Hi guys, it's that time of the year where I look to optimise my server resources before the "look after yourselves" holiday period ...
I've been hosting the CLUG wiki for a few years now, and usage seems to have settled down to being basically just a way of scheduling meetings and sometimes hosting their presentations. There is a reasonable collection of non-Canterbury-specific data in there too, but it's beginning to get a little dated and unmaintained. I've populated an Analog report of current usage on http://clug.net.nz/analog.html show you what's happening, sorry there's no useful Domain section, I didn't merge the proxy logs in first ... I contend that this low level of usage doesn't justify the effort of running an entire wiki platform (i.e. db cleaning, anti-spam measures, backups etc), and I'm intending to cease hosting this sometime soon. Of course, I can't say that without having some ideas about alternatives, now can I? :-) Remember that the domain names clug.net.nz and clug.org.nz are *not* held by me, Nick Rout currently controls them IIRC. My preferred solution would be to ask the Waikato LUG for a virtual site on their wiki server [http://www.wlug.org.nz], as they have done for NZLUG [http://wiki.linux.net.nz/]. In here we could maintain a separate CLUG identity, and keep track of Canterbury-specific data. The generic Linux info pages on the CLUG wiki should be contributed to the WLUG wiki directly (they use a similar license). I like this solution, because WLUG, as an incorporated society, have dedicated hosting and a number of people actively maintaining the facility. If we choose this approach, I'll liaise with WLUG to request this, and organise the data transfer. At this stage, I've only ascertained that it's plausible; we would need to get approval from their committee to proceed. Obviously I expect that they'll say "yes" :-) Another possibility would be to convert clug.net.nz into an essentially static website, which I could continue to host without problem. I could provide access to site source over SFTP to agreed updaters. We would then move the meeting scheduling and information into a public calendar, such as Google Calendar. This works well for DunLUG, for example. I don't see much future for the bulk of the non-Canterbury data in the current wiki in that case, and would probably recommend that the good bits are contributed to WLUG anyway. The third possibility is that someone else associated with CLUG donates their own server space and time to hosting the wiki, whether a direct copy of the existing phpwiki database, or migrating in to another platform such as mediawiki. However, I don't think that our level of usage of the current wiki really justifies that sort of effort. If you want to try, you can grab a DB backup direct from http://clug.net.nz/index.php/PhpWikiAdministration If there are any other great ideas, please reply and let us know! Remember - There Is No CLUG - http://clug.net.nz/index.php/ThereIsNoCLUG This means that no-one can "decide" anything except on a personal level, but in general friendly discussion on the mailing list seems to work out just fine :-) -jim
