mamboportal mirrors

[simbo]

Some history: There was an unfortunate incident that happened when someone offered to mirror Mamboportal. There was a misunderstanding such that the offer was rejected. The person that made the offer flipped out and said some harmful stuff.

Now that is all history - I don't want to drag up what happened when that person flipped out as it is a closed matter. I only mentioned it so that people know that I am aware of that incident when they read what I want to say below.

Mirroring means:

1) an exact copy of the site is made without modifications which is automatically synchronised to the master site
2) the only purpose of mirroring is the ease the load on the main site. anyone that mirrors a site is donating bandwidth
3) a community site that is mirrored it can never be taken off air by the failure of a single server
4) control of a mirrored site stays with the site owner. they update the master and the mirrors only reflect that master. control, copyright and intellectual property remains with the site owner

You can only download content from the apache.org site through a mirror http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi . That is an example of the community helping apache with its bandwidth. Also when you download linux most people choose a mirror close to them for their distro. Once again this is a powerful example of community mirroring being a donation of bandwidth.

The reason that I wanted to say this is that when Mamboportal was off air recently one of the things that was sited was bandwidth and space cost. The community could help Arthur by trusted and professional System Administration mambers mirroring his site to ease this matter.

So what I am appealing for the community to approach Arthur through mambers to both explain to him how mirroring is a donation to him - and for professional sysadmins to setup a mirroring network for him such that he drives the content across a cluster of mirror sites. Things could be setup so that downloads are *only* taken from mirrors. Then he will never have to pay for download bandwidth ever again - without every loosing any control of the content of his site.

A key word above is "trust". I am a junior system administrator what has only had one conversation with Arthur. I would not expect him to take my words without question. I am a sysadm at a bank - so I cannot offer him space on our servers. So I have said all of this here as there are mambers that Arthur can trust whole heatedly - and I am sure that there are sysadmins where that can offer professional space. So I post this here to bring the trust and the resources together to help Mamboportal.

[Gayle]

What may be more useful is to expand the ReMOSitory to include a SourceForge style "Select a mirror" page. Mirroring full Mambo content without a lot of wasted bandwidth is difficult (not impossible but not trivial) but having the filebase mirrored (I believe this is the main killer of Arthur's bandwidth) would be much easier and an a great way to lower the bandwidth usage considerably. If all the actual content is at Mamboportal and the user simply browses the filebase as normal but can select the site to download from then it keeps the community portal in one place but spreads the load as you say.

I know I have about 19GB of unused bandwidth (hosted at The Planet datacentre so exceptionally fast) that I could easily donate to the cause. I also have the skills needed to implement both the mirroring and the ReMOSitory extension if there is interest from Arthur.

[mamboguy.com]

The reason that I wanted to say this is that when Mamboportal was off air recently one of the things that was sited was bandwidth and space cost. The community could help Arthur by trusted and professional System Administration mambers mirroring his site to ease this matter.

I/we have made that offer to Arthur before, as well as other hosting offers to him. Our company is trusted enough to host 1000's of websites and has been around over 3 yrs. And for the record we have servers at NAC and The Planet.

[mamboguy.com]

The files stored at mamboportal are IMO the best mambo resource on the web. Good Job Arthur!

[Admin]

Thanks Brad, You have offered free webhosting a thousand times, but I always denied. Now, that you made this public, here is the same answer than every time, also made public:

I already have a wonderfull webhoster. I'm working with 1and1 (ENG: www.1and1.com, DEU: www.1und1.de) which is probably one of the biggest webhosters in the world. Actually I'm very satisfied with their server setup and the bandwidth they have. My servers can be reached fast in all parts of the world. 1and1 has taken over the whole management of my servers and they have a good service. During the years I never encountered any problem, which did not get solved. So, many thanks 1and1!!!

But this is not the main reason, why I denied all offers for free webhosting. Personally I love to be in controll about things. And this is what I'm not at a sponsored hosting. If something is not ok, I can call my hoster and kick them untill the problem is solved 100% as I pay them for working systems. This is something I can do not, when someone offers a hosting for free.

Speaking about 'free'. Nothing in live is free! So every hosting always comes with a commercial add shown at the website too. Currently I'm able to run Mamboportal.com, and hopefully Mambers.com too, with a small Google ad only and with the help of donators. And I will try that this will stay the only adds shown at the websites.

But we are off-topic. Speaking about mirroring, there would be an easy solution for Mamboportal.com's filebase: A better download component! If you actually would be able to add more than one location, I would add mosforge's link, the developers link and finally (if all others went wrong) Mamboportal local link. So the only thing needed is professional download component.

I've already thought about this problem and I'm currently searching for a good, even commercial download system. This could be set up without MOS and would be a filebase system only. And please don't argue about this, as you did with Mambers.com's vBulletion decision. MOS is a wonderfull CMS, but it only has a few high-end component's.

And Brad, could you please use the edit button if you have something to add to your last post. You are creating dozens of post's following just an earlier post of you.

[mamboguy.com]

Speaking about mirroring, there would be an easy solution for Mamboportal.com's filebase: A better download component! If you actually would be able to add more than one location, I would add mosforge's link, the developers link and finally (if all others went wrong) Mamboportal local link. So the only thing needed is professional download component.

Way to go! I am sure a php component could be written to handle that.
Keep up the good work....

[mamboguy.com]

And Brad, could you please use the edit button if you have something to add to your last post. You are creating dozens of post's following just an earlier post of you.

I only edit posts when there are spelling errors etc, otherwise subscribers to thread may not see the parts you add, they have to re-read it all.

I am really sorry if I have upset you. If you would prefer I left this community just say so. I only want to make it a better place, and I truly appreciate your hard work. Our offers with regard to hosting were made due to your repeated statements on the high costs associtaed with running a website. Bandwidth in particular. My posts here are only to help out as well.

edit - pointless

[Gayle]

Originally Posted by Admin

But we are off-topic. Speaking about mirroring, there would be an easy solution for Mamboportal.com's filebase: A better download component! If you actually would be able to add more than one location, I would add mosforge's link, the developers link and finally (if all others went wrong) Mamboportal local link. So the only thing needed is professional download component.

I've already thought about this problem and I'm currently searching for a good, even commercial download system. This could be set up without MOS and would be a filebase system only. And please don't argue about this, as you did with Mambers.com's vBulletion decision. MOS is a wonderfull CMS, but it only has a few high-end component's.

I'm in two minds about this, part of me goes with the Unix philosophy of simple tools each doing their own job and doing it well (i.e. dedicated forum, dedicated fownload manager, dedicated CMS etc) but I'm also equally sure that extending the ReMOSitory to handle mirrors and multiple download sources is fairly trivial. Leeching from mirrors is not a problem as if you don't want people to download then you don't provide a mirror, easy

Obviously it's your site though, if you don't want to go that route then it's up to you but if you're interested I'll throw some code together and you can take a look.

[Gayle]

Originally Posted by badbaker.com

So do you want me to leave?

Pointless post. Either leave or stay, the choice is yours. You're an adult, you make the call.

[mamboguy.com]

Originally Posted by Gayle

Pointless post. Either leave or stay, the choice is yours. You're an adult, you make the call.

Well of course I want to stay, but I don't want to upset others because of how I post....

In other words, I am here until the admin/mods tell me to go....