Fwd: wikispot.org is shutting down April 1st

[Kevin Eldridge]

Hello Nashville Linux Users Group,

Our hosting provider is scheduled to shut down on April 1st, giving you almost a month to find a new host for the nlug.wikispot.org data. This should not be an issue. If you need assistance with this, please let me know, I will try to help as best I can.

I sent Philip Neustrom a reply thanking for allowing us to have our data on his server.

Thank you very much,

Kevin Eldridge

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Philip Neustrom <phi...@localwiki.org>
Date: Tue, Feb 17, 2015 at 4:55 PM
Subject: wikispot.org is shutting down April 1st
To: <cras...@gmail.com>


Hi there!

Sometime, probably years and years ago, you were an administrator of a wiki on wikispot.org.  I'm writing you this email today to let you know that, on April 1st, 2015, the wikispot.org service will be shut down.  Please see below for more information:

http://wikispot.org/2015_Shutdown_Notice

All the best-
Philip

P.S. Don't worry, we won't email you again and you're not on any kind of email list.

==============================================
You created a wiki on wikispot.org a billion years ago.

Unsubscribe cras...@gmail.com from this list:
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Our mailing address is:
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[Amber Adams]

On Friday, February 27, 2015, Kevin Eldridge <cras...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello Nashville Linux Users Group,

Our hosting provider is scheduled to shut down on April 1st, giving you almost a month to find a new host for the nlug.wikispot.org data. This should not be an issue. If you need assistance with this, please let me know, I will try to help as best I can.

I sent Philip Neustrom a reply thanking for allowing us to have our data on his server.

Thank you very much,

Kevin Eldridge

Thank you for the heads up and giving Philip our gratitude, Kevin. 

Hey LUG'ers, does anyone want to volunteer some wiki hosting? Alternatively, we might consider forming an NLUG group on Github and taking advantage of their free Web hosting for our info page. What do y'all think?

Amber Adams

[Andrew McElroy]

This would be a good time to have a Nlug steering committee meeting. I've had an idea for a new Nlug website, but very little time to build it. 

Sent from my iPhone

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[andrew mcelroy]

I just renewed the meetup.com membership for another 6 months.
Also, I'd be happy to get a VPS to put NLUG on, but I'd really like to
have a meeting regarding possibly building a new website.
I have time next week.

[Amber Adams]

On Saturday, February 28, 2015, andrew mcelroy <soph...@gmail.com> wrote:

I just renewed the meetup.com membership for another 6 months.
Also, I'd be happy to get a VPS to put NLUG on, but I'd really like to
have a meeting regarding possibly building a new website.
I have time next week.

A meeting with who? Where? When? Is it only about a new website? 

Amber 

[Michael L]

Is that meeting going to be in person or online. And I'd be interested in attending if I may, to listen to the more knowledgeable people speak. If it's officers only, I understand. -M
T-mobile. America's First Nationwide 4G Network

[Howard White]

> --

Michael,

You need a historical perspective in order to understand. NLUG has a
constitution in name only. Said document was drafted on the outside
chance that someone would do all the work necessary to become a tax
exempt organization that supporting businesses could give money for us
to do stuff. Never happened. Those supporting businesses all drifted
away, mine included.

Truth is, NLUG is a fine anarchy. All voices are welcome to discuss how
we might move on from our current wikispot arrangement. The concept of
the steering committee is an overstatement in itself.

Name a time and place. Just do it.

Howard

[_NSAKEY]

Digital Ocean's $5 VPS is good enough to host a copy of MediaWiki, and
is one of the cheapest VPS providers I've seen that doesn't use OpenVZ.
I use them to host one of my tor relays. If you care about things like
apparmor, you have to use Ubuntu though.

--
_NSAKEY
PGP key: https://abigisp.com/key.txt

[Bucky 'Igneous' Wolfe]

Hey dudes, please pardon the top-posting. I just re-joined the mailing list to participate in this discussion, and I do not have a real mail client.

Just to test the water, what do you guys think about starting up a github organization for NLUG? Anyone with a github account would be able to join, it'd be an open group. We'd need a lot of owners, so they could add new users, but I don't think there's any shortage of people on this mailing list that know how to use git, or would have a problem maintaining that group.

