Stiner0931":1mdk3w6i said:
Would suggest we have 2-3 people co-own this, so we have a backup in the event that the primary and secondary are unavailable.
I had a nice detailed post that I lost. So you get the Cliff's Notes version lol
- It's not a matter of "ownership", it's a matter of someone staying alive (and available) to pay for it. Someone has to pay the ongoing domain name and DNS fees (I pay $19/yr for improved touring) and someone has to pay someone to host the database and to pay for the Vbulletin fees/maintenance/updates (I suppose you could build your own server, install yor own VBulletin, and move over the database. But that'll take some real dedication, create single points of failure, and increase those risks of failure).
I suppose one could set up an LLC to take on the responsibility to pay for the domain, hosting, and maintenance fees, and have multiple partners in it, but that seems a bit excessive (and not cost effective).
- Even if someone accepts that responsibilty, a process has to be in place to transfer that responsibility to someone else, should that person get hit by a bus (and/or have life intervene).
- Now, finally that it's functioning and being paid for, we can have multiple admins within the functioning forum to manage the day-to-day. But that's the easy bit, since the failure in our case was a failure of the first bit of paying, not administration. And that failure was not due to money, but to life intervening.
My offer is to take over paying for the domain/DNS fees (and bloody well yes I'll accept your donations and keep the funds saved for that purpose) and move the forum to the servers of GT40S which may host it for free. That still leaves the potential-bus-deaths of either me and/or Ron (GT40S) as the major risks for failure of the forum. I'm not sure I see a reasonable way around that risk, short of tossing money at it for a single-point hosting service.
Forums are not as easy as putting everything on a Facebook group (free to join, free to use, free to host, free to maintain, always backed up on multiple servers across the globe) and toss in a handful of admins (free to add/remove). That's just the way the technology is designed.
Kinda reminds me of the old Wildcat! BBS we used in the 80s: some guy would build a PC under his bed and we'd login via telephone line to transfer messages and discussions. His server would call the next city overnight to transfer the stuff and collect new stuff, then we'd check in the next day. Suddenly, the board stopped responding; for weeks we wondered if it would come back up. So someone got his phone number and called his house and his mum said, "oh yes, Jim went off to university last month and we shut that bloody noisy thing off."
Technology.
