Forum Migration

[EntroX]

ohai~

This is something i have been working on in the background for a while now and I'm getting close to the point that i feel comfortable with announcing. I am planning to migrate the forum away from vBulletin to Discourse. This is mostly just to centralize the forum once again (i wont be running this on the cloud, split up in 6x separate VM's) and to get something a bit more modern up and running. And of course there are bonus points because its an open source project.

This will also involve migrating the website away from Digital Ocean and moving it to the infrastructure i have running at home (fairly modern decommissioned enterprise hardware). Because of this i will be removing ads from the website entirely (fuck ads). This is the same hardware i end up using to host personal and FHC game servers (currently hosting space engineers and 7d2d if anyone is interested~)

I know its been a long time since i have been active. Some of you know that i have been lurking in the background and i am aware that my neglect has been felt and that is something i definitely feel shitty about but hopefully moving forward things will be a bit better.

If anyone has suggestions or questions feel free to ask here or poke me on Discord.

/trox

[helgur]

Discourse is the same software I used for rustheap-challenge back in the day for a very short time (when we also made the discord server). It's a solid forum package, miles above what we have now in vBulletin. Some might not like the modern UI, but it's just something you'll get used to fairly quickly. This also means no need to use the shitty mobile app, as discourse conforms to modern web ui standards and scales to look pretty awesome on mobile. This is pretty great!

Thanks Entrox

[Nordstern]

HE LIVES

Just don't "lose" certain subforums in the move, plz kthxbai

[Sacul]

Thanks mate!

FHC is the last real forum i frequent and would hate to lose it.
Need a donation drive for this?

[EntroX]

HE LIVES

Just don't "lose" certain subforums in the move, plz kthxbai

The plan is to do a 1:1 migration. Its one of the main reasons i picked Discourse (they have a vB -> Discourse migration tool)

Thanks mate!

Need a donation drive for this?

Nope, FHC has been low cost enough that Ads and the few people that still throw a bit of money via the PayPal donation have been enough to keep things running (its about $30ish/mo to run right now) and the hardware that i am moving things to is just part of my homelab.

[rufuske]

What's the rationale for moving it away from cloud to centralized infrastructure in your garage, if you don't mind me asking?

[whispous]

What's the rationale for moving it away from cloud to centralized infrastructure in your garage, if you don't mind me asking?

Only costs electricity

Plus he likes keeping us in his house

[Dorvil Barranis]

Will the infrastructure be able to handle the impending flood of new users? (Upgrades attract new users, right?)

[tulip]

Thanks for the forum, appreciate it x

[Itiken]

w00t hi 'trox.

been looking at discourse for some other project, it'll be nice to see how it runs.

[Keckers]

How much to accidentally lose the pony ghetto in the migration?

[Varcaus]

How much to accidentally lose the pony ghetto in the migration?

2nd

[EntroX]

What's the rationale for moving it away from cloud to centralized infrastructure in your garage, if you don't mind me asking?

one big reason (as whisp mentioned) is because it will add a negligible amount of load to my current environment and i can just stop paying a 3rd party to host it for me.

Plus he likes keeping us in his house

Hidden inside of a closet (vlan), but yes.

Will the infrastructure be able to handle the impending flood of new users? (Upgrades attract new users, right?)

yes (half the blades aren't turned on. lots of headroom available)

How much to accidentally lose the pony ghetto in the migration?

why?

[RazoR]

infrastructure i have running at home

basement PC confirmed

[EntroX]

infrastructure i have running at home

basement PC confirmed

living room actually >.> (its all very quiet hardware)

[whispous]

infrastructure i have running at home

basement PC confirmed

living room actually >.> (its all very quiet hardware)

I dream of outfitting a house from scratch and having a network/server room

[Joshua Foiritain]

Oh god discourse is that pile of trash CCP uses as well.

tnx 4 the effort tho.

[GeromeDoutrande]

Thanks for the forum, appreciate it x

[Lowa [NSN]]

infrastructure i have running at home

basement PC confirmed

living room actually >.> (its all very quiet hardware)

This is a joke right? There isnt a server in existence that is that quiet, esp blades and their chassis, they are the devil!
I appreciate the rig tho and the continued hosting of the forum! <3

[EntroX]

infrastructure i have running at home

basement PC confirmed

living room actually >.> (its all very quiet hardware)

This is a joke right? There isnt a server in existence that is that quiet, esp blades and their chassis, they are the devil!
I appreciate the rig tho and the continued hosting of the forum! <3

The chassis is a Dell PowerEdge VRTX, Its designed to be quiet. With 2/4 blades on and 17 SAS SSD's its producing 38 dB of noise. My AC is louder. The rest of my hardware all has manual IPMI profiles so its sitting on pretty low fan speeds (unsurprisingly, the VRTX is the loudest thing on the rack).

You would be surprised at how quiet Dell hardware can get nowadays. Current and previous gen (13g/14g so rX30/rX40) hardware when not under heavy load can be near silent even while in use since you can tweak IPMI values.

infrastructure i have running at home

basement PC confirmed

living room actually >.> (its all very quiet hardware)

I dream of outfitting a house from scratch and having a network/server room

The day i buy a house i will 100% have a couple of 48U racks with lots of blinkies on them. Limiting myself to a 24U rack for now because i'm renting an apartment and i cant exactly install a few 220V outlets for fun stuff (or deal with the noise of the kind of things i want to buy )