Potential closure of the forum

[DDRM]

Hi Everyone,

Richard has decided it is not viable for this forum to continue to be hosted in the same place as the rest of his website, because of the threat to the total data usage, which could make unavailable elements of the website that he feels need to be "always on". Discussions are continuing about ways to avoid its loss, but it is not clear that a solution will be found.

Please be warned that this forum may disappear without notice, either temporarily or permanently.

Best wishes,

David

[Edja]

this forum may disappear without notice

Without an alternative this would be a great loss...
Edja

[Hated Moron]

Without an alternative this would be a great loss...

The forum's administrator seems to think that there are adequate 'alternatives'. He recently wrote "This forum is already effectively mirrored in the groups.io site (I think all posts are cross-posted at present), you have your distillery site, and there is the unofficial shadow site that Kendall set up last time there was a major crisis.".

Although that's not entirely accurate (for example the Distillery site is not mine, it's Soruk's) it seems to be at the heart of his unwillingness to move this forum to a new host, so that it can continue in existence without threatening to exceed the bandwidth cap.

My view has always been that although the Discussion Group is functional, it doesn't provide the facilities that a programming language support forum really needs. The ability to embed code within a post, without mucking up the formatting, is very limited; there's no division into different areas of interest, limiting the extent to which you can filter notifications; there's no way of embedding videos etc.

Anyway we are where we are. It now looks very likely that this forum will be closing permanently at the end of this month. I could, of course, then start a new forum from scratch but all the existing message archives, membership list etc. would be lost. And I don't want a repeat of the (enormous) upset that was caused the last time I was a forum administrator.

[Hated Moron]

On 17/04/2023 13:28, Sean Miller wrote (cross-posted from the Discussion Group):

For goodness sake Richard, let's find a solution rather than make it a problem.

I'm really so fed up with this that I'm not motivated to struggle any further.

I thought I had come up with the perfect solution: move the forum to a new host, so that it wouldn't share the same bandwidth cap, but in such a way that it had no impact at all on the existing administrator or on the existing members. They would access the forum in the same way they always have, indeed there would be no way of telling anything had changed at all.

I assumed that the admin could have no objection to this, because (apart from the one-off extra task of restoring the forum from a backup) it would not involve him in any additional effort, not give him any additional responsibilities, and not alter in any way how he administered the forum. How could he possibly object?

How wrong I was!

Okay -- can the person who offered to host the forum for free please stand up and make themselves known?

Please don't, that's a confidential matter between them and me. All I can say is that I've had offers from three people to provide free hosting, and one of them has even gone to the trouble of already installing phpBB. Transferring the forum to his host could probably be completed in minutes, if the admin was prepared to cooperate.

If they are provided with a TAR file of the forum plus a Database Backup I'm sure they will be able to restore it

You can't transfer the forum by backing up and restoring files (not safely, anyway), not least because of the way it interacts with the database management facilities of the host. The way to do it is to backup the forum and the old host and then restore it at the new host, using the facilities provided by phpBB itself. Only the forum's administrator can do that, I can't.

we may need a new domain, as that would be cleaner, and then you can make the old subdirectory point there can you not?

I don't think a new domain provides any advantage, who would own it and pay for it? But, yes, as I've made clear in the other thread I can very easily link to, or probably redirect to, the new host. Indeed one of the reasons I created the 'landing page' for the forum (the one with the yellow announcement box) was precisely to simplify moving the forum elsewhere, because I can trivially change where the Dismiss button links to.

To some extent I think we've got this all "upside down" because I think the issue is the very small amount of bandwidth you appear to have on your hosting plan and it would be better to move everything lock, stock and barrel to another host who would provide something more fitting for the 21st Century... but that is as it is!!

50 Gbytes per month is the largest bandwidth of any of the (non-reseller) hosting packages offered by my particular host, so it's hardly "very small". But what's far more important than bandwidth is reliability - that's absolutely crucial for serving the in-browser edition of BBC BASIC - and that has been excellent to date. I very much doubt that you can identify an alternative host that is as cheap and as reliable as my current one (although I'd be interested to know if you think you can).

All this "the forum will be gone at the end of the month" talk is ridiculous because there are people willing to help move it so I think it will happen!!

The administrator is not willing to move it, he is adamant that he won't (see the other thread); without his cooperation it can't happen. As I said, a brand new forum could be created from scratch, but I don't think that's worth all the hassle and flak. Indeed it's happening already: you are posting highly critical comments about me, accusing me of being partly responsible for this mess. Would you like me to kill myself?

[Hated Moron]

On 17/04/2023 13:41, Sean Miller wrote (cross-posted from the Discussion Group):

I can register bbcbasicforum.co.uk for £5.58 if that's any help.

I can't see what value a new domain has. If it's of any benefit at all, I already own bbcbasic.com, bbcbasic.org, bbcbasic.net, bbcbasic.uk and bbcbasic.tv, any of which could be repurposed for no additional expenditure.