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Websites => Off-topic (Locked) => Topic started by: PaulBlay on July 01, 2009, 09:45:44 AM

Title: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: PaulBlay on July 01, 2009, 09:45:44 AM
For some time I, and some others, have been concerned about RogueBasin (http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Main_Page).  The person (people?) with administrator access to the wiki don't appear to be very active (to the extent that I'm not sure who they even are) and there are ongoing problems with the MediaWiki version and wiki settings used.

My greatest worry is that whoever is paying for the domain name might not and the next time I visit it might just not be there.

One possible way forward would be to copy the wiki content to a new wiki hosted elsewhere.  At the least I would be happier if I knew that someone is taking monthly backups or something.

Any suggestions, volunteers, information?
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: rdc on July 01, 2009, 12:20:06 PM
I use Wikidot (http://www.wikidot.com/) for my wiki and I am quite pleased with the system. You can go with either a free site or a pay site. I use the free site and haven't had any problems.

The question though is the content rights on Roguebasin. If it is moved to another site and is challenged, it may be a problem.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: ido on July 01, 2009, 01:00:33 PM
Björn Ritzl is the one paying for the domain/hosting, I emailed him and he will hopefully be able to help you.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: PaulBlay on July 01, 2009, 01:01:51 PM
Björn Ritzl is the one paying for the domain/hosting, I emailed him and he will hopefully be able to help you.

Not Björn Bergstrom ?
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: PaulBlay on July 01, 2009, 01:07:24 PM
I use Wikidot (http://www.wikidot.com/) for my wiki and I am quite pleased with the system. You can go with either a free site or a pay site. I use the free site and haven't had any problems.

PBworks was the service I was thinking of, but I haven't actually tried it so I don't have anything invested in the choice.

Quote
The question though is the content rights on Roguebasin. If it is moved to another site and is challenged, it may be a problem.

Articles in RogueBasin are those which are under either the "GNU Free Documentation License 1.2" (most of them) or a modified version that doesn't allow the content to be modified (a handful or two, I guess).  There should be no problem with copying them to another site as long as they remain under the same license.

[EDIT]

As I see it the big problem is the uncertainty.  If we knew that the wiki content was safe and that somebody (or somebodies ;-) was both actively interested in the wiki and had the relevant admin access that would be good enough.

The more minor problems seem to be symptomatic of a lack of interested people with admin access.  Non-ascii characters turning into gibberish, searches that include certain pages causing crashes, crude spam prevention and Delete category pages that rarely getting deleted. 
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: ido on July 01, 2009, 01:44:16 PM
Not Björn Bergstrom ?

Name changed due to marriage as far as I know.

Same person anyway.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Ex on July 01, 2009, 05:53:59 PM
For some time I, and some others, have been concerned about RogueBasin (http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Main_Page).  The person (people?) with administrator access to the wiki don't appear to be very active (to the extent that I'm not sure who they even are) and there are ongoing problems with the MediaWiki version and wiki settings used.

My greatest worry is that whoever is paying for the domain name might not and the next time I visit it might just not be there.

One possible way forward would be to copy the wiki content to a new wiki hosted elsewhere.  At the least I would be happier if I knew that someone is taking monthly backups or something.

Any suggestions, volunteers, information?

I'm concerned about this too. I definitely think we need an easy way to backup/mirror roguebasin. Roguebasin has an export page, but it would require typing in the name of every page on Roguebasin, to my knowledge anyway. However, unless there's an easier way to do this, this might be the best option. We could use the export utility to export every page in the wiki, and then migrate that content onto another mediawiki. If only there was some kind of script or program to automate that process...

edit;

Another solution would be having more people who are admins at roguebasin and able to pay roguebasin's bills. Though this would be nice, I think it's not as full of a solution as having the ability to easily backup and mirror Roguebasin. As long as there is only one server hosting a single copy of Roguebasin, the threat of it simply disappearing remains.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: PaulBlay on July 01, 2009, 06:36:31 PM
I'm concerned about this too. I definitely think we need an easy way to backup/mirror roguebasin. Roguebasin has an export page, but it would require typing in the name of every page on Roguebasin, to my knowledge anyway. However, unless there's an easier way to do this, this might be the best option. We could use the export utility to export every page in the wiki, and then migrate that content onto another mediawiki. If only there was some kind of script or program to automate that process...

It should be relatively easy to do for someone who already has admin access to the (server?)/wiki and knows what they are doing. 

