Dear all

This thread is the start of an important discussion which I hope will help to secure the future of this site and the community that it supports.

As recently as the 1st April, I made this statement:



It was true at the time. However, in the intervening weeks I have set certain events in motion in real life that could change all that. If things play out the way I expect/hope, then I'm sorry to report that I will no longer have the time or money available to continue running UnrealSP.Org. I may, in effect, have to "disappear".

Nothing is certain at this stage, and I won't know for sure whether I really do have to vanish until late 2010 at the earliest, but I'm mentioning this now so that we have plenty of time to discuss options and arrange a handover of the site... If I were to wait until I knew for sure before making a final decision, then it could be too late to make the necessary arrangements, so I'll keep things simple: I'll be aiming to step down my role here by the end of this year whether, in the end, I am forced to or not.

Unfortunately I can't say any more at this stage as it's personal, but I can assure you that the reasons behind my thinking are good, not bad. It's just an unfortunate side effect that my contribution to UnrealSP.Org will have to come to an end, although, judging by my declining motivation in recent months / years, that may not be an entirely bad thing.


So, over to you. This obviously needs some discussion; is there anybody here who, either individually or as a group, has the time and resources available to continue running the site? If several people are involved, who should take the lead?

And, of course, how should the site be funded? At present, I pay about £10 a month to keep UnrealSP.Org running; I'm sure there are better deals available, but I've been happy to pay at that sort of rate in order to have access to a reasonably reliable hosting package with a good set of features that requires minimum technical support on my part. If paying for the site alone sounds like too much of a financial burden for any one individual here, would advertising revenue or peer funding by Paypal be an option?

Hopefully we can find a way for the site to continue without my involvement. After nearly ten years, I would be very sorry to see it close down. However, I would also encourage anyone who is considering volunteering to think very carefully about what is an ongoing, potentially long-term commitment of time and money.

Let me know your thoughts.

Cheers
Mike

Just putting this here in case anyone may find it useful. Their hosting packages are a lot more attractive than they were a few years ago. Uptime is rock solid too.

I highly doubt this site will shut down; there's still a lot of people who are very much interested in keeping it alive. I'd be willing to chip in donations when possible to support whoever does decide to take over. Hell, I'd offer to run it myself, but there's just absolutely no way I will have time for that once I find a job in the career field I'm really aiming for. I can't imagine this site and forum are particularly expensive to run all by themselves since it doesn't host many images or downloads; it's mostly just off-site links for big files, right?

sad news that this site might potentially shutdown. Unfortunately, I can't help save it either (I basically eat out of the garbage can). I guess only time will tell what actually happens to the site in the future

What does the fee translate into in American funds? I might be in a position to carry the weight in the near future. I don't know about site master and all the main website duties you typically handled yourself, since I'm largely absent minded of the whole deal (I had a hard enough time figuring out how to make updates on the Red Nemesis website, Zyn will attest to my ignorance).

I can take care of all technical stuff. If that's enough I know admin of http://unreal.pl/ (have site there myself). Depends on space USP consumes I can ask him for hosting (free). You won't have unlimited web-space and server does sometime go to hell because of DDOS attacks or some shit . But you can be assured that website will not be deleted.

Great to see some potential volunteers already - thanks.

Moving the forum to another host would be challenging, but not impossible if somebody can spare the time to do a lot of fiddling with SQL files.

Waff: You're right, our bandwidth demand isn't heavy. We do host some rare files, but nothing very large or popular.

Sorry to hear that Hellscrag, you're probably in a situation I can relate to. There's just so much one can do and RL commitments take priority. It happened to me and I took the easy way out - closed my forums - basically also because I didn't trust anyone to take over and continue in the same spirit.

Having said that, it seems you do see potential for continuation. So ... no, I'm not volunteering, the interest is thre but I cannot guarantee long-term interest nor sufficient time available.

But, looking at the size of the community, my impression is that the storage space and bandwidth needed aren't very large and cost shouldn't be a problem. There are free hosts which offer more than enough, including php, MySQL, phpMyAdmin, FTP access so a move (if necessary) wouldn't cause problems as such. Except: the forum runs with phpBB2 and that is not supported (nor allowed) anymore.
Even if one would rent a serverbox, I wouldn't advise continuing with phpbb2. And then a transfer to phpBB3 is no problem for the forum but what about the other things in the database. Also the skin (template) would have to be remade to keep the look and feel of Unrealsp.org.

The simplest solution would be for someone (or a group) just to take over the site for starters and perhaps work on defining a physical transfer (what is needed in terms of hardware and software specifications, storage, bandwidth) for the future.

With my current knowledge of what comprises unrealsp.org I'm not really able to offer any specific advice/thoughts (nor will I be able to the next weeks since I'm leaving tomorrow on holiday) but it raises a point that a t a certain time potential successors will need to know soem raw specifics in order to be able to decide whether they are willing to take it on.

From my side, I hope Unrealsp can continue - it's been an interesting time for me learning new playing tactics and all the new maps, and also learning some inside stuff in the development of unreal-related stuff.

The need to move to phpBB3 was pointed out to me some time ago, but I've never got around to it. IIRC, at the time, I'd only just got through the process of transferring the forum from one web host to another, which was time-consuming and stressful enough... so yes, that is something for any future volunteers to think about.

The forum could possibly be upgraded here before attempting to move it to new hosting (I don't know whether such a patch exists, however, and it's not something that I'm in a hurry to do myself...!)

I'd rather download DB and try to upgrade it locally (using eg. Apache) and then eventually send upgraded DB on server (along with forums). Also probably news/upcoming mods sections should be changed a little bit. Anyway I can search for solutions if ya want.

EDIT:
Converting to phpBB3 shouldn't be a problem.

Entirely up to you. Let me know if you need me to send you anything.

Well - I need a copy of the forum along with database copy . You don't need to include config.php (also upcoming maps/news script will be useful). I'm working in this kind of things all the time so it's just a matter of time.

Anyway it's up to you, after all, whenever you'd like to (or not) use phpbb3. Personally I think that if something works - don't fix it.

You will need a copy of the forum database, of course, but we're obviously not ready to move the site yet as we haven't established with certainty who's going to run it and where we're going to host it. I'd like to give the discussion a few days so that everybody has a chance to weigh in.

Thanks for the offers you've made so far. I'll keep them in mind.

Too damn bad I can't support anything aside myself in RL; plus I suck at taking responsibility of stuff, let alone Internet ones. Even with a high amount of time, I don't know what to do jackshit. No idea!
Then I'll think I won't do anything else anymore if Hellscrag goes away, it would be like staying in limbo but I don't foresee the future so whatever.

Upgrading the forum is not a problem as long as you haven't changed the original database fields. (mind you, the permission system in phpBB3 is completely different and will take some time getting used to).
It all depends on what you have in the database - if your forum database is compeletely separate then there really is no problems except for the skin.
If your database contains other things related to the site then I would suggest using the opportunity to split the database. This sounds more difficult that it is - just copy the whole database and in one copy remove everything not forum related, in the other copy remove all forum related stuff).

Some analysis may have to go into how to present data from both databases with a suitable CMS or portal.

The volunteer could easily experiment offline on a local machine using easyphp.org or Wampwerver (there are others also which are probably just as good but I only use those 2).

It's a pity I'll be away for a bit more than 2 weeks but if some help is needed with phpBB3 (7 years experience with phpBB starting from version 2.03) I'll be glad to do what I can (in ± 3 weeks time at the earliest though).

PS check the site phpbb.com for templates, there might be a template available which could be adapted to the unrealsp.org look.