Archival Forum
 

I have a forum started in December 2001 which is getting large and approaching a million posts.

Ideally I would like to dramatically reduce the size of the database to make things run more efficiently, reduce search query's etc.

I don't want to just blow away hundreds of thousands of posts because they have some value from a historical perspective.

I was thinking about an Archival forum where I could keep links for say 2001 to 2008.

I don't mind paying a one-time fee for a second license but paying annual dues on my forum plus an archived forum which will only be looked at once in awhile and is read-only seems cost prohibitive.

Any suggestions on what I could do?