Fixing MSFN

[TSNH]

@xper@Tripredacus@Dave-H

So basically from what I can see we have 4 problems right now:

1. A forum hack that as a result de-indexed MSFN from search results
2. Spam accounts that lead to registration block
3. Lack of donations to pay for Invision software
4. Lack of maintenance

#1 and #2 are the most important ones right now and it may very well be that due to lack of maintenance the forum remained at old software versions which is much worse for servers than it is for client devices. And eventually got hacked. Cleaning the malware is one thing and securing the software so that the vulnerabilities aren't there anymore is another and I think it may actually be easier to just redo the forum board from the ground-up. A fresh board can be brought to life with just a few hours.

But I think it's important to keep MSFN alive due to the incredible amount of useful info already there, the fact that there is no forum quite like it: eclipse.cx and legacydev.org suffer from dramas causing a large portion of users not being reachable on one or the other and a lot of the actual software development happens here (especially drivers nowadays). And MSFN is a really active forum for the technical state that it's currently in.

Now what IMO has to be done:

1. Archive everything as it is
2. Put up a fresh install of a free forum software like phpBB
3. Transfer users (with more than 0 posts) and emails so that they can redo their password using email verification on the new board
4. Strip the old forum of any javascript/php code to clear malware and put it in read only mode somewhere like archived.msfn.org
5. Maybe transfer the contents of some of the most active topics.
6. Consider giving some maintenance access to most trusted forum admins so that the software gets properly updated

And there you go, it requires some work, but problems solved, if a change like this happens I promise to donate to the forum and I'm sure many users would do the same, I think they just don't really want to donate right now due to lack of maintenance happening anyway. And phpBB unlike invision is free!