Finding a new home for the PCKF

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Nisaba
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Post by Nisaba »

keenmaster486 wrote:
Fleexy wrote:I would personally prefer (strongly) to not have third-party ads here. A discreet donation link to help with server costs would be appropriate, though.
Amen.
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Benvolio
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Post by Benvolio »

Agreed. No Ads. If wikipedia can do it we can. Someone quoted a tenner per annum. If the cost is actually higher than that, feel free to get in touch!
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Malvineous
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Post by Malvineous »

Hi all!

It's been a while since I stopped by but Commander Spleen let me know about this discussion. I'm sure most of you know I host the KeenWiki and the ModdingWiki.

I'm not about to put my hand up to host the PCKF though, because I daresay I don't put enough time into the wikis as-is already. But I have a few ideas you may (or may not!) wish to consider.

1. Community hosting. Rather than tacking the site onto someone's existing hosting they are using for something else, could a host be purchased solely for the PCKF? If so, a few people from the community could then be given access to it, so that we aren't relying on one single person. Then as people come and go, the admins can change but the hosting can stay the same. This may cost a little more per month, so the suggestion of a Kickstarter-style campaign could be worthwhile to get things off the ground.

2. Backups/exports. I try to provide (although not nearly as often as I should) a complete backup of both the KeenWiki and the ModdingWiki, so that if I suddenly disappear, someone else can put the content up on another host and keep the wikis going. I don't think I've ever seen an export of either Keen forum, so it would be nice to have this available on the new host.

As an example of this, leaving ezBoard meant we had to leave all our posts behind, because there was no means of exporting the posts. Having regular exports available would make it easier to trust the new host, as we would not be held hostage in case anything goes wrong because we could leave at any time, and use the backup to transfer everything to a new host.

As a side note, I wrote a web crawler not that long ago that is able to convert all the ezBoard posts into XML format, however I was stuck figuring out how to import them into phpBB. Currently there is no generic import for phpBB, you have to code one in PHP for every system you want to import from. Having an XML import would greatly benefit the phpBB project, so if anyone with the skills is willing to write an XML-to-phpBB importer, you would be very popular over there, and we'd be able to get the ezBoard posts into phpBB as well.

3. Ads. Perhaps you could consider having no ads by default, but allow people to enable ads if they choose? Then those people who are not in a position to support the PCKF financially, but still want to help out, can turn ads on and contribute that way.

4. KeenWiki. If there is community hosting, it might be nice to move the KeenWiki across to it as well. Then whoever the community admins are can look after both forums and the wiki all in one place. It's been fun looking after the KeenWiki all these years (in two months, on 2 September, it'll have been 10 years since the first edit!) however like Andy, there are many other demands on my time and I am not able to spend as much time as I'd like looking after the wiki. While I try to be as fair as possible to the community, there are still also some occasional disagreements (e.g. some want skin mods listed, I consider them fan art and so it doesn't belong) so if this was hosted on a community server then there would be no one person to say what does and does not get included.

Anyway, just some food for thought. If the decision does end up going down the path of community hosting, I'm happy to be involved in the initial setup and stay in the background as an "emergency admin" if needed.
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Fleexy
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Post by Fleexy »

Good to see you around! Community-managed hosting seems like a good idea. I think we'd be able to come up with a few extra dollars to handle that and the wikis. I did write a scraper for this forum a while back, but a real database export (minus private stuff like PMs, e-mails, and password hashes) would be better. It seems possible for forum admins to manually put users in a state where they see or don't see ads. I'd be happy to set all this up once we figure out the server situation.
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Nisaba
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Post by Nisaba »

open question: what about adding/using an RSS Feed option?
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Keening_Product
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Post by Keening_Product »

A very quick googling suggests phpbb 3 has Atom built in.


An update: I've just upgraded my hosting. Strong chance I can auspice the PCKF for at least a few years.
Keening_Product was defeated before the game.

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Nisaba
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Post by Nisaba »

is there any news concerning hosting questions?
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