WGA site to move to Hostgator

[zuma]

Please note the following motion has been passed by the board:

Whereas the WGA website is currently running on a dedicated server co-hosted by Elknet, and

whereas it has become impractical for the WGA to maintain a dedicated server, and

whereas the website committee has determined that the website should be hosted on a managed virtual private server (VPS) hosted on Hostgator.com,

be it resolved that a VPS be set up at Hostgator.com to host the WGA website.

Be it further resolved that the WGA will will pay $49.95 per month to Hostgator.com for hosting services and support. Monthly payments will be billed on a recurring basis to the WGA’s PayPal account. It may be possible to change to annual billing at a later date.

Be it further resolved that the webite transfer, debugging and testing will commence immediatly and will be completed no later than May 1, 2011.

[rcflyer2242]

Does that mean that there will be a new web address since there will be a new server?

[Buy_The_Tie]

Nope. The address should remain the same.

I would also guess that the look, feel and operation of the site will be largely the same as well.

In fact, you might not even notice that anything has changed.

[Astro_D]

$49.95 a month? Expensive!

[CodeJunkie]

@AstroD-Team wrote:

$49.95 a month? Expensive!

I didn’t want to be the first to say this, but that’s what I thought. Then I went to their website and started poking around. I know with the shopping portion and the PHP-Nuke requirements for the forums and other things that we require a few add-ons. Best case scenario would be $29.95 / month for the Business package, but the VPS option is a little more expensive. I’ve never had to get into the VPS options, so I’ll defer to the committee and webmaster that they’ve made the right decision.

This site definately isn’t your basic website and I’m definately a supporter of moving off the existing hardware to a hosted environment. If keeping all our functionality means paying a few bucks more a month, then so be it.

[Team Black-Cat]

Yes the address will remain the same, and yes the look and feel will be the same. There may be some cosmetic changes, but all of the familiar features will be the same.

Considering the traffic this site gets and the resources used, we don’t exactly fit into the $9.95 per month bracket. If we went that route, the site would be unbearably slow, or we would get booted off in a week. $49 is actually pretty inexpensive.

[neonride93]

Do you think this could help the issue with certain memebers ( ME ) not being able to access it from their Road Runner?

[GetMeOutdoors]

@Team Black-Cat wrote:

Yes the address will remain the same, and yes the look and feel will be the same. There may be some cosmetic changes, but all of the familiar features will be the same.

Considering the traffic this site gets and the resources used, we don’t exactly fit into the $9.95 per month bracket. If we went that route, the site would be unbearably slow, or we would get booted off in a week. $49 is actually pretty inexpensive.

Hostgator is fantastic. I use them for a couple sites and have never been disappointed or had a problem. And $50/mo for a dedicated server is great -and virtual servers have some nice perks! The decision will serve this site well!

[myside]

I own a dedicated server: Xeon 64 bit, 4 processors @2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, HD1 250GB, HD2 500GB, 100mbit unregulated and unmetered interface.

It is mostly a personal server running a few of my sites and miscellaneous mail services.

Any resources that may be needed off the VPS load and onto a enterprise class dedicated?

[Team Black-Cat]

Very possibly, myside. I’ll bookmark your post and get back to you later.

[myside]

Here is some follow up and reference information:

I have 13 years of Unix administration experience and my college education is in computer network administration.

The dedicated server host is running Redhat Enterprise 5.5 (centos). The host services include a small load and lightweight build of MySQL for Syslog facilities, NTP in which I donate to pool.ntp.org.

I separate services and resources using VMWARE ESX Server. I have 3 virtual machines running on the host. Two VM’s are FreeBSD, and one is Ubuntu Server.

One FreeBSD VM is a personal machine. The second FreeBSD host is the backbone for all the physical and virtual hosts. This VM handles DNS, Mail, high demand SQL resources, Courier-IMAP, and its related service inclusions. The MTA is Postfix using two milters: greylist-milter and Spamassassin. The hostname is “extserver.com” and the IP does reverse if you wish to do an investigation.

The Ubuntu Server machine is a user based web services environment. The webserver is “lighttpd” using fast-cgi for PHP, Perl, and Python. I do not use Apache so all .htaccess is done by hand. Lighttpd is a very high performance web server for high demand and high load sites used by services such as YouTube, wikipedia, meebo, and of course I use it for “my content”.