Once we have an org, we could host a static website using github pages. This could just be some raw html that we've written ourselves, or we could use a static-site generator like Jekyll, and manage the site as a series of text files and templates (take a look at https://github.com/igneous/lordofthephon.es to see what that would look like). It would still be something that everyone could contribute to, like a wiki, but we'd have a bit more control over it. Also, you can rest assured that github isn't going anywhere. It's also worth mentioning that we could still keep the nlug.org domain, just forward the apex to a 'www' cname, and point www.nlug.org -> nashville-lug.github.io.

We could also create a few repos for group nlug projects. if anyone wants to work together as a group on other stuff (perhaps a bot for our irc channel?). I notice that Gerdesas hasn't been keeping his bot around :P

Best,

  Igneous

[andrew mcelroy]

re: _NSAKey: that's $5 a month or 60 a year. I was looking at
http://www.servermania.com/linux-ssd-cached-vps-specials.htm for $56 a
year. Jim Kinney from the Atlanta Users Group suggested them. So far
I've been happy with switching to them for my company.

I was thinking about launching a new website all together. NashJS.org
did a new launch they are using this
https://github.com/JedWatson/sydjs-site (I forked their version). It
integrates with Meetup and not to offend whoever launched the current
site, a legit upgrade.

Thoughts?
I can make time tuesday-wednesday of next week.

[andrew mcelroy]

Also, I'd cover the $56. I already renewed the meetup which was more than that.

[andrew mcelroy]

On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 11:43 AM, andrew mcelroy <soph...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Also, I'd cover the $56. I already renewed the meetup which was more than that.
>
> On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 11:43 AM, andrew mcelroy <soph...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> re: _NSAKey: that's $5 a month or 60 a year. I was looking at
>> http://www.servermania.com/linux-ssd-cached-vps-specials.htm for $56 a
>> year. Jim Kinney from the Atlanta Users Group suggested them. So far
>> I've been happy with switching to them for my company.
>>
>> I was thinking about launching a new website all together. NashJS.org
>> did a new launch they are using this
>> https://github.com/JedWatson/sydjs-site (I forked their version).

My fork is https://github.com/Sophrinix/sydjs-site

[andrew mcelroy]

On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 9:41 AM, Bucky 'Igneous' Wolfe
<pmig...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey dudes, please pardon the top-posting. I just re-joined the mailing list
> to participate in this discussion, and I do not have a real mail client.
>
> Just to test the water, what do you guys think about starting up a github
> organization for NLUG? Anyone with a github account would be able to join,
> it'd be an open group. We'd need a lot of owners, so they could add new
> users, but I don't think there's any shortage of people on this mailing list
> that know how to use git, or would have a problem maintaining that group.
>
> Once we have an org, we could host a static website using github pages. This
> could just be some raw html that we've written ourselves, or we could use a
> static-site generator like Jekyll, and manage the site as a series of text
> files and templates (take a look at
> https://github.com/igneous/lordofthephon.es to see what that would look
> like). It would still be something that everyone could contribute to, like a
> wiki, but we'd have a bit more control over it. Also, you can rest assured
> that github isn't going anywhere. It's also worth mentioning that we could
> still keep the nlug.org domain, just forward the apex to a 'www' cname, and
> point www.nlug.org -> nashville-lug.github.io.

I wouldn't be opposed to this option either.
I already proposed a different option. We should talk about this at
the next NLUG meeting.

[andrew mcelroy]

On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 11:43 AM, andrew mcelroy <soph...@gmail.com> wrote:

> re: _NSAKey: that's $5 a month or 60 a year. I was looking at
> http://www.servermania.com/linux-ssd-cached-vps-specials.htm for $56 a
> year. Jim Kinney from the Atlanta Users Group suggested them. So far

I skipped a word. The Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts (ALE) group.

[Amber Adams]

On Sunday, March 1, 2015, andrew mcelroy <soph...@gmail.com> wrote:

I wouldn't be opposed to this option either.
I already proposed a different option. We should talk about this at
the next NLUG meeting.

No, you haven't. NashJS uses the exact Github solution that Bucky and I have proposed:  https://github.com/nashjs

The group needs to avoid having our hosting solution paid directly out of your pocket, or anyone else's for that matter. You know as well as I do, particularly after working with other user groups for the past year, that can put us in a bad spot when that individual is no longer in a position to pay, etc. Since there are perfectly adequate free solutions, let's use them.

Github groups also have the benefit of allowing members to share their repos. NashFP uses this to great effect, since it allows members to easily share their slides or other projects they've presented with the group, as well as work on those projects together in the future when there's interest. For those of us interested in kernel development, we could even coordinate or at least track our collective efforts this way.

