May You Live In Interesting Times (Discussion).

DeVore

Hi there,

This is the usual update on what is going on in the palatial Boards HQ and our, nearly realised, plans for world domination.

Much has been afoot!

We're moving server. Probably in the next two weeks. If you think that’s traumatic, you don’t know the half of it. Boards.ie is now running around 2.5 million pages served a month. Any downtime and Regi's and my lives turn to hell! You cant just unplug it and cart it over to another host. It doesn’t run on ISDN either.

For the first time in our 4-year history we now own our own server. We've built it from bits and pieces lying around here and with a lot of the cash you gave at the boards bash (not least of which was the raffle for the Legal Letter). W00t!

We now have a dual 733 Mhz Pentium server with a whopping 1.7 gigs of main memory and about 64 gigs of HD space.

The server is being hosted by Hosting365 and in the near future will be sitting about 30 metres from the new INEX (Irish NEutral Exchange, or the crossroads where all the telcos meet, to the non-techies out there), so response times should be good from all ISPs.

This means more space, more RAM and a dedicated HD for the database (which will be cached directly into main memory for speed).

We are also only going to be hosting Boards.ie (and not other miscellaneous stuff) so we can progress some of the HackAttack ideas we've been having over on the community coding forum. That will start to gear up after the move.

This means that Boards is now becoming cheaper to run as we don’t have to pay whopping bills for machine rental as well as

bandwidth and hosting. That means Boards.ie is now slowly becoming self-sufficient which was the plan 4 years ago when we started. Now we have to have a long hard think about what we *want* to do with Boards.ie. Where do we want to be in 4 years time?

We'll be opening a discussion about that on the Admin forum soon, as we plan on kicking the whole "community supporting itself" idea into a higher gear in the future. It may also be time for a Charter for the whole site... as statement of intent, something like an agreement between all of us as to what can be planned for and what shouldn’t.
I'm thinking things like a pledge to never ever do pop-ups. To never let the email list out of our hands etc. A map to build something kinda cool... back to where the websites started (like Yahoo) before they fncked their users over for a excessive profit.
The cool thing is that we don’t have investors to answer to, we can do as we see fit. So what do we see fit???

Anyway, I digress. We will be moving the site over sometime in the near future (that’s Regis department). We'll probably experience any number of minor issues but I'm sure you'll bear with us!

Pretty soon I'm going to open up a major discussion on the future of Boards.ie because at this stage we've done pretty much what we set out to do a long time ago and its time to plan again.

May you live in interesting times? We wouldn’t have it any other way

DeV and the Admins.


(as ever you can discuss this on the Admin forums...)

Bard

Sounds promising. Kudos to all involved.

Cheers, hosting365!

seamus

Yuss! Having recently procured IRC, tis all OK. IRC is what kept me sane during the last move. plyd gg etc etc

Gordon

Good stuff peeps.

smoke.me.a.kipper

@boards.ie email.

custom forum styles (presumably after vBulletin 3 is here).

more user webspace.

smak for president.

DeVore

1 and 3 look very likely Smak.
2 and 4 we'll have to see about

DeV.

amp

Might be possible now, but redirecting pm's to e-mail? Replying could be tricky and I'm sure there could be some bandwith/sql/php/perl/cobol related issues that I don't understand.

Any chance of jIRC being upgraded? or dumped in favour of something that's better?

But maybe best to wait for Vb3's whistles und bells.

Also, I think world domination should be given serious thought. Boards should get so big that I get to be a guest on a chat show where all I say is "I like cake" "Atari Jaguar" and "amp test". In fact screw that, I want to be the host (and still just say the same things only with question marks after them).

That is all.

DeVore

Can anyone find anything better the jIRC (and DONT mention CGI/IRC)

We might give a mail account with every user account but put a "sponsored by" message on it until you are a supporter of boards (ie: the supporters pack idea). Hmmm spammers might be a problem...

I'll be opening up a discussion soon on the commercial aspects and what we (as a group) think will work and what wont.

DeV.

seamus

Originally posted by DeVore
We might give a mail account with every user account but put a "sponsored by" message on it until you are a supporter of boards (ie: the supporters pack idea). Hmmm spammers might be a problem...

Messy as it is, you could put a web frontend on the SMTP and set the server to refuse to send all messages that don't originate from localhost. After that, spammers can be dealt with through bannings........

Bard

Originally posted by DeVore
Can anyone find anything better the jIRC (and DONT mention CGI/IRC)

The lads at cmeire.com have an excellent one installed at http://www.cmeire.com/chat/ . It's fully configurable - and apparently it's free.

Stephen

I notice that the users logged in record has been broken again today - 192 simultaneous users this afternoon - gg boards.ie

Yoda

Originally posted by DeVore
That means Boards.ie is now slowly becoming self-sufficient which was the plan 4 years ago when we started. Now we have to have a long hard think about what we *want* to do with Boards.ie. Where do we want to be in 4 years time?

One very cool thing is how some government departments and the ODTR and some big companies are watching the IOFFL thread. The Boards (especially with greater participation if the plain people of Ireland ever actually get online) could be an important source of information, in principle.

If only so many of the people who post to it would learn to spell.

