Rebuilding FSTDT

[BobRumba]

After several weeks of the website being down and no explanation, a few of us thought it might be time to gather a few people together, those in the know, those with some history here, to see if we can figure out a way to get the board restarted, give it a new admin structure, etc. so that we don't find ourselves in this situation again, and we have backups.

I'm not sure the best way to go about this, and I'm only voicing this because no one else seems to have done so, I'm by no means a take-charge kind of person but maybe the first step is we can gather a few people here who have some kind of history with this place, know the ropes in terms of anything from the programming of it to the approval of comments.

I'm hopeful to see this turned into a topic and that people contribute to it, so that we can get the website back, as so many of us love it and would hate to lose it.  If there is a forum admin here, can you start a new topic under "general" on the main page and re-post this message there?

[Sigmaleph]

If you want me to pin a thread, I will. I'd rather not start a new section, if that's what you're asking.

[BobRumba]

If you want me to pin a thread, I will. I'd rather not start a new section, if that's what you're asking.

Whatever you can do to boost visibility, and hopefully get some action...I think it's important enough given the circumstances.

[RavynousHunter]

I understand the underlying technology well enough; barring the few points of styling info and assets (which could potentially be nicked from an archive.org snapshot), it wouldn't be that difficult to reimplement.  The only issue would be that none of the original content (quotes, comments, and accounts) would exist in the hypothetical new version.  That, and there's no guarantee that should the original come back, that any data between the two would be able to be reintegrated.  Of course, one could always make an API for that.

[BobRumba]

I understand the underlying technology well enough; barring the few points of styling info and assets (which could potentially be nicked from an archive.org snapshot), it wouldn't be that difficult to reimplement. 

That is encouraging, so rebuilding seems possible (even if you wouldn't necessarily want to run with the job on an ongoing basis, we could find someone else willing to do that).  An old archives is desirable but obviously we'll work with what we've got.  And shy could return at any time as well.

[RavynousHunter]

Aye.  The biggest issue would be money.  I don't got enough to host a site like that, which was why Shy took over in the first place.  Without a financier, all I gots is ideas and some code lying about doing naught.

[BobRumba]

The next question then becomes how much money's required to make something like this happen.  These are all questions that shy could probably answer in a heartbeat, so it's a shame we have to work around him, but the situation is what it is.

[RavynousHunter]

It'd depends on the amount of traffic the site gets per month.  Google might be able to get us an estimate of visits from earlier in the year, which might help in figuring that out.

[BobRumba]

Anyone else out there?  Anyone want to help?

[davedan]

I would love to help but I have literally no useful skills or knowledge.

[RavynousHunter]

You got money?  Halfway joking, but that's the biggest thing we'd need.

[davedan]

How much do we need?

[BobRumba]

I would love to help but I have literally no useful skills or knowledge.

At least you expressed interest, so thanks for that.

[RavynousHunter]

I'm having a hard time finding traffic info; everything's just rankings, no hard numbers with historical data.  If I had to guess, from what little I got, the mainpage saw maybe 1,000 visitors daily.  If we assume that each visit consumes approx. 2MB bandwidth per session (an overestimation, most likely, as the data on each page is very small), then we'd need about 60GB/month of bandwidth.  Round that up to prolly 75-100GB to have wiggle room.

[davedan]

what does that mean in currency?