Simply paying for hosting a website doesn't give us this option, in fact it will require one of us to keep updating the content. Considering we can't even get talks scheduled or posted on the Meetup with more than 24 hours notice, I don't have a lot of confidence a single individual is going to be able to maintain a website, too. We're a LUG, let's distribute and open source our effort when it comes to publishing code. That was the nice thing about the wiki, but as you pointed out that might not be the best implementation now.

Amber Adams

[Csaba Toth]

Talking about github. If the website is static, you can host it as like nlug.github.io for $0

[Wesley Duffee-Braun]

+1 to free solutions. 

However, as Amber said, if we are going to have expenses (which it appears we already have wrt meetup and there could be more) I would see it as appropriate to spread that cost around somehow. That does get potentially complicated (is there a bank account? would one have to be setup? I gather we have a treasurer position but no idea what the funds situation looks like) but the extra work seems to be worth it to keep everything transparent.

http://www.wesleyduffeebraun.com

[Amber Adams]

On Sunday, March 1, 2015, Wesley Duffee-Braun <wdu...@gmail.com> wrote:

+1 to free solutions. 

However, as Amber said, if we are going to have expenses (which it appears we already have wrt meetup and there could be more) I would see it as appropriate to spread that cost around somehow. That does get potentially complicated (is there a bank account? would one have to be setup? I gather we have a treasurer position but no idea what the funds situation looks like) but the extra work seems to be worth it to keep everything transparent.

Being a Richard Stallman fangirl, I'm all for keeping the group as democratic or even anarchic as possible, but this right here is our most compelling reason for pursuing a little formal organization. It will help us remain open and transparent in the end, especially considering we need to be able to handle resources beyond just a website. Almost every month we here rumours that Vandy is going to start charging us for parking, or that we might not be able to keep our meeting room, etc. There are other options for meeting places NLUG could pursue, but almost all of them require accepting sponsorship money. Many of them would also allow us to provide refreshments during meetings, if we could accept sponsorships. I'm not sure if we really want to expand what NLUG does, but if we wanted to start holding hack days or doing education outreach for students, etc., again we would need a functioning organization behind us. This can only help the viability and growth of the group. NLUG is the oldest user group in Nashville, it would be great if it could still show these kids how it's done for years to come. ;)

Nearly every other user group in Nashville has encountered this same problem, and most of them have solved it in one of three ways, 1) benevolent dictatorship by a single sponsor, either an individual or a local company, 2) formal organization, such as their own non-profit (Nashville 2600 being a prime example, with a close historical relationship to NLUG), or 3) forming an "umbrella" relationship with a local non-profit who can accept and distribute funds on its behalf (TedXNashville does a lot of this, with varying degrees of success and oversight).

Andrew has offered to be our benevolent dictator, but such an arrangement has its flaws. We could also pursue #2, and the membership seemed to express support of that initiative at the last election in May. It hasn't been pursued since, however. We could also try option #3, perhaps even through Nashville 2600, since as some of you may know they've recently reformed their Board, are cleaning up their bylaws, and have established a solid financial position. Andrew is a Board member, not to mention Dru Myers is still President and a member of NLUG. Our group has been a frequent contributor to PhreakNIC. An agreement might be pretty easy given the relationships.

I'm just putting these ideas out for discussion, I'm not wholy committed to any of them.

Amber Adams

[Bucky 'Igneous' Wolfe]

On Sunday, March 1, 2015 at 3:18:11 PM UTC-6, Amber Adams wrote:

On Sunday, March 1, 2015, andrew mcelroy <soph...@gmail.com> wrote:

I wouldn't be opposed to this option either.
I already proposed a different option. We should talk about this at
the next NLUG meeting.

No, you haven't. NashJS uses the exact Github solution

They've got a github org, and their old website looks like it used gh-pages, but looking at nashjs.org, it's definitely running node and sydjs. Slow your roll.

My only real issue with Andrew's suggestion is hosted infra managed by a single person is probably not the greatest idea (in terms of webapp availability and human availability). If you wanted to push the code to a free heroku dyno (belonging to an nlug org), I think that'd probably be a happy medium.

I'm obviously still in favor of gh-pages, but that's only because I think we'd see more contributions from nlug members (Jekyll being a much lower learning curve, in my biased opinion). GitHub Pages or not, though, there's nothing preventing us from creating an nlug org for member projects.

