[kDev] Sorting website hosting properly need dev feedback...

[Daniel Harris <daniel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi there All,

I'm going to get the Kendra website hosting sorted properly this time - 
it's stopping all development the way it is. I need some feedback from you 
guys and girls regarding technical requirements. I know I've made attempts 
to sort this before (starting a year ago! Sorry) and failed but now I've 
learnt my lesson. It needs to be on a formal contract (rather than a 
favour) so things can't get changed halfway. Ah!

I am going to send an email to kNews with a clear spec for what we need 
and, in case no Kendra participant can fulfill the spec, a cost of getting 
someone to host the website to our spec.

We have *money* available if needed. Companies have put 1000s into Kendra 
meetings and there have been offers recently to sponsor the next meeting so 
we'll just divert the funds, as it were.

Important to note that only stuff under kendra.org.uk will go on this server.

So, here is a draft minimum spec (comments please):

Hardware: P3/750MHz/128Mbyte/50Gbyte - Andi Freeman's suggestion
Backups: Daily?
Firewall?
Real Server developer version - for testing only
Bandwidth allowance?
Anything else?

And a few ideas on where we can go with cash if no Kendra participant can 
fulfill the spec. Please give other suggestions on vendors also.

Dedicated Servers - http://www.dedicated-servers.com
Please specify minimum server and config that would suit spec and your needs.

DSVR - http://www.dsvr.com
These guys provide a virtual server and we could get multiple telnet logins 
but what I really need to know is could you work with their setup or would 
it just be a pain?

It would be really nice to have, as much as possible, web front ends for 
configuring the server. Not that I'll want to be doing configuring mind but 
if something needs to be done in a hurry and I can't get any of you then 
I'd rather have web setups than command line.

Source Forge - http://sourceforge.net
I've had a look around SF and it looks cool. Took a good look at what web 
CVS looks like (can you guess I'm not a techy? ;-). Also liked how they 
rank developers - could we do that easily? There's a limit of 100Mbytes but 
if we stored all the media files elsewhere then could we do it? Of course 
no Real Server to play with. Is there anything that SF does that we 
couldn't do on our own server or virtual server? My one concern is that all 
the services they offer are for developers whereas we are catering for a 
very mixed bunch and so have to make things very simple. I'll explain...

One thing I like about the current website is the way that /profile.php 
handles all the users setup requirements. They log on once and they can 
update their details, subscr!be to mailing lists, register for a meeting, 
enroll a friend, etc. All very convenient. Also what's nice is that most 
(we should aim for all) these details are entered into our database - this 
has proved very useful with moving mailing lists for instance. So, if we 
introduce, as Kev suggests, a wiki system and a tracking system or change 
the email list program to mailman then we've got to make sure that a) the 
users only need to log into the website once to be able to access the 
various systems, b) all user config information gets put in our database 
and c) users can update all their details from their profile area rather 
than going to each individual program interface. I know I've laboured the 
point but we're not dealing with developers here so we have to make it 
nice, easy and ergonomic.

FYI currently the website (php pages and list archives) comes to around 6 
Mbytes and an sql database dump comes to less than 1 Mbyte. The test video 
files for the network trial come to 315 Mbytes. As we go forward with the 
trials I don't think the Kendra website should be looking to host all of 
the video/audio/whatever content but until we enable generic content to be 
used it's good for us to have a central store for people to upload to their 
streaming servers. Also, I don't think the Kendra website should be 
maintaining a streaming media server as part of the network trial - that 
will help to make it clear that Kendra Initiative is not a content service 
provider. But I don't see why we shouldn't have a streaming server for 
development purposes (in fact it'll probably attract more developers if we 
do) - I hope the distinction is clear.

Please comments please?

We're gonna do it this time! ;-)

Cheers Daniel