DhO needs a new home and possible upgrade

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Daniel M Ingram, modified 5 Years ago at 5/19/18 9:50 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 5/19/18 9:50 PM

DhO needs a new home and possible upgrade

Posts: 3268 Join Date: 4/20/09 Recent Posts
I plan to sell my houses, including the guest house where the DhO lives on a tricked out MacMini in a corner of the living room. Thus, the DhO needs to go somewhere.

It is possible I might just park the MacMini in one of the houses I own that my step-kids live in and run it off their internet connection. It is very low bandwidth, being largely text-based, so they likely won't notice any difference. That would involve the DhO being down for about 7 hours some day while I drive there and get it set up.

The other possibility is to go back to the cloud, but that had issues that haven't occurred since I moved it to a space and machine that I own, and the cloud costs, whereas I spent $2000 on the MacMini so that I didn't have to pay cloud costs, so trying to avoid that.

The other question, while thinking of where to put the DhO, is do we try again to upgrade to Liferay 7? It was a bit of a nightmare last time we tried it, so we ran screaming back to Liferay 6, but perhaps they have worked the kinks out of version 7. I also have more time now to devote to a project like that. Liferay 7 in theory is more mobile friendly. It might be more secure and stable, though Liferay 6, for all its quirks and failings, has been solid as a rock. Every time we try to upgrade the DhO, it is complicated and time-consuming, so thanks in advance to whomever helps with that project.

Just letting people know and getting feedback in case anyone has something useful to add.
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Lewis James, modified 5 Years ago at 5/20/18 5:19 AM
Created 5 Years ago at 5/20/18 5:19 AM

RE: DhO needs a new home and possible upgrade

Posts: 155 Join Date: 5/13/15 Recent Posts
I have always been a fan of VPS services like Linode or DigitalOcean, where you get full access to a virtual machine, as if it were a real computer you owned. However as you said that incurs a monthly cost (not very much I might add - I think I pay $10-20 a month for my development machine which has handled everything I've thrown at it so far) - and also that they're unlikely to provide OS X machines, so if your current set up relies on being Apple-oriented you're probably better off keeping the Mac.

There's also the option of co-location in a data facility; actually sending your Mac off to a provider who will set it up in their network. Again this is pricy, perhaps pricier than a VPS. Here's one that specialises in Mac Minis from a cursory google: https://macminicolo.net/pricing.html

Setting it up in your step-kid's house sounds like a fine plan, and wouldn't be much of a change from how things are set up now, but out of interest, do you ever have to fiddle around with the machine physically? In the event of something going wrong and the machine being inaccessible you probably don't want to have to rely on them to fix it, I'm guessing.

I offered help to upgrade before but I think that was towards the end of the last attempt and it never really came to fruition - the offer still stands! I don't know Liferay but I was a Java developer for a number of years and still work in web based software development and deployment today.
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Lars, modified 5 Years ago at 5/21/18 12:32 AM
Created 5 Years ago at 5/21/18 12:32 AM

RE: DhO needs a new home and possible upgrade

Posts: 420 Join Date: 7/20/17 Recent Posts
I can't really help on the software/hardware side of things, but if the chosen solution requires cloud service fees or hosting etc, i'd be willing to donate to help with costs. If so, just send me a pm with mailing address etc and i'll send off a cheque. Thanks for continuing to provide this resource.  emoticon
Gurvi, modified 5 Years ago at 5/21/18 9:32 AM
Created 5 Years ago at 5/21/18 9:31 AM

RE: DhO needs a new home and possible upgrade

Posts: 3 Join Date: 7/19/17 Recent Posts
Cloud service is probably good option but  they only have flavor of windows and Linux. I am in IT on network side and happy to help with AWS or Azure setup.I am happy to chip in also just let us know how i can send money ( paypal/check etc). I am not much of use with actual sofware that is being used for site and not sure it will work with Linux but happy to give it a go.
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Ricky Lee Nuthman, modified 5 Years ago at 5/24/18 2:49 AM
Created 5 Years ago at 5/24/18 2:46 AM

RE: DhO needs a new home and possible upgrade

Posts: 92 Join Date: 4/22/18 Recent Posts
Yeah, this site weighs nothing. You could host it for free on my MediaTemple account if you like. I've had 99.9% uptime for the last 10 years.

Yeah, the site definitely needs responsive upgrades emoticon

If you are interested, let me know. I can drop a copy of "Liferay 7" on my server and duplicate the DhO database to see how it goes.

Well, I'm just making it up right now because I'm not familiar with Liferay, but if it's like most content management systems/forums it shouldn't be that difficult to figure out.

I'm computer programmer / game developer by the way, but we do web work all the time. I've been looking for a good opportunity to get my 'dana' on. 

http://www.pintsizeart.com is our 'business site' in case you want to look at some of our work.

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