"The Great Crash of 2013" a.k.a. The Future of ACL site hosting

[Benslights]

Allan how can I say this " I could not have said it better myself"

and things are happening behind the scene that will not be posted or should be as we all do not need to know every little detail.

I say lets all have a deep breathe and enjoy the holidays and thank all that keep this site going in whatever way they do.

Ryan thank you so much for the last few sleepless nights getting acl back up and running with help from Harrison and I look forward to acl growing in 2014

 

[dale82]

Here is just a thought, Is it possible to "Contribute/Donate" and make this Forum better and leave everything as is but make it better? If you get what I mean, I want to contribute but I know making a donation that is already linked to this site is not going to it at all as aussie phil has disappeared. if we could set something else up to help make this better? would this help Ryan and Harrison out?

 

[multicast]

Silly question


(1) Who is "in charge" of this Forum / Web site

 

[sck1ng]

Re: "The Great Crash of 2013" a.k.a. The Future of ACL site hosting

Now I have a special deal with a collocation service in Florida but I only pay $130 a month for .5gb service. I own the server and can put whatever I want on it. Have you looked into collocation service in aus? Network is barely ever down and I am solely responsible for my own backups and server stability. Before a major upgrade to my software I had a 2.5 year uptime on my server. So far after the upgrade it's been going for a half year.

 

[ԆцряєсϮ]

Just out of curiosity, who are or is the Admins of this site now? And what is the Mod structure etc.
When I joined it was AussiePhill, I assume now as he's not been seen that he no longer is?


By the way, I'm happy to keep paying as well, I think $10 or $20 a year is more than reasonable.


Edit: oops should have read to the bottom of the thread.... ^^^ What Andrew said^^^^^

 

[multicast]

Current admins:
AussiePhil - not been heard from for a long time, but owns the ACL domain name
Ryan (ryanschristmaslights) - quiet achiever

Current mods:
FastEddy
Superman

Any idea who is in charge though? Who makes decisions?

 

[ecbailey]

Doesn't seem to be that there is a lot wrong with the hosting, simply and lack of backup. Considering the show off videos are just embedded from Vimeo and YouTube, I would doubt that the volume of data created everyday from largely just text based posts would be that great and hence it wouldn't require that much additional resources (disk space, bandwidth etc) to have a real time mirror of everything or at least daily or twice daily backups. Most of the activity seems to be around evening and night, so a daily backup at say, 3am or so would ensure that much stuff was unlikely to be lost in the event of a crash. The backup doesn't have to be full each time, the best solution would comprise of a monthly full backup, weekly differential and then daily full backups as to create a good combination of quick restore time and minimal use of disk space.


Just out of interest, does anybody know how many GB(TB?) ACL takes up?

 

[multicast]

Current admins:
Aussie Phil - not been heard from for a long time, but owns the ACL domain name
Ryan (ryanschristmaslights) - quiet achiever

Current mods:
FastEddy
Superman

Any idea who is in charge though? Who makes decisions?

A most excellent question.

Maybe no body is in charge?

 

[mborg10]

Re: "The Great Crash of 2013" a.k.a. The Future of ACL site hosting

I'm not going to jump in and give my thoughts on what should be done with ACL cause basically I don't know enough about that sort of stuff.

All I know is I'm here for info and help and I ain't leaving. Without ACL my lights wouldn't be as good as what they are.

If the decision is made to have paid membership, I'd pay. If it means donating, I'd donate. I say that now cause I know how good this place is, but rewind 2 years ago when I joined and I wouldn't be so willing to hand over cash and I probably would have just stayed with off the shelf LOR products.

What's the answer... I don't know, but what I do know is I like it here.

 

[muzzag50]

Everyone in ACL Forums are very friendly, always helpful and this information on forum is awesome.

Whilst I did donate the past two years, future donations from me my not be forthcoming:-

>> I am a little concerned my donation may not be used to help the forum.

>> I can't find anywhere to donate. >> Missing Donation Button

(Searching returns http://auschristmaslighting.com/forums/index.php/topic,1857.msg15220.html#msg15220 -- " •A Donation system has been put in place, a donation button now appears on the top menu, this will take you to this page http://auschristmaslighting.com/forums/index.php?action=treasury ")

Hopefully these concerns will be addressed over time.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

(PS: It is a little worrying the main forum administrator AussiePhil hasn't been on since March 2013..)

 

[darylc]

Before we can consider the future hosting and so on, we need to resolve the issue of site ownership.

a) Is AussiePhil contactable (by anyone on ACL)? Is he willing to transfer ownership or management (has he already transferred management to ryanschristmaslights?)

b) Should we consider some risk mitigation?
- Consider getting a new domain name and get people to start using it pointed back to the existing server to mitigate the domain name not being renewed in 2015?
- Consider setting up a new site/forums to 'replace' 'ACL' over time
- If AussiePhil is uncontactable then it might be reasonable to copy the content over and redirect people to the new site

The only thing I feel about strongly in all of this is that donations should be voluntary and ACL or it's future site should not require paid membership.

Daryl

 

[SmartAlecLights]

Ive left a Msg with Phil to Contact the great admin staff here at ACL.
Phil is around, but there are reasons he's not around here as much.
Last i herd the domain name was a gift to ACL by Phil.

 

[ecbailey]

I still don't see why we can't use the existing hosting (unless the he wants us gone?.....).


We just need to implement an automated backup solution. I am happy to give up some space on my hosting (unlimited space) or on my physicals disks at home....I've got some reasonable net connected QNAP NAS Drives.


But if we were to move and the domain can't be changed, we could get the same but .net or .net.au and make the current one redirect.

 

[harrisonk]

Re: "The Great Crash of 2013" a.k.a. The Future of ACL site hosting

The massive size of ACL is the chat logs. The rest is just SQL tables. Another thing to think about is the bandwidth to access the site. Lat month this was in excess of 500GB.

 

[harrisonk]

Re: "The Great Crash of 2013" a.k.a. The Future of ACL site hosting

I would also like to reiterate. I'm more then happy to continue hosting ACL. We just have to iron out a few bugs with the current chat software and figure out what went wrong with our current backups.

I am currently interstate in Perth and managing a server from a phone is a little difficult.

Please just give myself and Ryan some time to clean some stuff up behind the scenes and we will try our best to bring you the best ACL we can possibly can.


While we don't have a timeline at this stage for the chat system to get fixed up maybe take a little break. If the sites down for a few hours here and there don't get mad. I'll try my best to implement patches overnight (sorry overseas guys) so there will be minimal disruption.

Once again. Thank you to all for the kind words and showing your support for myself and Ryan trying this semi stressful time.