[Suggestion] EMC 'reform'

How accurate word choice.

I am not exactly certain as I neither have forums Dev access nor the knowledge related to site stuff. But as I understand, pending confirmation, is the dependency on the supporter upgrade system with XF which was then altered such that you cannot just update. More specifically, ranks/billing have a very hard dependency on the forums.
Edit: oh and I would assume the rest of the time factored in is the research required to implement these changes in the newest version while allowing the ability to update. Along with general familiarity/research of the updating process

To clarify about the website as best I can:

The website is not as simple as some may think. The supporter system is routed through it in a rather wonky fashion that was established long before Aikar took the reigns. Aikar has been wanting to fix this for a while, but the current system works and it's difficult to knowingly break a working system in order to update. Just to update without breaking things will take creating a database of the supporters, freezing supporterships, updating the forum version, creating a brand new supporter plugin code, etc (or at least that's my understanding of it). I'm sure there is a lot more.

To put it bluntly, I really don't know all that it will take, but I know the minimum that will have to happen and it's going to take some time to figure out how to do things without breaking the supporter system since the game and the site are integrated thanks to a section of code that really shouldn't have been used in the first place. At the time it was created, it was the best option for EMC and I can respect the creator for that reason. However, we DO want to fix it because we plan to be around long enough to need multiple updates. =)

It will take week(s) to study the current code base, get a listing of all the core modifications, upgrade the core files, REDESIGN the changes to not rely on core upgrades where possible, and come up with a future upgrade plan if it does absolutely require core modifications.

And that's the small (but most important) part!

Templates... They are a nightmare. Justin admitted this many times: He made tons of mistakes in setting this server up for maintainability. He went through the effort to access debug elements of the site and modified the CORE templates that are default not even possible to edit, because your not suppose to.

We have no documentation on what templates are modified... So it's to then install new template in a 'clean' slate, and find out what's broken, and go through it and repair it as I can find.

And the biggest part of the modifications is Supporter system. We CAN NOT have bugs there...

And this is all coming up with a 'plan' in a test environment, rolling back constantly throughout the process as I find a way to do it better and need to RETEST the plan.

The ultimate goal being the least amount of downtime, and the least amount of breakage in usability of the website with our customizations that the community is use to.

Considering I am an adult with obligations and responsibilities in life... that leaves me with 20-40 hours a week at absolute max on EMC and that's pretty much ALL of my free time, and will always lean towards the low end.

Also, There's no other web developer on our team (well socks has done some stuff in the past, but I'm sure he would admit this is kind of too big of a project for someone under senior level)... And I surely am not opening up access to users password hashes, emails, billing transaction logs etc to someone who's not even at a trust level to be on our staff team...

Sorry that won't happen.

Anyone who can pull off all that in less than 72 hours (ie: 2 weeks worth of work), and has a clean history with EMC, then please send me your resume (and why you haven't offered to help with development before!)

I feel like my expertise is in question here - So incase it's not known, I am a Senior Software Engineer for a career, focused in the Web Development area, with 13 years of experience. I am also a Systems Administrator, Systems Engineer, and you could say a level of Security Engineer. Running in EMC I've dabbled in minor networking too.
I am a jack of many trades, master of some.

I have reviewed our version of XF and manually applied security patches for things that affect us (most notably the swfupload)

I work in the industry with tons of brilliant people so I have information sources to know about all of the latest exploits, and patch our systems immediately when the fix is released.

Any questions?

I started programming when I was 16, and by the time of high school programming classes, I had already outpaced everything they taught.

Then the same happened for College... In both cases I helped the instructor teach the class.
So, I only went for an Associates Degree just to have _SOME_ paper to help land that first job, and Associates has a lot less involvement to stuff like that.

Typically for programming at BS level you would go for Computer Science.
Computer Engineering is closer to hardware level so electrical engineering makes sense.

http://www.eng.buffalo.edu/undergrad/academics/degrees/cs-vs-cen
While a CS degree would of helped me earlier in my career knowledge wise, now I already know all the things it teaches too, without all that student debt =P

Having a separate site penalizes you these days. Users don't want to downgrade features/usability. They just want the site to work better at small sizes, and access same features through different methods that's more mobile friendly.

That is mostly what would be done.

Lot of our stuff is already in Addon form, so its getting the rest where possible as addon form.

Already am eyeing certain theme looking to do one with AD Styler so users can still keep that personal feel to the site (and have more control over their own colors)