[plug] LinMagAu goodnight :(

[Sham Chukoury]

On Wed, 2004-03-31 at 22:04, Kimberly Shelt wrote:

> a) 	First you subscribe to all relevant lists.. 
> So you can trawl for information .. to add to the site when necessary..
> b)	Then you read them all. and add the important bits to the site as needed.
> c)	The site is on 3 machines.. because of previous hits from slash..
> Not distributed.. thus you do everything 3 times :) Watch out for cost..
> I got a good deal.. network transist costs and bandwith etc.. 
> d)	Host file fun to round robin the machines.. 
> e)	All content is on 3 machines, in the dbs,, so 3 sets of backups..etc..
> f)	Hand hacked by Kim php pages.. to draw the info from the relevant machine..
> unless it is more important.. aka members signing up etc.. aroudn 500 I think.. 
> that and the links, mail archive and other random things are on the main machine
> and auto redirection works to point people back there when needed..
> g)	Currently PHP Nuke scripts.. needs an update.. but so much to change in 
> the hand hacked pages.(for the other 2 sub machines) .. a bit of time :)
> h)	Lots of hassling of folks to use their things.. get permission etc..
> i)	Lots of risking it without permission :)
> j)	Calendar updates.. havent been done for ages.. means trawling LUG sites to 
> see when they are doing things.. again reading the lists.. and adding it to the site.. (3)
> k)	Be KIM :)
> 
> Actually there is a lot more.. seriously it does take a lot of time and dedication.. 
> Content gathering, backups, updating all and everthing, finding new stuff, avoiding being
> caught in the middle.. evaluating what is right or not.. and and and :)
> being nice to folks who do put in the effort.. (the latter was never a problem for me.. ) 
> cause they had the same wish as me.. to be part of the community :)

O_O

Dang, you're kidding, right.. <:|

I can handle mailing lists... but I dunno if I can read all of what's on
them. >_< Hmm.. alternative: could linmagau have 'correspondents' from
each list, instead? That is.. people who subscribe to the mailing lists,
and occasionally report interesting stuff happening on the lists, to
linmagau.. :P

The 3 machines thing seems cool, for slashdot-hardening, but I wonder if
the added maintenance burden is worth it. Is there no other way of
slashdot-proofing a web site? (question to networking guru PLUGgers out
there :) Maybe streamlining the backend a bit (i.e. a more efficient CMS
than *nuke), and fitting it on only one or two machines? :P (fit on less
machines = less time spent on maintenance) Or maybe even have a
slashdot-effect 'taskforce' - as soon as linmagau gets slashdotted,
replace the affected part by a static page pointing to mirrored copies
of the content. Presumably, members of this taskforce would have their
own web hosting arrangements, to support the mirroring...
</brilliantidea>

As for hand-hacking scripts.. this should probably not be done without
looking at security consequences... Perhaps there might be a way of
customising CMS scripts such that their update/upgrade path is not
severely compromised.. that would take some design work to figure out.

As for 'being KIM'.. I don't think that's quite replaceable. ;)


> I did start a LinMagAu howto some time ago. I can probably dig it out.. 
> 
> Interested ?

Hmm, well, what can I do? :) I can probably help with some bits, but I
don't think I can run the whole show. (I can't be MissKim, right ;)

Cheers.
§:)