[theforum] Lists Hosting

[David Kaufman]

hey Dean!

Dean Mah wrote:
> I think it's time to address the hosting of the lists.  The lists are
> currently [hosed] being hosted on a server that was never intended for
> that use and shares space with a number of other unrelated services.
> The server is also being paid for by a few people rather than by
> evolt.org itself.

i agree that it's time, too!  as Martin mentioned, we had some back and
forth about this on the finance list and the proposal for getting evolt,
starting with lists.evolt.org, paying for it's own hosting met with the
approval and enthusiasm of all participants.  i apologize for not
posting back to theForum that finance was on board, until now.

> The host ServerMatrix (http://www.servermatrix.com/) has been
> proposed.  For about $1000 a year, we'll get a TB of data transfer.
> The network connectivity also looks good.  It appears that we would
> have enough money to fund the server for the year.  Then we would rely
> on donations and pledges by members of the community to keep it going.

we do now have a comfortable nest egg, and no one can think of a better
way to plunder it... :-) also, servermatrix looks like a *great* host
to go with.

i will however repeat my penny-pinching suggestion that we opt for their
el-cheap-o Celeron offering and i'll even further amaze you all with my
ability to be cheap, by adding that i much prefer their "$99 setup +
$79 monthly" pricing option to the 49/99 alternative of course, since
that saves us $190 (in the first year, and $240/year thereafter).

and if that's not a great enough deal for you, back in Feb/March,
Servermatrix offered WebHostingTalk readers a series of "secret"
promotional code discounts, first apparently a $10/month discount,
plus some control panel thrown free in that is normally an add-on
cost: http://www.vdsp.net/server288.html

and *then* (the same code) for a free secondary 80G hard drive
(woot woot!) http://www.webhostingtalk.com/archive/thread/245552-1.html

and *THEN* in April (this one may still be available) a free 512 meg RAM
upgrade (to a righteous 1GIG of memory --- yeah *baby*)
http://www.askwebhosting.com/special/158/Server_Matrix_offers_free_RAM_upgrade.html

googling 'servermatrix promotional code' further may turn up still
better deals.  point being, although the prices are excellent, maybe we
should call up a sales rep ("Beth" was mentioned by name in one of the
WHT threads), tell her how great evolt is, how many readers *we* have,
and how much they love to support evolt, and see if we can get whatever
deal the sysadmin group wants (i'm thinking free backups, but i'm just
overcautious) and/or even our own cool EVOLT promo code that *we* can
"leak" to theList and be cool like those WebHostingTalk weenies :-)

btw are you planning to run debian by any chance?  hope... hope...
what mta do you like, qmail, postfix, what?  can we have a Bayesian
spam filter on the give at evolt.org address?  *man* that thing gets some
gnarly UCE's ...the content list too.

> I suggest that we move as soon as possible (within a month).  We need
> to get certain patches applied to the server and software upgraded and
> it makes sense to do this all at once on a new server rather than
> staging something on the existing one.  We can also address the lists
> reorganization as well at that time.

no problems there.

> So I'd like to get a discussion/vote on this issue.  In particular, it
> would be nice to hear from the Finance reps to let us know if this is
> a feasible idea.  If we could have feedback by next week or earlier
> would be appreciated.

my vote is obviously +1

i don't think we need to prepay for a year necessarily, although we
could.  it seems odd that they have this "TERMS:" drop-down on all their
server signup forms, and on all of the packages, it has just one option:
"Month-to-Month" with no "Prepay 1 Year: SUBTRACT 15%" in the list.  so
maybe their sales rep would consider a nice discount if we *did* offer
to prepay for a year of service ...or give us a free upgrade to one of
the nicer packages {wipes drool from chin}

-dave (thoroughly exhausted from all the cheapness)