DeVore

yes, thats a very cool chat applet. We'll be having a bit of that thanks.

DeV.

Ruaidhri

how about a step by step guide to how you installed your server and configuring it?
you could document it and take pics for all us,umm i mean all them geeks out there.

The Corinthian

[edit]Posted to the wrong thread [/edit]

Boston

I persume the email account thing would be pop based and not web based. I.E. YOu can use it from out look. I think you should screw the sponsored by idea as its annoying, and just make a flat out payment or a yearly payment for the accounts.

something like 20 euro for one and a five every year after. It would also mean that they wont be used as spam accounts.

Could also use it at a means to restrict access to certain areas, i.e hack attack and the like.

DeVore

we may do something like
Unsponsored: Web mail, line from us saying we sponsored it. No pop3.

Sponsor Pack: POP3 mail (ie outlook/Eudora) or Web access, no sponsorship line.

I dont see us ever making a board PPV except maybe Admin (the thinking being that if you arent happy to give us a small bit of money a year, I dont see why you should get a say in how the site develops.

Like I said, I think we need a charter or a plan personally. And I'll be writing a draft one soon for discussion.

DeV.

amp

Originally posted by Ruaidhri
how about a step by step guide to how you installed your server and configuring it?
you could document it and take pics for all us,umm i mean all them geeks out there.

Pervert.

As for Admin being ppv, well seeing as it's also the Supreme Court of boards.ie, I can forsee issues where non-paying members get no chance to defend their muppetry.

Then again unlike the real world everybody here's a muppet unless they prove otherwise.

Also, maybe a Supreme Court board where threads like the one about Gunnarse might be spun off from Admin.

amp, having vented his spleen, wanders off to get more Pepsi Max....

DeVore

hmmm interesting ideas there Amp but to be honest we dont have any plans to make Admin PPV in the foreseeable future... I just dont want to say "All boards will always be free" when the thought of Admin being PPV has crossed my mind.

I'm very much in a "Charter for the Next 5 years" mood at the moment so I want to start to define some things that everyone can hold us to, and for us to outlay where we think the site is going in the future so people know what we're thinking and cant come back later on and say we broke their trust in us etc...

Commercialisation is a dirty word but so is Debt. What I want to do is find a way that is fair and equitable and allows Boards to grow further while remaining true to the spirit/history.
If it doesnt do that, then we'll end up another souless piece of web-commercialisation and my interest in that is ZERO.

DeV.

dahamsta

Boards should get so big that I get to be a guest on a chat show where all I say is "I like cake" "Atari Jaguar" and "amp test". In fact screw that, I want to be the host (and still just say the same things only with question marks after them).

Picture the scene. Amp deep in thought, listening attentively to a wonderous superstar. The superstar stops, waiting for a deep and thoughtful reply from the Master. Amp leans over, touches them on the knee affectionately, and says...

"Hmmmm. Atari Jaguar?"

*snort*

PiE

Well I'd pay to see that for sure.

The Sweeper

...you would?

Jesus, get OUT more...

dahamsta

Hey, that'd be a good craic actually: Boards Revue. It's not as if we'd be at a loss for material. Course, amp wouldn't get a word in what with everyone shouting "AMP TEST" the minute he walked on stage.

At least we could get the bouncers to Ban Castor Troy though.

adam

smoke.me.a.kipper

Originally posted by DeVore
we may do something like
Unsponsored: Web mail, line from us saying we sponsored it. No pop3.

Sponsor Pack: POP3 mail (ie outlook/Eudora) or Web access, no sponsorship line.

you will recieve my payment as soon as this goes ahead.

boards.ie webmail = om-nyomity!

koneko

What can I donate to get a custom title?

How about cake?

DeVore

We're working on it. Slowly, ever so slowly... but it should happen this side of xmas. Hopefully.

DeV.

Keeks

It good to finally see that boards.ie is (slowly) becoming self-sufficiant and I welcome moves to make it so.

As for the charter, make it as simple as possible, but the main thing the charter should down is to allow the boards to continue to grow as it is.

Also it would be no harm to exactlly define how boards interacts with the business world. This whole alliance or friendships begin struck up with various companies (Kmoplott, Hosting365, UTV etc) is a little unnerving. I don't know the whole story about it (nor do I want to). But if don't know then the rest of the business community certainly doesn't. And to me, that could mean lost revenue through potential advertisers, or certain companied trying to "blackball" us.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is keep the rules simple for us to follow (along the lines of no muppetry) and have a detailed set of rules for the commerical world (such as adverts won't be pop-ups).

Nevyn

Yes i'd def be intrested in email and webspace, but it would depend on the contract


and in a Boards isp which was mentioned in breif on irc one night

kaimera

Originally posted by DeVore
We're working on it. Slowly, ever so slowly... but it should happen this side of xmas. Hopefully.

DeV.

Ah crap!:(

Looks my my donation will have to wait till I get home after Christmas...

any idea's on how the payments are to be made Dev?

through bank transfers, postal orders, cheques??

STaN

have u thought about sponsorship and if so... in what forms?

i may know a company, or 3

Wook

any chance in buying shares ?
(as a way of support ?, I am not interrested in alcohol bashes ? but i am interested in keeping this board )