#1

some of you noticed server outages today.

disk space topped.

i’ve upgraded the server plan, which is on digitalocean. however, we’re now at $40/mo which is a lot. i’m looking for alternatives if anyone has suggestions, and/or may try to downgrade the server but add external storage, which is unfortunately not straightforward.

in the meantime, if you need great server space, i suggest digitalocean. use the lines referral code and you’ll help offset the cost of running lines:

cheers.

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#2

I enjoy this little part of the internet a lot and would happily chip in a few €/£/$ a month to help offset the running costs.

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#3

Same. I owe a lot to this community

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#4

I wholeheartedly agree. I’d be more than willing to pitch in, either one time or something more regular.

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#5

Yes, please do this:
https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/get-started/create-recurring-donation-button

I will happily contribute.

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#6

Posting rarely here, but reading & enjoying it very much, so count me in for server cost donations!

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#7

Pease set up a donation link for server costs!

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#8

+1 (and another few characters)

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#9

I would happily contribute as well.

#10

i call dibs on february… i’ll cover february!

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#11

…with this, I am sure there are enough people here that would contribute some small enough amounts, but on regular basis, to offset the $40 a month. Which, when spread among a bunch of people will be negligible.

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#12

Agreed. It would only take 40 people donating $1/mo …, fewer if some people donated a bit more.

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#13

thank you for the most appreciated outreach and support!

but honestly i upgraded the server because i presently have no time to transition to a more affordable setup-- which will likely mean moving the server to a digitalocean zone which supports their new “blocks” disk storage. so the post was fundamentally to hear any feedback of alternative web services you all use (because i know many of you here are smarter than me about this stuff!)

some day i may consider a donate-to-lines system if i feel lines crosses a sufficient mostly-not-monome threshold.

which is also to say-- if anyone has suggestions for how to make this community even more inclusive and/or invite more varied discussion of other groups-- i’m always interested!

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#14

Normally I would have server suggestions, but you’re already two steps ahead of me. Digitalocean is good stuff.

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#15

I think sticking with DO is a good choice. I know quite a few people working there and it’s a solid service with a great team behind it. You could probably find another service that’s marginally cheaper but I doubt the savings would be worth the time investment to move things over.

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#16

in my experience discourse hosting is just rather expensive due to the underlying tech, while phpbb2 et al were terrible, they were pretty low demand relative to the complex-ish [borderline wasteful of resources] rails stack that discourse runs on.

That said, as forum tech goes this is leagues better than what we’ve had historically.

Another +1 for donation if that becomes an option :slight_smile:

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#17

I was curious as to what was running out of space though - is it the actual DB, or is it Bloody Log Files? I’m aware it takes you away from mod_php on a box rather than a stack.

Beyond that - yeah, moving anything to detachable storage always takes time/config/faff which isn’t always something people have time for.

(I’m staggered at how many phpBB/similar forums just eat resources and people outlay more and more money to keep them alive; it seems like the most dreadful piece of software.)

#18

indeed, i was going to ask, what kind of resources are needed ?
Is the discourse software currently deployed on a sort of PaaS, or on a dedicated server ?
Cause 40€/$ begins to yield some serious power on a dedicated machine, probably way more than needed for a forum software (even a modern one).

#19

to be clear - not trying to backseat-sysadmin here, nothing more infuriating than that. just genuinely curious.

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#20

This was the topic of a rather epic rant from eevee. Shared here purely for entertainment purposes.

But hey, that’s life at scale.

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