The Ubuntu Server VM is also a backup MTA (fallback) server for extserver.com using again Postfix. FTP services for this host are provided by VSFTPD (very secure FTP) and is SSL enabled. You may reference extprovider.com, extprovider-e-e0-e100.extprovider.com again both domains are reversible by IP resolution.

I own 7 static IP addresses. I am not willing to discuss the mappings for them all. If WGA needs a private IP, a static IP is priced at $1.00 per month. Otherwise, I am willing to provide a domain and subdomain that points to extprovider-e-e0-e100.extprovider.com at which most of my websites are pointed too.

I do not use or offer a control panel. I am not willing to offer SSH access, but I am willing to work directly with your administrators for all needs that can not be accomplished using the above resource access methods.

I am willing to donate your needed resources free of charge unless additional expenses are involved such as a private IP for WGA, and etc..

Cheers!

[arffer]

@zuma wrote:

Please note the following motion has been passed by the board:

Whereas the WGA website is currently running on a dedicated server co-hosted by Elknet,

Just for historical sake…

My name is Alan, and my wife, Arlene, and I along with 5 others were the founders of WGA. My wife created the original WGA website and I hosted it on the ElkNet ISP that I was the director of. Jeremy was in as another webmaster right from the start, and I contributed a few scripts along the way.

If you are interested in seeing the original WGA site, you can do so HERE. Quite a few early versions are viewable, rather fun to see!

Back in 2005 my wife took over the commercial side of ElkNet into her own company, and from that point on she has solely hosted the WGA website at her company, IXNet Services LLC.

In the Fall of 2006, Jeremy built and donated a brand new server for the website, which was placed at my wife’s company, and Jeremy redesigned the WGA website from the ground up.

The website has been running in that configuration since then. My wife and I over the years moved off the BOD of WGA, and have pretty much retired from geocaching. This increased the load on Jeremy, and while others stepped up to work alongside him as webmasters, it is still a significant effort for them to support a physical dedicated server.

While Arlene and I are happy to continue to host the WGA server, it makes sense from a support standpoint to move the WGA site to a virtual server.

[Team Black-Cat]

I’ve known about webarchive, but never thought to look at what the WGA site looked like. That is pretty cool.

Thanks Alan!

[zuma]

@arffer wrote:

@zuma wrote:

Please note the following motion has been passed by the board:

Whereas the WGA website is currently running on a dedicated server co-hosted by Elknet,

Just for historical sake…

My name is Alan, and my wife, Arlene, and I along with 5 others were the founders of WGA. My wife created the original WGA website and I hosted it on the ElkNet ISP that I was the director of. Jeremy was in as another webmaster right from the start, and I contributed a few scripts along the way.

If you are interested in seeing the original WGA site, you can do so HERE. Quite a few early versions are viewable, rather fun to see!

Back in 2005 my wife took over the commercial side of ElkNet into her own company, and from that point on she has solely hosted the WGA website at her company, IXNet Services LLC.

In the Fall of 2006, Jeremy built and donated a brand new server for the website, which was placed at my wife’s company, and Jeremy redesigned the WGA website from the ground up.

The website has been running in that configuration since then. My wife and I over the years moved off the BOD of WGA, and have pretty much retired from geocaching. This increased the load on Jeremy, and while others stepped up to work alongside him as webmasters, it is still a significant effort for them to support a physical dedicated server.

While Arlene and I are happy to continue to host the WGA server, it makes sense from a support standpoint to move the WGA site to a virtual server.

Just wanted to repeat what I said in the other thread here, since this thread is a little more on target.

I am very appreciative of the great support that Alan and Arlene have provided for us over the years, and appreciate what the folks who started this association were able to accomplish. Thank you very much!!!!!

The move to Hostgator is being made simply to ensure that we remain viable over the long term, going into the future. The board is very appreciative of the current host and so far the existing system has worked out very well for the WGA.

I know all on the board appreciate your help, and I have to guess that most of our current members who are aware of what you did for us, feel the same way.

Thank you!!!!

zuma

[arffer]

Thanks for the nice comments, but no thanks are necessary 🙂

This organization, from the founding meeting in Yawningdog’s cigar room/garage, has always been much greater than the sum of its parts. So many people have stepped up when needed to make it a great association of geocachers.

I think the best testament to this is the fact that it continues to grow and thrive every year, even though there are almost none of the originals still guiding it. I recognize almost none of the names currently giving life to WGA, it really has become alive of itself!

So, if any kudos are deserved, its the membership at large, each of you, that deserves it.

[Author]

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