Do not worry about the technicalities, that's my problem but I believe I am correct in saying that updating the news script for 150$ is the only remedial expense to keep the site in its entirety. I would hope the rest should not incur cost.

My questions are more where do we want to take ttwebsite and the forum? They are two separate issues: 

Website
I could remove the central news area on the website and lose history but not incur cost to bring the website and forum up to date. The news database goes back to 2011 and an earlier archive. The even earlier stuff in the separate news archive on the right hand column is already missing. I have not investigated to see why. So do we waht to try to preserve the immense amount of history on the website?

If we want to keep the news history then we need to update the news script.

If we just want to 'future proof' then we either need to lose the central news script or update it.

Security of the forum then naturally follows the above decision.

All of this requires the agreement of the owner and I have not had a reply to my question as to whether he wants to keep the site going and our offer to help with costs if he does. There is no income from the hosting.

Sorry but IT 'experts' are not good at explaining things they understand buy you don't! so ask away

The knockon is that the news script is like a word processor that users can log onto if appointed as news correspondents. If we want to add fresh news to the website (not the forum) then I'd need to show one or two how to log on. I can clear up if problems initially.