All's Well That Ends Well...

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koitsu
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All's Well That Ends Well...

Post by koitsu »

I have some disheartening news for most visitors (including the moderators), and will probably come as a surprise to many. I ask that folks here read it with an open mind.

All good things...

I'm going around to certain forums of the more popular sites we host and provide a link to this, as I don't have recent/active Email addresses for everyone. And in some cases (like nesdev), I want to be as open and up front as possible.

There are a lot of reasons (some financial, many personal) for my decision, but I ask that folks be as respectful of it as much as possible. I know it will be a stressor, as change this big often results in shock and disappointment or frustration, but please understand that it's something that I have been thinking about for the past 6 months and finally came to a decision. Making that decision was one of the most difficult things I've had to do in my entire life.

If you have any comments/concerns/etc. that you'd rather not voice publicly, contact me here (or via any of the mentioned means) and I'll do my best to answer.

Remember: keep your chins up -- it's not the end of the world. :-)

(Footnote for other mods: feel free to split this, change it to an announcement, or whatever -- I'm not sure what gets the most coverage)
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Kasumi
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Post by Kasumi »

Sad news, indeed. I imagine someone will step up to continue hosting this forum, though. So it's all good.
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Banshaku
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Post by Banshaku »

Sad news indeed, but life must go own. I hope nothing bad happened to you.

Should we make another thread regarding the planning on how to get nesdev forum and the wiki on another server? We still have a few months to do it.

I need to find a solution for the wiki ;)
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Bregalad
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Post by Bregalad »

For us it'd just be a matter of moving the forums and the wiki to somewhere else.

The nesdev main page has been abandoned since about 2005 and like 90% of the links here are 404 errors so loosing it won't be a big loss (I'm sorry Memblers but that is really the case...)

The forums are still very active, and we already moved them from another place back in 2004 I think. So it's not a big deal. Most of the thread here contains no interesting info or info that has already been documented somewhere - some thread contains relevant info that is nowhere else to be found so I think it should be important to document it somewhere.

Many people put efforts into documenting things as properly as possible on the wiki. Yet I can't refrain to thing it's still a huge mess of info that is not organized properly. Sorry but again this just is the case, and I am probably also responsible for that.
Yet the wiki is still somewhat precious as it's better to find all info in a single place than have them spread everywhere.
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Jeroen
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Post by Jeroen »

I agree with Bregalad that the main page isn't that important anymore...(Altough a backup for reference/old time sake stored somewhere would be a good thing.) What worries me more is who's gonna take up hosting...It costs money ya know! Donations perhaps?
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thefox
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Post by thefox »

Just writing this as a reminder here (to myself and others) that the stuff from http://blargg.parodius.com needs to be saved (I doubt blargg will be around to do it).
3gengames
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Post by 3gengames »

If we move to a new site, I'll be happy to design and program the main page to bring it to a more current look and replace some of the data with just more specific/unspecific links to everything like nerdy nights, the wiki, other peoples projects, etc. I'm sad that this won't be the place any more and wish I could help financially with it but the HTML part is the only thing I can really offer to help with some stuff to make the process easier and in the end better for everyone. I hope somebody else hosts the site too. I can't imagine what I'd be derping with today if these forums didn't help me so much and all of you guys didn't answer my mostly stupid questions in the beginning. A big thank you to all you guys, especially koitsu, for everything you have provided and made possible so far. :)

ETA: As for financially helping, I say we need to make sure the NESDev compo happen and get everything done on time, the cart sales profit could be a big helper to whoever helps with the hosting, I'd be glad to program some stuff up, even with others as a group, to get some money coming to anything NESDev related, especially the forums. :)
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rainwarrior
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Post by rainwarrior »

Some of the wiki is poorly organized, but it's still being actively worked on, if slowly. I've lately been trying to improve the articles about expansion audio. I sincerely hope we can continue to work on it.

There's a lot of great stuff on these forums as well. I'd hate to lose any of it.

Is there a way to download an archive of the wiki?

Anyhow, thanks for all the time you did host this place. I'm very glad it exists.
Bisqwit
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Post by Bisqwit »

I, or rather, my server, may be available for temporary hosting purposes.

I used to host TASVideos from its creation in 2003 to late 2009, and the server on which I ran it (situated at my home) is still available.*

I cannot guarantee long-term hosting though. (The reasons for which I gave out TASVideos still apply.)
It also has a very low uplink bandwidth (around 100 kB/s total, shared between all concurrent clients), so hosting large downloads is not practical. (It was this way during TASVideos as well.) Currently NESDev does not have large downloads anywhere, does it?
The earliest I could start any concrete actions towards such migration practically is about 3 weeks from now.


*) Debian LAMP with 6 GiB RAM, though I need to investigate a virtual server solution if I want to give adminship to some others, as the server is also the storage for all of my personal data and I cannot figure out how to set file/directory privileges in such manner that it's not too inconvenient for myself.
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Jeroen
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Post by Jeroen »

Btw Koitsu...does this mean we'll see alot less of you? Or do you plan to stick around at least a little?
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Dwedit
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Post by Dwedit »

So what's next? Piggyback nesdev onto some random person's Dreamhost account?
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koitsu
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Post by koitsu »

Jeroen wrote:Btw Koitsu...does this mean we'll see alot less of you? Or do you plan to stick around at least a little?
That's actually quite sweet (of a question). :-) Yeah I'll still be around, rest assured.

Edit: Heh, shortly after the announcement, someone started massively downloading all of the content from numerous hosted sites here (nesdev, nesworld, JE in specific) using wget, which is absolutely the wrong thing to do (such utilities get stuck indefinitely on forums/boards). I just had to firewall them off. Some people...

Edit #2: And now about 30 minutes ago some dude in Argentina doing the same thing. I wish people would settle down.

Edit #3: And today (05/01) I found someone whose leeching client downloaded the site 3 separate times in the past 3 days, and got stuck in an infinite loop (like they all do), so I had to firewall them off. IP was an ADSL connection somewhere in the south (I'm guessing Tennessee). IP had never visited the site before either (looked back numerous weeks). Real cute. Here's a graph showing what I'm talking about:

Image

Edit #4: Same guy in edit #3 somehow changed his IP address (def. same guy; HTTP client string is the same, IP is within the same /16 netblock) and started up again a little after 10:00 PDT. Quite a persistent son of a bitch...

Image

Edit #5: Same guy changing IPs again, this time into an entirely new netblock to get around things, but same ISP. I swear if I find out who this dickhead is there's going to be trouble. Doesn't even bother to read anything on the forum or the site to see what's going on.

Image

Edit #6: Same guy just started up again a little after 23:00 PDT. Once more, changed his IP to a new netblock (same ISP though). I *could* block him based on HTTP client string, but the client string he's using is a total lie anyway (and I can tell what web browser he usually uses vs. the leeching application), so there's really no point. Dude, just give up already.

Image
Last edited by koitsu on Tue May 01, 2012 11:33 pm, edited 10 times in total.
Drag
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Post by Drag »

Dwedit wrote:So what's next? Piggyback nesdev onto some random person's Dreamhost account?
You could always give Xkeeper a ring. We tend to dabble in dorky video game stuff anyway. :P
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Dwedit
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Post by Dwedit »

TCRF only successfully loads about 45% of the time, no hosting from their host, please.
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Drag
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Post by Drag »

It wouldn't be from the host we use for TCRF.
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