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Forum Hosting - Balanor - 05-21-2015
Rather than further derail the tactics thread, I'll start a new one if people want to talk about forum hosting. To provide background, these forums were originally started by someone called Axdec, back in 2008. Shortly afterward though he disappeared, but KTA stepped forward, took the forum backup I was able to get, and eventually turned it into what you are all visiting now. He even kept an eye out for the thaypw.org domain name when Axdec let that expire and grabbed it back for us.
Unfortunately though, back around September of 2013, KTA had real-life changes that caused him to quickly drop from full-time to a non-active member of the community. He does still, however, add new members which I understand is a manual process because we were getting dozens of bots a day signing up fake accounts in years past. So he's around...just not active. Regardless, I've been very pleased with these forums and the job KTA has done in managing them to get them to the nice state they are in, and have been in, for years.
We are approaching the 2 year mark on his general hiatus, I will admit I have been slightly concerned about the future of these forums. But within the last 6-8 months, KTA has assured both me and Sundraoi that he will continue hosting these forums and renewing the thaypw.org domain name, which has provided some peace of mind. I've discussed the future of this site with the staff and it sounds like Sundraoi may have some ability to host the forums if the worst came to pass and these were shut down unexpectedly, too.
But if someone wishes to take over hosting of these forums, we'd need you to work with KTA to ensure a smooth transition. He pays for all expenses out of his own pocket right now, but the costs for someone else taking over would be more than just a one-time expense and include monthly hosting fees and the yearly (or whatever) registration of the domain name. Furthermore, I would require that *if* we end up moving these, the administration of the actual machine or site these forums are hosted on is jointly-done, so if someone does have RL come up, we have another person(s) that can easily step in and take over the costs of running the server/site so we don't get in this same situation when the person in charge can no longer devote time to Thay.
I've got more than enough to do without taking on the job of setting up a new serve rand site for these forums somewhere else, so if anyone wants to see this done, I'll need those interested to take the initiative and see it through.
RE: Forum Hosting - Animayhem - 05-21-2015
Thanks to KTA and Sundraoi for doing this. Having been on two worlds who had to do this, it was quite the experience.
Prior to my joining the one world they had a severe problem which caused them to lose valuable written rp and world history.
This forum is one of the more liberal and has very few restrictions.
Thanks to Thayan for creating this place. :)
RE: Forum Hosting - DarkRanger - 05-21-2015
Ok I was definitely tired when I read what Wids posted because I did a search for Neverwinter Nights server hosting. Anyway, if people feel it necessary I could help out some with the one time stuff but I can't commit to anything monthly/annual right now. I'd also definitely not be the one to do the search as I couldn't tell what's a good price on a good machine, a bad price on a good machine, etc.
RE: Forum Hosting - Wids - 05-21-2015
Unless I'm mistaken, Thay's NWN Persistent World is hosted on an American server. So suggests Thay's Iscandar page:
http://www.iscandar.ch/server.php?ip=65.101.102.74&port=5121&template=black
And it's only this forum site -- and not the NWN server -- that's hosted in Germany. Correct?
RE: Forum Hosting - Balanor - 05-21-2015
Yes, that's correct. I host the PW itself on a server in the US. These forums are hosted from a server located somewhere in Europe.
RE: Forum Hosting - Bishop Edward - 05-22-2015
(05-21-2015, 10:28 AM)Thayan Wrote: Furthermore, I would require that *if* we end up moving these, the administration of the actual machine or site these forums are hosted on is jointly-done, so if someone does have RL come up, we have another person(s) that can easily step in and take over the costs of running the server/site so we don't get in this same situation when the person in charge can no longer devote time to Thay.
I'm totally willing to help out as one of the secondary backup joint admins you mentioned here, Mr. T.,
I could also probably draft any legal documents that such an arrangement might require, if necessary...
RE: Forum Hosting - Balanor - 05-22-2015
I don't know that any legal documents would be required. I think it would more likely be a matter of sharing the logins and password to the server/site the forums are hosted on, as well as where/how to pay any associated costs with running the server (domain registrar, server hosting, etc). Of course, my experience running a forum is extremely limited, so there probably is more to it than that.
RE: Forum Hosting - Bishop Edward - 05-22-2015
Hrm.. yeah I was thinking like, setting up joint ownership, so that the server, domain, and such belongs to our community as a whole and not to the particular host who happens to register it, but that isn't strictly necessary here I suppose...
RE: Forum Hosting - Wids - 05-23-2015
Well, I can think of a few options right off the top of my head.
One is to go with Runboard as a host, as one or two PW forums that I know about have done. There are options for Free forums and Premium forums (the latter of which costs $25 or 25 Euros per every 100,000 page views). Users can have paid accounts or free accounts as well. The downside includes not having your own icon for internet browser tabs (as all Runboard sites use the same Runboard icon) and the mandatory "B" in all Runboard URLs (so if your forum site's named Dances With Mariliths, your URL will come out "bdanceswithmariliths.runboard.com"...which kinda sucks).
Option Two is to take Proboards as a host, and Proboards is fairly popular among a fair number of NWN server forums out there. Its downsides are similar to those of Runboard, as far as I can see.
Option Three is where I get off my butt and see about changing my own Yahoo-based (and formerly Geocities-based) website which, at present, costs me about $40 every three months because it's on the Small Business plan. The three play-by-email World of Darkness campaigns which one of my Air Force buddies and I used to run through my Tritonius site have been defunct for about ten years now, and I'm really only using the website to host pictures, MP3 tunes and the odd video these days (and I'm not using the website to run a small business, as my Yahoo service keeps reminding me), so I've been wanting to find a cheaper plan with fewer bells and whistles. I've been wanting to call up Yahoo and speak with them about doing this, so perhaps I can ask them about piggybacking a forum site onto my plan as well.
Just some ideas. What other options might we have for changing our hosting service? And which hosting service are we using now?
RE: Forum Hosting - Sundraoi - 05-23-2015
OK, time to put in my two cents worth. With all the work KTA put into these forums and the Thaypw.org domain name he keeps up for us, if he is willing, as he has stated he is, too keep it up, I see no reason to move. It seems to me the biggest gripe is with not being allowed to post videos to the forums. Big deal. If someone wants to see what you've linked, minus the http:/www part, they can go find it easily enough. We've had these forums up and running since before the Thay world reset and have never had issues with it. Why fix or change what's not broken?