I’ve been running a sports website for years that for the past six or so has run Wordpress, SMF and a couple of simple database apps that list rosters and prospects - simple lookups with an admin interface.
I’m the definition of “knows just enough to be dangerous”. SSH and some linux commands don’t trouble me, things like “docker” and “droplet” cause me to freeze up a little.
With that shallow skill set, I’ve been hacked repeatedly - most significantly through a Plesk hole, almost as bad through an SMF hole, and lately, I assume, by a Wordpress plugin hole.
I like Discourse a lot (even though it will be a big UX transition for my members). I like the idea of offering social login/signup so people can trust their credentials with someone other than me.
I have peaked at 260 simultaneous users, but the normal peak usage is 100 at a time. I have used about 1GB of disk all in (most of it MySQL databases), and I need 10GB of bandwidth/month.
I’m paying about $1,000/year for my server, and my community can raise that. I’d love to host here (and can cover the extra $$), but I need to run the PHP/MySQL apps and I need Wordpress or an alternative. I’d love to bring my SMF forum into the new Discourse forum, but I’ve been unable to achieve that on an OS X local installation of Discourse …
I’d be interested in some expert advice/suggestions about how a mostly amateur should manage this transition. I’d consider eliminating Wordpress - the forum is the nucleus of the site and Wordpress is almost a wrapper - but I have to keep the PHP/MySQL apps.
Thanks in advance…