Hosting and Backups

[Stephanie]

Hi @katie or @Dena,

I don’t need (and probably shouldn’t have) details, but can you give us an outline about how the site is being hosted and how backups are handled?

One of my biggest concerns about another site is it was being hosted on a system in the owner’s home, and the way backups were being handled may (or may not, I just don’t know) have been a bit sketchy. When the site was down for over three days at one point I was extremely unhappy about the possibility of losing my posts, which I was using as a sort of journal of my progress.

A followup question concerns those old posts. I see on another thread here that it’s allowed to copy and paste posts from the old site to here. I could probably automate the process to bring them over, but there are well over 3000 posts in my two personal threads. Would that be a problem at this point? My goal is to rescue those precious posts before something terrible happens to them.

Stephanie

[Stephanie]

@Stephanie , our hosting is cloud based. It shouldn't (hopefully) be prone to some of the weaknesses that you're concerned about.

Katie,

I received your PM, but can’t reply. Apparently I haven’t reached my post minimum yet?


- Stephanie

[Dena]

The hosting service does regular backup and we can recall one as needed. In addition, I am able to pull a backup to my system and normally I pull a copy down every evening. If I feel nervous, I may pull an extra one down. The site is still under 2 MB so backups come down fairly quick on my 40 Mb link. It takes under 8 seconds so it's quick and easy to do.

Something I should mention to you, if you are in a thread, there is a print button at the bottom. That button should prepare the entire thread for print. You only need save it as a PDF then you can cut and paste what you want out of it. Material posted here should be your own work and not that of other people. I even have a few posts I would like to repost here when have the time. Most of my work was done on other peoples threads so I don't have many of my own.

[Kiera]

. . . our hosting is cloud based

       I am skeptical you mean you don't lease your own server space? Are doing the so-called low cost monthly where others are "maintaining all"? I belong to an 'Admin Only' forum and the opinion thereof "distributed cloud" is far less than positive. Tapatalk is another such "do all for" space I do presume you still have CPanel access for your installation files?

Albeit I did find it hard to comprehend what the exact difference between the two is. lol "Cloud" seems just that: rather fuss free but rather fuzzy wuzzy on the where?

If in "limbo-land" then doesn't really belong to anybody! ('cept THEM)

. . . there is a print button at the bottom. That button should prepare the entire thread for print. You only need save it as a PDF

     If a forum has an "archive view" that should work as well? There is auto "forum scraping" software available I've also done the 'ole "copy/paste" trick, which is very labor-intensive, by "show all posts" by a particular user. An example page copy is ->HERE<- ( that's on MY server not HERS! but don't "click" some of the links work some not - just a testament to what's already been erased by Users!))

Curious: Just logged in by userID BANNING but not by "IP"? One can still view as "guest"? Rather evilly serves my purposes just fine!

[Dena]

       I am skeptical you mean you don't lease your own server space? Are doing the so-called low cost monthly where others are "maintaining all"? I belong to an 'Admin Only' forum and the opinion thereof "distributed cloud" is far less than positive. Tapatalk is another such "do all for" space I do presume you still have CPanel access for your installation files?

Albeit I did find it hard to comprehend what the exact difference between the two is. lol "Cloud" seems just that: rather fuss free but rather fuzzy wuzzy on the where?

If in "limbo-land" then doesn't really belong to anybody! ('cept THEM)

Cloud based is a fuzzy term. About all it means is you don't own the hardware your hosting on. We know where the hardware is located and we can access things down to the Apache level. They toss in MySQL and a bit more. Why do it this way? It's cheap and scalable. As we grow, at a quick glance they have options up to 120 GB of storage. If people don't like the site, we pull a backup and close up shop. If the site does well, we worry about that problem when the time comes. The biggest risk to a new business is overextending themselves when the business isn't there to support it. We know our funding restrictions and we are staying within them. If we are successful, it opens the doors to other funding options.

[Stephanie]

@Kiera , as Dena pointed out, cost is a major factor in our decisions.

When I have purchased businesses or business equipment in the past, I have always used 24 months to set my hurdle rate. Many businesses use 18 months, but I am more patient. I am not yet confident that investing in the hardware right now would yield a reasonable return. We haven't set any commercialization plans, so how such investments would yield a return isn't even defined. Everything so far has been out of our own pockets.

None of us has bottomless pockets, so for now we're operating on the smallest budget we can manage.

Katie and Dena,

Due to disrespect and paranoia I’ve been subjected to recently, I am looking for a worthy cause to redirect a $20/month donation to. Please let me know if you decide to initiate a subscription donation system.


- Stephanie

[Kirsteneklund7]

Katie and Dena,

Due to disrespect and paranoia I’ve been subjected to recently, I am looking for a worthy cause to redirect a $20/month donation to. Please let me know if you decide to initiate a subscription donation system.


- Stephanie

Count me in as well!

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