-Igneous

[Amber Adams]

On Sunday, March 1, 2015, Bucky 'Igneous' Wolfe <pmig...@gmail.com> wrote:

My only real issue with Andrew's suggestion is hosted infra managed by a single person is probably not the greatest idea (in terms of webapp availability and human availability). If you wanted to push the code to a free heroku dyno (belonging to an nlug org), I think that'd probably be a happy medium.

I'm obviously still in favor of gh-pages, but that's only because I think we'd see more contributions from nlug members (Jekyll being a much lower learning curve, in my biased opinion). GitHub Pages or not, though, there's nothing preventing us from creating an nlug org for member projects.

-Igneous

Andrew likes Jekyll too, and has even suggested we use it recently in groups like 2600 (where there's a compelling security interest in having static pages). That's why it's curious to me he wants something else here. I seriously doubt NLUG needs more functionality than Github pages provides. Hell, I've got a network-enabled terminal running on mine, and could do all sorts of other things like interactive games, etc., if I just took the time. It's not really that limiting.

Amber Adams 

[Tilghman Lesher]

On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 5:15 PM, Bucky 'Igneous' Wolfe
<pmig...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sunday, March 1, 2015 at 3:18:11 PM UTC-6, Amber Adams wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Sunday, March 1, 2015, andrew mcelroy <soph...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> I wouldn't be opposed to this option either.
>>> I already proposed a different option. We should talk about this at
>>> the next NLUG meeting.
>>>
>>
>> No, you haven't. NashJS uses the exact Github solution
>
>
> They've got a github org, and their old website looks like it used gh-pages,
> but looking at nashjs.org, it's definitely running node and sydjs. Slow your
> roll.

Yes, but the source code is hosted on Github:
https://github.com/JedWatson/sydjs-site

> My only real issue with Andrew's suggestion is hosted infra managed by a
> single person is probably not the greatest idea (in terms of webapp
> availability and human availability). If you wanted to push the code to a
> free heroku dyno (belonging to an nlug org), I think that'd probably be a
> happy medium.

Interestingly enough, NashJS is indeed running a Heroku dyno.

$ host nashjs.org
nashjs.org is an alias for secure-chamber-9538.herokuapp.com.
secure-chamber-9538.herokuapp.com is an alias for
us-east-1-a.route.herokuapp.com.
us-east-1-a.route.herokuapp.com has address 23.21.126.203

So in effect, you just agreed with Amber, even though you didn't think
you were agreeing with Amber. ;-)

--
Tilghman

[Csaba Toth]

Actually, to speak against gh-pages: when I threw it in, I mentioned "if the website is static". And I guess that wikispot is a some wiki derivative, thus there is some DB backend behind it which holds the content, so technically it's not static. Although we might changed it rarely, but extracting the content of the wiki and flattening it into static pages would cut the possibility of a wiki type update. If we are looking for contributions on a GitHub version, a wiki version requires less expertise and can be safer, simpler. But requires a hosting with DB bakcend.

Also, April 1st is April's fool day, maybe it's just a joke? :)

--

[Amber Adams]

On Monday, March 2, 2015, Csaba Toth <csaba....@gmail.com> wrote:

Actually, to speak against gh-pages: when I threw it in, I mentioned "if the website is static". And I guess that wikispot is a some wiki derivative, thus there is some DB backend behind it which holds the content, so technically it's not static. Although we might changed it rarely, but extracting the content of the wiki and flattening it into static pages would cut the possibility of a wiki type update. If we are looking for contributions on a GitHub version, a wiki version requires less expertise and can be safer, simpler. But requires a hosting with DB bakcend.

Also, April 1st is April's fool day, maybe it's just a joke? :)

I'm starting to feel like you guys are messing with my head. Github has wiki built-in:  https://help.github.com/articles/about-github-wikis/ I mean...this is one of the great things about Github repos...if we want to keep the wiki format it's right there and it's distributed and we can all edit it as long as we know some basic HTML and we don't have to flatten anything into static pages or worry about a backend for serving the wiki.... 

Am I being hazed? I feel like this is a hazing. It's okay, I love you guys. :)

Amber Adams

[_NSAKEY]

Upon reading the shutdown notice (Found here:
http://wikispot.org/2015_Shutdown_Notice), the data they have is 1.
Eligible to be imported into their new project, LocalWiki (It's not
there now, but some other LUGs show up in LocalWiki's search), and 2.
Will supposedly remain static but still on the internet for some
undetermined period of time. The trick is that even they don't seem to
know how long they intend to keep Wiki Spot up, so this e-mail shouldn't
be construed as a call to inaction.

