So the site seemed to be working very smoothly. I started with a fresh database, so everything was lost. The restore I attempted only restored posts/comments up to 2010. So I started running SQL queries to restore the lost posts. At some point I got a majority of them back.
But then I noticed the site loading very slowly. I watched the sql process eat up the server resources.
Unfortunately I’ve come to the conclusion that the data in the database is just too large storing all the data. There’s 15 years of posts an comments in there, and it’s choking the site.
Hence, I’m going to remove older from the database. I’ll keep only the X most recent years, which at this time will be 10 years. If that stabilizes the site, I can keep them. Otherwise I’ll keep reducing it by a year, until I find a sweet spot.
My thinking right now is this: Keeping the site running smoothly so that people can read/post is more important than the old stuff. I still have the old database, so theoretically I can do something with it. Perhaps make some static pages. But that’ll be a future project.
Fingers still twisted…