtualized server offers 100GB disk space, is configured to use 1-3GB RAM and for the 99 Swiss Francs (ca. 66 GBP) per month lives on a pretty oldfashioned Dell PowerEdge 2850.
The new server, as is usual, can better any of this, comes with 6TB disk space and runs on a 16GB RAM i7 Quad Core server whose performance will allow for many more additional domains to be hosted on our account. All this can now be had for just under 60 EUR per month (50 GBP) and hence means a cost reduction of a quarter on greatly improved hardware.
For those wondering: the running costs for this site are taken from the piggy bank of the Swiss-German club by way of a (currently) one-time membership fee of 100 EUR (81 GBP). This has been the case since the club was founded in Aug. 2007 and so far around 150 enthusiasts have decided that 100 EUR is a small price to pay compared to the benefits they receive in return. The funds in the piggy bank will only be used for the server & software costs and up until now each new supporting member made sure that this server remains online for another month in the future.
Return to the pending upgrade:
The old server (running the forum now) will be taken offline on December 24th. This means that the move to the new server has to take place in the days preceding and around christmas. The website will be offline for around 2 full days to allow for configuration tasks and also for the global domain name servers to distribute the new IP address worldwide.
You will find the very same content in a slightly different cosmetical appearance. The content management system of the front page will be rather empty initially and filled with information during the next weeks. The forum will be available in 4 languages (German, English, French, Spanish).
From what I heard we will be able to use 3 letter search terms (e.g. B12). I feel tears welling up 
Hold on tight, it will be a bit bumpy in the next few days.
Cheers
Reinhard for Martin & Christoph wrecking their brains already
Thanks for all your efforts! 
