Domains and what to do with them

[Hated Moron]

To reduce the risk of 'cybersquatting' I own the following domains: bbcbasic.co.uk, bbcbasic.uk, bbcbasic.com, bbcbasic.org, bbcbasic.net and bbcbasic.tv. In almost every case they are forwarded to the same host (or are parked with that host); the only one hosted separately is bbcbasic.net which I set up recently as a backup server for the in-browser edition.

My question is: could I make more use of these domains, without any significant extra expense? Perhaps somebody with more experience of having a 'web presence' could make some suggestions. Or if what I'm doing now is fine, that's valuable information too.

[Cesar64]

I am a web developer mostly in java, and as far i know, you can do what you want with your domains, there no extras cost because you already paid for them, the cost hosting and bandwidth is paid separately and must be included in the plan that you have with the hosting provider.

[Hated Moron]

I am a web developer mostly in java, and as far i know, you can do what you want with your domains, there no extras cost because you already paid for them, the cost hosting and bandwidth is paid separately and must be included in the plan that you have with the hosting provider.

Of course I could (and probably will) leave everything as it is now, but my question was "could I make more use of these domains, without any significant extra expense?" and you haven't addressed that. Anything that would involve additional hosting would cost me more, because I have already used up nearly all the disk space provided by my current hosting package.

On which point, this forum itself consumes an ever-increasing amount of that disk space, which is something that I resent since it's out of my control. Inevitably the time will come, probably quite soon, when posts and attachments here completely exhaust the disk quota of my hosting package. What will happen then is anybody's guess!

[DDRM]

Hi Richard,

I guess that's at least partly aimed at me, and it's a discussion it is probably useful to have before it becomes too urgent. One obvious solution would be to discard anything older than a certain date, and repeat the process as needed. It's rather a blunt instrument as an approach, but I don't fancy the job of going through every post and making a decision of whether to keep or delete it! I'm aware you regard the forum as a useful archive (as do I!), and it's not easy to predict what someone might find useful.

Any other ideas about approaches? Is a lot of the space in a modest number of attachments, which we could flag up as about to be deleted in case anyone wants to grab a copy, and then delete?

Best wishes,

D

[JeremyNicoll]

One obvious solution would be to discard anything older than a certain date, and repeat the process as needed. It's rather a blunt instrument as an approach, but I don't fancy the job of going through every post and making a decision of whether to keep or delete it!

...

Any other ideas about approaches? Is a lot of the space in a modest number of attachments, which we could flag up as about to be deleted in case anyone wants to grab a copy, and then delete?

What is the scale of the problem? How fast is the storage requirement growing?

Does the hosting service provide (a few) GB or TB of storage?

Would the hosting company provide more (for more money, under the same level of account) or if a higher level of service/account was opened instead?

Is there anything else running on the server (logging, auto backups etc) that is consuming more space than is warranted?


If large files are deleted from the forum posts (and moved elsewhere) is it easy to update the URLs in the posts to point to the new location?


Some time ago I decided to put some files of original audio recordings online, for private use by members of a choir. It seemed likely that the normal Ts&Cs for ordinary webhosting companies would preclude that (many forbid one from hosting /any/ audio or video so that they don't get caught up in potential piracy problems), so I used a CDN. Naturally such companies usually have customers with many TB of data so my very small amount was, at first, very very cheap to host. Then the company concerned introduced a minimum monthly charge... but it's still only £4/month. For that I /could/ host around 55 GB of data (though they also bill on bandwidth - but for me, no-one is currently downloading my files). I should really hunt around for a cheaper service OR also use the account to store backups of my own other data. Anyway, the point is that if you are not already doing so, perhaps part of the solution to your problem is not with a web-hosting company, but instead someone like a CDN.

[Hated Moron]

What is the scale of the problem? How fast is the storage requirement growing?

As will be apparent, forum activity is very erratic. It can go for long periods with nothing being posted, then have a phase of dozens of posts over a couple of days. So I don't think there's any accurate way of quantifying the problem.

What I can say is that it's attachments (usually pictures) which are the main consumer of space. The limit on attachment size is already set quite low compared with some other forums, but they mount up.

Does the hosting service provide (a few) GB or TB of storage?

1 Gbyte of storage, described by them as "a huge amount of webspace" although you might not agree!

Would the hosting company provide more (for more money, under the same level of account) or if a higher level of service/account was opened instead?

It's the biggest of their non-reseller packages. More storage (15 Gb is the biggest they do) would cost nearly five times what I am currently paying (£28 per month instead of £6) so is out of the question.

Is there anything else running on the server (logging, auto backups etc) that is consuming more space than is warranted?

Only logs, as far as I know, which I prune quite regularly,

If large files are deleted from the forum posts (and moved elsewhere) is it easy to update the URLs in the posts to point to the new location?

