[clue-admin] [ADMIN] Those who want to determine the hosting provider... raise your hands

[Jed S. Baer]

On Fri, 17 Dec 2010 11:12:18 -0700
YES NOPE9 wrote:

> > As to things which might have changed a lot, I'd like to see that
> > documented.
> 
> Here are the changes .........
> == Active Clue membership has declined

Which has been happening for more than just the past year. Though at
least judging from meetings I've attended, I had the impression
attendance was up just a bit. I don't know the numbers for mailing list
subscribers from last year, so I can't compare those to this year.

> == Funding sources appear to have declined .... money must be used more
> carefully

I think we actually had more money last year than in any prior years.
Remember that we used to get hosting free, and our main expense prior to
signing up for VPSlink was the projector. I don't know what the projector
cost, and we did have some ongoing fundraising for that, so might be one
year with a higher total, and IIRC, there was some excess which we used
to buy other hardware, and maybe the rest went to our 1st year at VPSlink.

> == Relevant internet related services that CLUE provides to
> members probably fall in the category of:
> Website to explain CLUE and show coming events
> Discussion groups
> Archiving changing content and messages
> ( I don't really see any other requirements )
> == Adding content and supporting website could be more egalitarian
> == Really simple and cheap Linux based solutions have become more
> available

I haven't seen any major changes in pricing or capabilities in
shared-hosting environments.

> Anyway, David Anselmi will probably end up with enough money to
> maintain the status quo  .... So we can spend another year ( sigh )
> sniping over alternative visions.  It appears that Jed Baer ( and
> perhaps Crawford ) are the only people interested in figuring out the
> hosting.  Is this correct ?

We haven't spent a year sniping about hosting. What we've done is wait
until the last minute, yet again, to consider the issue. Last year we
decided it'd be good to test various things out at VPSlink, but that
didn't happen. I think that's still the best approach to take, so there
isn't yet anything to figure out in re. switching hosting. I actually
want to scale back my involvement in running CLUE, which is part of why I
resigned as webmaster at the end of 2008. But things are in a state of
flux right now, and I don't know what, if anything, is going on wrt
recruiting people for doing various tasks. And if there's a shiny CMS on
its way, then it seems silly to transition the current system to someone
else anyway. I'm all in favor of a committee, or a person, doing due
diligence to figure out our best option for hosting, but it isn't going
to be me, and until we know what our requrements are, I don't think it's
reasonable to try and make that change.

-- 
Ok, so we should be thinking of a lovable, cuddly, stuffed penguin
sitting down after having gorged itself on herring. Still with me? 
 -- Linus Torvalds