For the past seven years the site has been hosted by a friend of mine who has a server for his own stuff. However that server has got issues and he's shutting it down. The issues is the reason why we've experienced latency - slow loading.
I have got to move the entire site. In itself not a big deal normally but in this case the SQL database cannot be accessed. I can however create a raw backup the site through the admin section of the website. I did this last night so at worst we'll lose a day or two in posts.
This weekend - probably Sunday - I am going to do the work. Load the site onto the new server and update the PHPBB package. Thats the software that the site runs on. Again theres a problem with that as I have never been able to update it whilst its been running for free so I'm faced with compatibility issues.
Most of the work can be done without interruption as it'll be done on a ghost site but at some point I will have to direct the URL to the new host and that can take a few hours to take effect. In that time its possible that the site will go down. I'll give as much notice as I can before I take that step.
After this, assuming it successful, I will be able to update the look and feel of the site as it is a bit dated.