Feel free to send me links to the other forums and I can take a look and give a more informed response in respect to those. To be fair, Invision are largely driven by the technologies they build upon. They don't develop everything from the ground up themselves. They rely on platforms such as PHP, which in turn rely on the operating systems they run on. All of these technologies regularly receive security updates, performance enhancements and the deprecation of older functionality. As a result, forum software also needs to evolve to keep pace. It is possible to continue running obsolete software without updating it. However, those systems are often at risk of being compromised, suffering data breaches or other security issues. Just as boat owners carry out regular maintenance to keep their boats safe and reliable, we take the same approach with Canal World. The previous version of Canal World (v4) was nearly a decade old, although it was regularly maintained and patched with security and bug-fix updates. We had originally planned to upgrade to v5 around a year ago, but delayed the move until we could get the look and feel as close as reasonably possible to the previous version. The issue wasn't that v4 had been abandoned. Rather, we were approaching the end of support for the platform. By the end of this year, the version we were running would no longer be supported and would stop receiving bug fixes and security updates. I completely understand the frustration. I find it annoying that I have to change the oil and fluids in my engine. I'd much rather not have to do it, but neglecting that maintenance would eventually put it at risk. Software is exactly the same, particularly when it's exposed to the internet. Regular upgrades and maintenance are not always exciting, and they sometimes bring changes people don't like, but they're necessary to keep the platform secure, reliable and supported.