In either case, phi...@localwiki.org can be contacted for either an
export of NLUG's data, or to have the data imported into LocalWiki. The
latter seems to be the easiest and quickest option out of everything
discussed so far.

[Michael Chaney]

Honestly, a lot of you are overthinking this.  It's bike shed painting at this point.  Someone extract the pages and put them up on github or whatever.  Just do it.  Make sure google spiders it so it'll be findable.  Beyond that it doesn't much matter as hardly anybody is going to update it, anyway, and people mainly look at it to find out where and when the meeting is.  And isn't someone using "meetup" to do that, anyway?

And let's put Davinci's back on the B&P page while we're at it.  Yeah, it closed like 12 years ago but it was great while it lasted.

Michael

Michael Darrin Chaney, Sr.
mdch...@michaelchaney.com
http://www.michaelchaney.com/

[andrew mcelroy]

On Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 9:53 AM, Michael Chaney
<mdch...@michaelchaney.com> wrote:
> Honestly, a lot of you are overthinking this. It's bike shed painting at
> this point. Someone extract the pages and put them up on github or
> whatever. Just do it. Make sure google spiders it so it'll be findable.

Agreed. Although I'd call it a social experiment at this point or the
bike shed to end all bike sheds.

I am wrapping up a big contract at the moment, but was going to give
this time by wednesday.

> Beyond that it doesn't much matter as hardly anybody is going to update it,
> anyway, and people mainly look at it to find out where and when the meeting
> is. And isn't someone using "meetup" to do that, anyway?

There's a reason behind my original idea-- it better uses the
meetup.com I don't have time to get in to this at the moment.

> And let's put Davinci's back on the B&P page while we're at it. Yeah, it
> closed like 12 years ago but it was great while it lasted.

It's been that long? wow.


> Michael

[Howard White]

On 03/02/2015 10:17 AM, andrew mcelroy wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 9:53 AM, Michael Chaney
> <mdch...@michaelchaney.com> wrote:
>> Honestly, a lot of you are overthinking this. It's bike shed painting at
>> this point. Someone extract the pages and put them up on github or
>> whatever. Just do it. Make sure google spiders it so it'll be findable.
>
> Agreed. Although I'd call it a social experiment at this point or the
> bike shed to end all bike sheds.
>
> I am wrapping up a big contract at the moment, but was going to give
> this time by wednesday.
>

Is there any significance to the cutoff date being April 1???

Howard

[Csaba Toth]

Good point!

The question is: can this wiki exposed to the gh-pages published website, or can it be only on the direct GitHub site?

--

[Amber Adams]

On Monday, March 2, 2015, Csaba Toth <csaba....@gmail.com> wrote:

Good point!

The question is: can this wiki exposed to the gh-pages published website, or can it be only on the direct GitHub site?

Yes, if we configure the subdomain properly:

https://help.github.com/articles/about-custom-domains-for-github-pages-sites/

Bucky appears to be on it. Go, Bucky, go!

Amber Adams

[Amber Adams]

On Monday, March 2, 2015, andrew mcelroy <soph...@gmail.com> wrote:

There's a reason behind my original idea-- it better uses the
meetup.com I don't have time to get in to this at the moment.

Speaking of the Meetup, what's the status on scheduling the speaker/talk topic for this month (we've both posted reminders, but Justin Seiter appears to be MIA on the list)? We've got 125 members on Meetup while consistently not posting meeting details. I'm sure everybody is getting sick of you and I filling in all the time, too. Working out the scheduling and announcing it with sufficient notice that people can decide if it's something they want to attend should be our first priority, before worrying if we have Meetup integrated optimally on the website. 

Amber Adams 

[Jack Coats]

Anyone planning on archiving presentations and other information on the current site 'for posterity', and future reference?

[JMJ]

On 03/02/2015 09:53 AM, Michael Chaney wrote:
> Honestly, a lot of you are overthinking this. It's bike shed painting at
> this point.

I was actually thinking the same thing. LOL

This is what happens when very smart people try to solve a very simple
problem... it gets unnecessarily complicated.
[cough-cough-systemd?-cough-cough] heh heh

> Someone extract the pages and put them up on github or
> whatever. Just do it. Make sure google spiders it so it'll be findable.

My vote is to copy nlug.org onto a Raspberry Pi and host that somewhere.
;-)

Or heck... Someone should create an NLUG app.


JMJ, who needs to make an effort to show up at a meeting one of these years