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For those who don't know, forums.penny-arcade.com will be closing soon. However, we're doing the same kind of stuff over at coin-return.org with (almost) all the same faces! Please do feel welcome to join us.
For those who don't know, forums.penny-arcade.com will be closing soon. However, we're doing the same kind of stuff over at coin-return.org with (almost) all the same faces! Please do feel welcome to join us.
For those who don't know, forums.penny-arcade.com will be closing soon. However, we're doing the same kind of stuff over at coin-return.org with (almost) all the same faces! Please do feel welcome to join us.
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i think i wrote it already but it bears repeating, if you guys can culminate into some sort of self-hosted solution and manage scope I am supremely confident you can crunch this forum in a very affordable vps
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
Absolutely trivial to swap from a fat vps to aws or azure for multi-node deployments if the need arises as well. Probably wouldn't even take a day to migrate it.
It's a webforum not mission critical medical or financial software.
Depending on how many accounts make it in the transition, ddos/cdn also might not be needed (cdn is probably still a good idea if the money is there).
PSN: jrrl_absent
I would keep in mind that it would be smart to consider our deadline to be 2 months prior to the hard cutoff.
Things will get delayed, there will be time needed to manage the actual transition of users, there will be last minute hiccups, there will be time needed to raise funds. I would treat this project as if it needs to be completed by end of March.
That timeline could also change again.
PSN: jrrl_absent
Like sure we're going into the garbage time of US thanksgiving / december but if we are going with a pre-existing forum software then presumably it already handles enough of our use case that we likely don't need much development to get something functional for day 1. And if [chat] doesn't have polls for a little bit because they need more work well I think we can survive until then
It will be less flexible, but it also means we don't have a small group putting many hours into keeping it humming. What if one of them gets banned? Or just wants out? Or there's a major security event? I wouldn't want to impose an additional IT support rotation on people unless they absolutely can commit to multiple years unpaid.
Also another veto for Jenkins or any Atlassian product (seriously)
Tempted to play with an instance and answer this myself this weekend.
We all want to help, and there is lots of capacity and talent here…. But if we go ready, fire, aim! On this there will be chaos and we will start doing duplicate work.
Gonna sound almost silly… but maybe we should bullet list out the major tasks, then do a zoom call and assign them to people before we actually lock in on any decisions.
Hang on migrating the forum to a Pi3 that I've plugged into the hidden outlet under a bench that's connected to the local Starbucks guest network.
Great, now I started thinking about federated ActivityPub stuff.
Yes, I like the way Xenforo works and it is very similar to this board. In some ways it's like the same thing but with better features, at least from the perspective of a user.
agree, my feeling is outsource as much as possible to keep maintenance to a minimum. Maintenance is a huge pain in the ass and never stops. Outsourcing most of that to someone else for a reasonable price is totally worth it, in my opinion. Some trade-offs will be control and flexibility, but really, considering the Majora timelimit the forum has (and we can't rewind time), getting a minimum of a forum that works and can post with other people (within reason) like a XenForo up and stable should be the priority. Certain customized features are lower priority and can be dealt with later. Obviously, selecting a solution that you know beforehand can be customized is better before checking after, but I think (for me at least) it is not that big of a deal to sacrifice.
I'll report back when I hear from them.
For the record, I'm not trying to railroad us. Some of these questions should be asked of any provider we're considering, but xenforo seems to be the clear leader in terms of mentions so it seemed like a good place to start.
These are great questions to ask, and thank you for taking the initiative here.
MHWilds ID: JF9LL8L3
The biggest bummer here for me is that I was willing to personally shell out $60/m for a few months if it gave us a place for devs to start hammering at on custom features, but since ownership can't be officially transferred it would mean I couldn't turn it over to whatever legal org gets formed, and I don't necessarily want to the the always-and-forever person when the credit card needs to be updated. I do wonder if the answer would be different if I had phrased it as "can you change the email address of the account owner". I'll follow up.
A close second is the migration system isn't exposed to us. That said... it might be a drop in the bucket to spring $195 for a one-year self hosted license so we can tinker with the import system/add-ons/etc, meaning we can hand them a launch ready import file at some point.
I always assumed this was going to be the way. Someone with a dockerized version of the system just going wild on migrations for a week or so to get things aligned before the real test then import.
If something gets identified in the real test, we can address in local before doing the final.
Also, I guess it is worth asking if there is any way for us to do deltas, or will this need to literally be run once, no more ever.
This is good to know.
Otherwise if making the decision becomes an issue, just a generic gmail account we can later forward to or replace with the domain email.
Absolutely not a requirement, and you're right (although there are simpler options than running our own mail server). A Gmail address will work fine for our needs and can be shared with whoever needs access easily enough. The domain should still be a priority to knock out because it's cheap and easy, and hitting a couple of milestones early will go a long way towards keeping everyone positive and focused on what will be a months-long process. A good test of our group decision-making ability, at the very least. Ya know?
Route forwarding with something like Mailgun or a similar service isn't hard to do. Don't need to roll our own mail server for it.
Since I doubt we are going to be doing a microsoft stack, and because as much as I think proton does good shit their non-email capabilities are ass, I would propose google workspace.
Spool has some experience in admin on one of those also, which is nice to have.
Or not, it's hard to tell over there.
Edit: aaaaand it's locked
It's decimal dust in the grand scheme of things unless we are wanting to use some 2 letter .com thing.
Part of it comes down to the question of whether we have someone (or a few someones) who will be willing to float some of these minor costs before we have a legal entity set up and donations coming in. I know they're not large amounts, but I don't want to presume to expect anyone to shell out $100 bucks out of pocket for incidentals without someone volunteering that.
But also, I agree. We should find 5 good candidates for a name, register them, and poll everyone. There's been plenty of suggestions, and if nothing else new gets thrown out there that blows the doors off in the next few days, we need to just grab up a handful of the best candidates.
MHWilds ID: JF9LL8L3
So long as the person floating the costs ends up as part of the corporate structure, they can be recouped out of it as an owner contribution / owner payout with zero liability, even if the company isn't standing yet, so long as you do so within X time / calendar year.
edit: explicitly designed for these scenarios where you need things for the company, but the company isn't standing quite yet.