| Offer of web hosting [message #43540] |
Sat, 16 July 2011 20:59  |
 Irene
Messages: 1
Registered: January 2007 |
|
|
|
I was very sad to hear of the passing of Bob Arnold and the situation it puts you in. I know you said you're already working with someone else to get the site new hosting, but I wanted to extend my own offer as well.
My server is a virtual machine in a real data center (run by linode.com), so were something to happen to me, it would continue running, rather than being at the mercy of my housemates. If you need an even stronger continuity plan for if I were to disappear, we might be able to arrange to get your name listed as a co-owner on my Linode account; let me know if you want to explore that.
I have long experience in server administration and could get you set up in a matter of hours, not days.
I'm not sure how much traffic you get, but if your bandwidth needs aren't too excessive, I wouldn't charge you anything, and at worst it would only be the incremental cost to add however much bandwidth you actually use to my data plan. It's far cheaper than bandwidth for services that only do web hosting, because the customer (me) is expected to bring his own expertise to the table rather than relying on the company that owns the hardware; I doubt you'll find better rates anywhere. And of course, given that you're only hosting text and occasional images, unless your hits are in the hundreds of thousands I don't imagine the cost will come up at all, because I'll be able to offer it to you for free.
I've been a longtime fan of this community and these authors, going back to the Sapphire's Place days and in a couple cases even to the days when they were posting individually on Fictionmania, and would be thrilled for the chance to help them out. I also don't mind and even kind of like the idea of being associated with something of this *cough* semi-erotic nature, which is important since my real name would be discoverable to anyone by whois and you wouldn't want me to panic and back out when I realized that.
You mentioned also that you wanted to redesign the site. I can donate my time to do web development on that, if you want me to, as well. But it's really a separate issue; it should take almost no time at all to get you up and running on the new location. The only wrinkle I see is that you might not be able to obtain a backup of the old forum posts right away (you'd probably have to go through Mr. Arnold's estate for that?) but my recommendation would be to install a new message board for now; we can always merge the old posts in later. (I know SQL also, if the board software doesn't directly support that operation.)
Please get back to me and let me know if you'd like to take me up on this. I think it makes sense to get your current site re-hosted first and then worry about the redesign separately, since it would be better not to rush the redesign.
|
|
|
| Re: Offer of web hosting [message #45400 is a reply to message #43540 ] |
Mon, 05 September 2011 05:40  |
 |
Piper
Messages: 6
Registered: August 2011 |
|
|
|
| Irene wrote on Sat, 16 July 2011 20:59 | I was very sad to hear of the passing of Bob Arnold and the situation it puts you in. I know you said you're already working with someone else to get the site new hosting, but I wanted to extend my own offer as well.
My server is a virtual machine in a real data center (run by linode.com), so were something to happen to me, it would continue running, rather than being at the mercy of my housemates. If you need an even stronger continuity plan for if I were to disappear, we might be able to arrange to get your name listed as a co-owner on my Linode account; let me know if you want to explore that.
I have long experience in server administration and could get you set up in a matter of hours, not days.
I'm not sure how much traffic you get, but if your bandwidth needs aren't too excessive, I wouldn't charge you anything, and at worst it would only be the incremental cost to add however much bandwidth you actually use to my data plan. It's far cheaper than bandwidth for services that only do web hosting, because the customer (me) is expected to bring his own expertise to the table rather than relying on the company that owns the hardware; I doubt you'll find better rates anywhere. And of course, given that you're only hosting text and occasional images, unless your hits are in the hundreds of thousands I don't imagine the cost will come up at all, because I'll be able to offer it to you for free.
I've been a longtime fan of this community and these authors, going back to the Sapphire's Place days and in a couple cases even to the days when they were posting individually on Fictionmania, and would be thrilled for the chance to help them out. I also don't mind and even kind of like the idea of being associated with something of this *cough* semi-erotic nature, which is important since my real name would be discoverable to anyone by whois and you wouldn't want me to panic and back out when I realized that.
You mentioned also that you wanted to redesign the site. I can donate my time to do web development on that, if you want me to, as well. But it's really a separate issue; it should take almost no time at all to get you up and running on the new location. The only wrinkle I see is that you might not be able to obtain a backup of the old forum posts right away (you'd probably have to go through Mr. Arnold's estate for that?) but my recommendation would be to install a new message board for now; we can always merge the old posts in later. (I know SQL also, if the board software doesn't directly support that operation.)
Please get back to me and let me know if you'd like to take me up on this. I think it makes sense to get your current site re-hosted first and then worry about the redesign separately, since it would be better not to rush the redesign.
|
Whilst Warren and the CrystalHall staff are more than welcome to look for new hosting if they wish, let me state this.
CrystalHall currently resides on a COLO'd server in a datacenter in Los Angeles. IT will be moving to a nicer, faster server (Dual QuadCore AMD Opteron Processors, 8GB Ram, 4x500GB HDD's) located in a Denver datacenter just shortly (assuming they don't take up yours or someone elses offer).
I can provide HTML and SQL dumps for the forums and the site if needed. And there is a clear path should anything happen to the box owner (not me) for what happens next.
This site, is no longer running on Bob's T1 line, which has been officially shut off nor is it running on bob's hardware (most of the hardware has been decomissioned).
Just thoughts I'd put that out there.
-Piper
P.S. The delays getting online had to do with needing physical access to the data/drives and the fact that I had to drive to get said hardware, drive home, and deal with many other issues.
|
|
|
|
| Re: Offer of web hosting [message #45442 is a reply to message #45400 ] |
Mon, 05 September 2011 21:13 |
rubberjohn
Messages: 375
Registered: May 2011
Location: South East Coast UK |
|
|
|
Thanks for the information Piper, it's nice to know that the site is secure for the forseeable future. However, I wonder if you have any info about progress with Warren's FTP access problems?
John.
|
|
|
|
| Re: Offer of web hosting [message #45490 is a reply to message #45443 ] |
Tue, 06 September 2011 19:03 |
rubberjohn
Messages: 375
Registered: May 2011
Location: South East Coast UK |
|
|
|
I'm very glad to hear that you have re-gained your access Warren and I'm sure that we are all looking forward to when you can resume normal service. I suspect that all the disruptions of the last few months have been as frustrating for you as they have been for us. Thanks for persevereing and keeping us informed.
John.
|
|
|
|
Members
Search
Help
Register
Login
Home