I don't know, but it sounds like a massive admin effort which I certainly wouldn't be able to contribute.

The forum's admin already knows my preferred solution, which is for him to move the forum to another host which has more storage (I can't do that). Separating the forum from the rest of the website (particularly the critical server for the in-browser edition of BBCSDL) would be desirable anyway,

One of our members, Svein in Oslo, has already offered some space for it and an attempt was made to move the forum by backing it up and restoring it at the new location. But it didn't work for some reason, and after multiple attempts it was abandoned.

[Hated Moron]

The forum's admin already knows my preferred solution, which is for him to move the forum to another host which has more storage (I can't do that). Separating the forum from the rest of the website (particularly the critical server for the in-browser edition of BBCSDL) would be desirable anyway,

Can somebody please explain to me why my concerns don't seem to be shared?

To me, it's actually highly desirable that this forum could be reinstated from a backup in the event of a server crash, but as far as I'm aware the administrator doesn't even bother to take backups, and even if he did nobody seems to know how to restore the forum from a backup successfully.

Also, to me it's important that the server for the in-browser edition of BBCSDL has very good availability. But again the possibility of forum activity causing the bandwidth limit to be exceeded and the server ceasing to be accessible seems not to concern anybody else.

Am I just being naïve? Is BBC BASIC of so little relevance today that it could disappear, along with its support forums, and nobody (apart from me) would care?

Shall we just forget the whole thing and close down all the websites, the Wiki, the forums etc? I can do that in five minutes if that's the general view.

[JeremyNicoll]

Can somebody please explain to me why my concerns don't seem to be shared?

To me, it's actually highly desirable that this forum could be reinstated from a backup in the event of a server crash, but as far as I'm aware the administrator doesn't even bother to take backups, and even if he did nobody seems to know how to restore the forum from a backup successfully.

I'm sure it concerns lots of us, but as mere users of the forum there's nothing that /we/ can do.

It's hard to comment on why the attempted move of the forum to somewhere else did not work, though I /guess/ it failed because the environment on the new server did not match the current one in some way(s).

Then again, no-one has said where the failure(s) were: did the restore of files work? Was it thought that an incomplete set of them were in the backup?

Did the applications start but then crash - what? Was it ok until someone tried to login? Did application logs give no clues?

So perhaps the problems were with: versions of server software, how those are configured etc? Or versions of the underlying OS, perhaps different approaches (by the owners of the server) to file/folder/user permissions ...?


That doesn't necessarily mean that a restore on the present system (if, say, it had to have a disk replaced) wouldn't work - where one might assume that all the external environmental stuff would stay the same ... though if it's never been tried that would make me nervous.

Also, to me it's important that the server for the in-browser edition of BBCSDL has very good availability. But again the possibility of forum activity causing the bandwidth limit to be exceeded and the server ceasing to be accessible seems not to concern anybody else.

Yes, but what can someone like me do about it?

Am I just being naïve? Is BBC BASIC of so little relevance today that it could disappear, along with its support forums, and nobody (apart from me) would care?

Shall we just forget the whole thing and close down all the websites, the Wiki, the forums etc? I can do that in five minutes if that's the general view.

I do not want the forums etc to vanish.

[Hated Moron]

I'm sure it concerns lots of us, but as mere users of the forum there's nothing that /we/ can do.

But there's value in expressing concern, even of there's nothing that you personally can do about it. If you choose silence, the person who does have some control is entitled to conclude there is general apathy about the matter and therefore that it's not worth bothering.

Then again, no-one has said where the failure(s) were: did the restore of files work? Was it thought that an incomplete set of them were in the backup?

I'm afraid I don't know, it wasn't me who tried it.

That doesn't necessarily mean that a restore on the present system (if, say, it had to have a disk replaced) wouldn't work

True. I think the admin of this forum said some while ago that he was going to try updating it to a new version, which would probably involve a restore, but I don't know where that has got to.

Yes, but what can someone like me do about it?

Same answer as to your first question: you can express your concern; if enough people do that, those in control know that there's a desire for some action and will be more inclined to take it. If you say nothing, they will reasonably conclude that mine is a lone voice and ignore it.

I do not want the forums etc to vanish.

Nor me, but are we in a tiny minority? The enthusiastic, knowledgeable, members (I'm thinking of the likes of Michael Hutton, Malcolm Marten, Jon Ripley, David Williams) have all 'jumped ship', they no longer seem to be interested in BBC BASIC. I know that Michael Hutton changed his allegiance to PureBasic, but I don't know about the others.

[Edja]

But there's value in expressing concern, even of there's nothing that you personally can do about it

and

I do not want the forums etc to vanish.

I definitely would like the forums to keep on going.
Edja