Unless I’m misunderstanding your question, the specific server is more important than the software they’re running; it doesn’t matter if the software is being developed long-term if the server shuts down in the short-term… your community will go down with it.
This is the answer. Pretty sure, for example, MetaFilter is running bespoke code for their forum (which means no development at all), and it’s been online since 1999.
Why does bespoke have to mean no development? If it’s custom code, big whoop - provided the dev either made it easy to modify, or still helps out with it. Our company has tons of bespoke apps that get developed regularly.
(That said, I don’t know what metafilter is)
MetaFilter literally used Adobe Coldfusion to put together their site and the site is still using ColdFusion as of 2025. There wasn’t “backend development” in the same way there is for projects like Lemmy, Piefed, Mastodon, and so on. MeFi is only just considering rebuilding the site from scratch since 2024 and the main head of that exploratory project has been MIA for several months now.
Thanks. Apologies for derailing your point which is that this stuff can run for years without changes.
No worries, it wasn’t as clear as it could have been, for sure.
Your community will not go down with a software dying or a server dying. As long as the server does not die surprisingly, you can just move to a new server, announcing on the old server that you have moved. Active members will follow then.
Can you carry over the posts and comments to the new community?
If the community has to start over from zero, that can be a huge loss.
From Lemmy to Piefed I believe so. I don’t know any other details tho
Awesome
.zip has both https://piefed.zip and https://lemmy.zip, they publish monthly reports including their finances: https://lemmy.zip/post/52485712?scrollToComments=true
Very nice admins. I could see them last quite a while.
