As sites go, this one has minimal software and server requirements. There have been a number of offers of help to host the site, so any fears of it's disappearance are probably premature.
Like others, I'd like to know of our backup plan should we one day find ourselves without our current server.
The sky is falling part II.
I contacted a photo.net sysadmin and got the following response:
I had offered to host the large-format forum at one point but after looking at it the work was a pretty big task because of the old code all the greenspun.com forums run on. Philip wanted to move it to photo.net but Tuan wasn't sure he wanted to do that. The problem is getting the old data from the greenspun.com machine into the new installation--it's not as easy as you'd think. First I'd like to see if we can move it someplace more stable (like photo.net) where we can easily keep the old data. I may see if Philip will let me move the greenspun.com machine into my datacenter so I can get it running better and have the ability to get it back up quickly should it crash. Right now that machine and several of the other photo.net servers are located in a borrowed space and I don't have physical access to the hardware to kick 'em back to life. This has been a problem and it has taken several days to get someone to restart the servers--this ain't good enough."
From my conversations with Philip, i get the my impression that he is happy to continue hosting the have the LF forum or have it move over to the photo.net servers and to keep hosting it from there. but that decision is Tuan's to make. This is one of about two or three dozen LUSENET forums hosted by greenspun.com and a lot of those are effectively dead, but this one is not.
I still haven't tracked down the guy who made the post I referred to in my first post in this thread.
I just got back today from a five week long trip. The situation is that in December, after my post about the possible move to photo.net or alternatives (please refer to "The future of this forum" posting in the Admin category), I received a couple of alternative offers to run the OpenACS software on a server. However, they have not yet materialized. As Ellis mentionned, while setting up a new BB appears easy, transfering the data from greenspun.com to a new BB appears to require some work. What's next ? If none of the alternatives materializes fast enough, let say before the summer, I will hand over the forum to photo.net.
Am I understanding correctly from the previous posts that starting up OpenACS on a different server and continuing the forum is not the heavy workload problem, but the heavy workload problem is only transferring the historical data over to the new server? If that is correct, I would speculate that most of us would rather continue the forum with no historical data than to continue with photo.net. Besides, think how much fun it would be to answer all those which- tripod-to-buy and tri-x-vs.-tmax and what-lens-would-you-buy-if-you- could-only-afford-one questions again! I'm serious, I think it would be a shame but not the end of the world to continue on with no archives. Certainly better than photo.net. Additionally, maybe the historical data could be transferred over slowly as time permits after the new server and forum was underway. I'm frustrated that I have so little knowledge of web servers and the like. Does anyone agree?
I don't think that this forum needs a particular kind of software to run. It's rather a matter of finding someone who is willing to host it. The reason for me saying this is that I'm a web programmer by profession and that I could easily port the functionality of this forum to whatever is needed really. This forum is currently run with tcl (pronounced tickle) software which probably is OK, but I have frankly not written a single line of tcl code in my life. But that can be compared to someone who have never shot and processed a single sheet of say Agfa APX 100 or have ever used PMK developer. Not having used a specific film or developer doesn't make me a lousy photographer as I may get excellent results with Ilford or Fuji. (There are of course other brands as well, but I can't remember the names... :-) Porting the functionality of the forum to say Perl or PHP (which are other programming languages) isn't that hard to do. Besides there are already lots of "free" code available which would make the porting into a matter of getting a desireable look and feel. I'm quite sure that there are lots of ideas for improvement of the forum as well. So, do I have anything against the current forum. In general, no, apart from the regular downtimes from which we all suffer. What I'm trying to say is that IF the forum is to be moved, the important thing is to find a host for it that can give us the space we need and a somewhat better "uptime". Which software to run it with doesn't really matter, as long as it is stable and that it isn't some esoteric kind of stuff which would make the code unmaintainable for anyone except the one who writes it. Having more or less insinuated it, could I do a porting of the forum to some other kind of software? Well, at the moment I do have the time for it. I cannot answer for what my schedule will look like in say two months. But it is a matter of a few days of coding if so would be the case. And the answer is no, i.e. I don't expect this to bring any greenbacks into my pocket. I'd do it simply because I enjoy this community and all the knowledge in it very much.
I agree with the anything but photo.net post.
To the poster just above, apparently there ARE people who are quite partial to this software. See the "This forum and Palm OS" thread. But again, anything but photo.net IMAO.
Most importantly though, I hope the people who have the knowledge and ability to help avert the loss of this forum are contacting Q. Tuan and working with him by email to figure out how to do it. Just talking about it here wont help, but it would be nice if those involved keep us updated here.
My personal wishes are to keep the old threads, as they are full of resources an d I often like to search references to a product or technique. But of course there is little I can offer to pass the ar chives into a new forum.
If they can be kept, a search engine as in PhotoNet would be invaluable to quick ly find old threads. I personally participate to some Yahoo forums but dislike very much the forums messy format, and the recent advert popups are disturbing. The actual Greenspun format or PhotoNet format would be fine. From t wo evils, PhotoNet would be the least.
My appreciation and thanks to those who will put the ideas into practice. Let us know if we can participate in a way or another!
I agree. Photo.net would be a reasonable alternative. But if this forum goes to Yahoo, it has seen the last of me. I can't stand the flashing adds. JIm
J.L. kennedy writes: "I would speculate that most of us would rather continue the forum with no historical data than to continue with photo.net."
I don't understand what the hostility is to this forum being hosted on the photo.net servers/?
No one said that the forum wouls be incorporated into the main photo.net forums, and even if it was you can always select just the p.n forums you want to see and leave out those that you are completely uninterested in.
And once again, if this forum goes to yahoo! not only am I out of here, but I'm going to request that my past contributions are deleted as well. I'm very much more concerned with yahoo!'s copyright claims to my work as they are a corporate outfit that will sooner or later try to wring every penny of value out of their product (our content) than I am with p.n trying to do something similar.
I am also very concerned with continuity, obliterating the past is a rather silly Stalinist approach to education.
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