(2020-01-16, 02:34 AM)Tom Butler Wrote: I use Hostgator for three sites. It makes me crazy trying to keep up with how I am supposed to access Billing but the technical help has always been very good. (Never try using their messenger help. I think it is just a pacifier.)
I had been very happy with Hostgator's service up until we experienced slow access times due to the database on our shared server being over-used at regular intervals, but now that that seems to have stopped happening, there's not much to complain about.
What sort of issues do you have with billing? Any problems I have (e.g., as above, switching from 2-yearly to 6-monthly billing) seem to be worked out by contacting their support team.
(2020-01-16, 02:34 AM)Tom Butler Wrote: I also had a MyBB board, but recently broke it trying to upgrade, so moved to WordPress WP Foro (http://coop.ethericstudies.org/).
Sorry to hear about the breakage. It looks like you might have managed to migrate at least some threads (and maybe some users?) from your broken MyBB installation? I say that because some of the threads on the forum to which you linked go back years.
(2020-01-16, 02:34 AM)Tom Butler Wrote: I am impressed as to how well [url=https://psiencequest.net/][/url]Psience Quest is operated. Thanks!
And thank you for being a part of it!
(2020-01-16, 02:34 AM)Tom Butler Wrote: My rule is to keep things as simple as possible. At 76, it is prudent for me to make sure others can pick up the pieces and move on if I do not come home from a vacation. MyBB did not fill that requirement. Hostgator has for years.
My guess is that, like me, you are currently a single point of failure. It all comes down to what you want.
Yes, to an extent I am a single point of failure, and it has been a concern of mine for a while. I am trying to mitigate the risk that if something happens to me, the forum dies and is unrecoverable, by giving other founders access to (encrypted) backups of the whole site (wiki database + forum database + files) on a Google Drive folder. Those backups are automated, so they don't depend on me being around.
(2020-01-16, 02:34 AM)Tom Butler Wrote: For me, I appreciate the article posts and would miss them. It is difficult to find an aggregator that allows discussion rather than hundreds of inane wisecracks.
Yes, I think we've got something unique and valuable here.
(2020-01-12, 12:09 PM)Typoz Wrote: I can understand cost always being a motivation. But given the technical problems seem to have calmed down, are there other reasons to move?
I've just encountered another reason: the latest version of MediaWiki, the software that runs our wiki, requires a minimum PHP version of 7.2.9, whereas the maximum currently supported on our shared Hostgator server is 7.1 - so we are currently unable to upgrade that software, and will potentially become exposed to exploitation of security holes fixed in the later version.
I do have issues with Hostgator but after being with a few others, years ago, I just don't have the energy to go migrating into the unknown. Billing has been a problem but is a little better. My main problems have been small. It seemed I had four or five different passwords to get around because nothing was integrated. Now I see that I can go to the billing page and access everything from there.
After trying their messaging tool a few times, I have decided it is just a pacifier. The people on their phone line have never failed to be helpful.
One suspicious experience was when two of my sites ... both under the same account ... were repeatedly hacked and simultaneously, I was receiving messages from Hostgator offering me a deal with a second-party protection service. The protection service was really expensive as if I am protecting a million$ site. Google was threatening me because my sites were unsafe so I paid for the protection. As far as I can see, other than periodic scans, they did nothing but the hacking stopped. Now I have installed yet another security plugin that I can see is doing something and have stopped the autopay for the protection people. My sense is that it was a protection racket with kickbacks to the server. Rather than making a thing about it, I just write it off as the dark side of capitalism. First lesson in the military is to never piss off the supply sergeant.
My first line of defense is periodic automatic backups to the cloud using a plugin. I also make an image onto my computer from time to time using FileZilla. Otherwise, I am not selling and all of the material can be replaced ... well, the world would not come to an end without it.
Laird, you mentioned MediWiki. After being a Wikipedia editor for a few years in the paranormal articles, I decided to install a wiki of my own to develop standard practices for the paranormalist community. I really like the format and their install software was reasonably well organized. I dropped it because of lack of participation and the updates kept getting more complicated making it hard to manage. While I highly recommend MediWiki, one should be mindful of the database. It used to be really hard to prune.
One version or another of my board was installed sometime around 2005. Database management was even more difficult back then and I had to prune a lot to be able to maintain the database. We had a blow-up a few years ago and the board has been mostly a ghost town since. Lisa and I pulled back from active support of the community about then. I keep the board open for a few Big Circle people in a closed section. My writing has become rather complex, so I also keep it open for the occasional question from a reader. On the board, my answers become part of the text others can read. That is much better than the here now-gone next minute sharing of social media.
The wpForo people have a migration tool that moved the MyBB database with one click.
The phenomena I work with tend to be technology-intensive. People learn to use the technology and management software, but that does not translate well to servers. I think it is important to keep the board as simple as possible. Wordpress is limited but there are a lot of people who know how to work with it. Compared to MyBB, making a major change is more like adding a forum than installing an upgrade. That should be doable for the untrained with a little initiative.
It is finding people with a little initiative that has been a problem for me. Maybe I have bad breath.
Hmm, that protection racket situation sounds bad. It's a pity you couldn't find proof of what was going on - but I guess that there weren't necessarily any tracks left behind by the perpetrators. Doing some googling, it seems that other people have had similar experiences:
https://websitesforgood.com/beware-of-ma...-web-girl/
Yes, MediaWiki is good software - feature-filled, powerful, and extensible. My main struggle with it is optimising load times - and I don't seem to have achieved that for either of the MediaWiki instances I run. I've enabled file caching and parser caching, and right now I'm not sure what more I can do, but its pages still load slowly.
I'm curious to know what your Big Circle is. It gives me the sense of a chosen family of fellow journeyers.
As for finding people with initiative to help maintain communally-used software, I think this is hard for all of us in that situation - I doubt that it's bad breath (unless you've found a way to send breath over the internet!).
Yes, that article points to what I experienced and the same players. Now I use plugins.
The Big Circle organically evolved out of the cooperation of several grieving mothers on the ATransC Idea Exchange. My wife and co-director Lisa and I helped some but learned to stand back and let them self-organize. One of the founders is still active and I have set up a closed forum for them with the promise that I will stay out.
I have learned that I am too technical and determined to be evidential. Grief needs to be served in its own light ... something I only intellectually understand. By promising to stay out of the forum, I am assuring them that I will not try to correct their belief that some of their examples may not be meaningful EVP. If it servers their grief, then it has served its need.
A good example of the kind of cooperation the original Big Circle had is the 4Cell-EVP Demonstration. The teams were mostly people in the Big Circle. See https://atransc.org/4cell-evp-demonstration/
(2020-01-28, 04:09 PM)Laird Wrote: I've just encountered another reason: the latest version of MediaWiki, the software that runs our wiki, requires a minimum PHP version of 7.2.9, whereas the maximum currently supported on our shared Hostgator server is 7.1 - so we are currently unable to upgrade that software, and will potentially become exposed to exploitation of security holes fixed in the later version.
Either I missed it when I wrote the above or Hostgator have added it to cPanel since then, but it is now possible to select a PHP version for each domain up to version 7.4.10, so I've gone ahead and done that and upgraded MediaWiki to its latest version, 1.35.0.
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