I'm not a specialist on databases, that's why I ask:

If I have 10 000 archived posts in "read only" forums and 1000-2000 active posts, will the first 10 000 charge the board with search/find etc., or not much?

Ivan
"Archive" is the same forum like others, so yes - it will charge the board. But we have another idea on that and are planning to program some kind of REAL archiver, which will put old posts in a separate tables or even archive HTML files.

This will be great! I'm not sure though that HTML will be better (because of the search function - will it exist?...).

But if we could only put the old forums in some "archive" state and this way to freeze them, kind of separating them from the active part, it will be the best.

Of course, there is now, too, a workaround for that: to have more than one copy of the same software with different databases and separate links. For example 1 (old, read only), 2 (old, read only) and 3 (current, read/write), but it's slightly comic :) :) :)

If the old archives are in HTML, will it be possible to maintain the search function as in the active part?

Ivan
because of the search function - will it exist

In that case, you could use built-in Google bar. In true, HTML would be done really only for indexing purposes.

But if we could only put the old forums in some "archive" state and this way to freeze them, kind of separating them from the active part, it will be the best.

That's exactly I am talking about and probably it will be the big final code for miniBB in general.

Of course, there is now, too, a workaround for that: to have more than one copy of the same software with different databases and separate links.

At last, it is good working solution!

If the old archives are in HTML, will it be possible to maintain the search function as in the active part?

As I told already, HTML is just for "offline" versions or search indexers. As we plan this kind of archiver, it will create separate tables and put old data in them; later, you can use this tables as usual forum (for example, in the script itself variables $Tf, $Tt, $Tp will be replaced).

Team,

I didn't meant that "indexing".

I don't talk about searching of the archives from the web by Google, or anything alike. I don't care about that. I'm interested the users themselves to be able to read the old material, to search it, to quote it etc. - i. e. to use it.

(May be simply two functions in miniBB itself: search in the current material and search in the archives... Just thinking...)

In that view the database variant will be better.

I'm interested the users themselves to be able to read the old material, to search it, to quote it etc. - i. e. to use it.

Exactly this I've meant with Google - you can install Google bar (like f.e. on this page), that's much better and faster in searching HTML files than any other PHP script.

Ivan
But if we could only put the old forums in some "archive" state and this way to freeze them, kind of separating them from the active part, it will be the best.

I wonder, if the archives would be available to Google ONLINE search?

Moony
In this case - yes... you only need to put some link to them somewhere on active forums.