There are 975 pages in RogueBasin (not counting any 'non-page' type content).  That should be doable, even if it has to be done manually (ick!).  Slash (or maybe Z) would probably be the best able to say if there are easier methods (/scripts) available.

Quote
Another solution would be having more people who are admins at roguebasin and able to pay roguebasin's bills. Though this would be nice, I think it's not as full of a solution as having the ability to easily backup and mirror Roguebasin. As long as there is only one server hosting a single copy of Roguebasin, the threat of it simply disappearing remains.

Quite.  For example the ToME wiki lost a lot of content from some sort of data corruption problem.

[EDIT] Technical considerations.

RogueBasin uses MediaWiki.  Apparently the wiki syntax used by wikidot is quite different (although some work has been done (http://community.wikidot.com/howto:convert-mediawiki-syntax-to-wikidot) on conversion utilities.

PBWorks is apparently also quite different to MediaWiki.

Wikia (http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia) does use MediaWiki - but may have a worse reputation technically?  Also Wikia is under Creative Commons license so that may cause problems as RogueBasin is under a different license.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Ex on July 01, 2009, 07:16:42 PM
Further support for the idea of an easy way to backup and mirror Roguebasin is the Interactive Fiction archive: http://www.ifarchive.org/ (http://www.ifarchive.org/). They have many mirrors which help the archive greatly by keeping their bandwidth costs low. This has the added benefit of preventing the disappearance of the ifarchive even if the "main" site goes down.

[EDIT] Technical considerations.

RogueBasin uses MediaWiki.  Apparently the wiki syntax used by wikidot is quite different (although some work has been done (http://community.wikidot.com/howto:convert-mediawiki-syntax-to-wikidot) on conversion utilities.

PBWorks is apparently also quite different to MediaWiki.

Wikia (http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia) does use MediaWiki - but may have a worse reputation technically?  Also Wikia is under Creative Commons license so that may cause problems as RogueBasin is under a different license.

Even a copy that required a certain amount of manual or automatic translation would probably be preferable to no copy at all. I'm not sure if the Creative Commons license is compatible with the GNU FDL, but I would suspect it might be. Wikia looks perhaps like the best option, so long as the licenses are compatible.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: PaulBlay on July 01, 2009, 07:28:42 PM
Further support for the idea of an easy way to backup and mirror Roguebasin is the Interactive Fiction archive: http://www.ifarchive.org/ (http://www.ifarchive.org/). They have many mirrors which help the archive greatly by keeping their bandwidth costs low. This has the added benefit of preventing the disappearance of the ifarchive even if the "main" site goes down.

Interesting, but more technically advanced than what I'd be able to cope with.  :o

Quote
Even a copy that required a certain amount of manual or automatic translation would probably be preferable to no copy at all. I'm not sure if the Creative Commons license is compatible with the GNU FDL, but I would suspect it might be. Wikia looks perhaps like the best option, so long as the licenses are compatible.

I've been looking through the options available (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_farms) for wiki farms.  I think there are some that are MediaWiki and GNU FDL.  Don't know whether they're any good as well though.

**********************************

Anyhow, to summarize some of the options available:

Option 1: Create a read-only backup at a free wiki farm using MediaWiki.  Update the backup with changed pages every month or so.

Pro
- Content is safe (and everybody can see it's safe ;-).

Anti
- Monthly backup will be a tad fiddly / annoying.
- Does not solve any of the problems with spam, non-ascii characters, etc.

Option 2: Create a backup at a free wiki farm using MediaWiki and allow editing at the new location.

Pro
- Later versions of MediaWiki will (hopefully) cope better with spam, odd characters etc.

Anti
- Keeping the two versions synchronized might be stupidly difficult.

Option 3: Create new 'RogueBasin' at a wiki farm and encourage people to go there instead.

Pro
- Can take advantage of later MediaWiki versions.

Anti
- Lose nice domain name, lose Google ranking, possibly annoy Slash and Bjorn for trying to 'steal' their wiki.

Option 4: Obtain reassurances from those responsible for the current RogueBasin that the wiki content is properly backed up.  Encourage additional admin access users for server / wiki to deal with technical problems.

Pro
- Keep all the current good stuff.

Anti
- Current admin may be too busy with real life and may not want (or be able to) allow other people at the admin level required.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Ex on July 01, 2009, 08:17:59 PM
There's got to be a way to automate the process of exporting and importing a wiki. I think a variant of option 1 is the best. If we found a way to automate the process of exporting and importing wikis, we could automatically mirror RogueBasin every month or so onto a host of different mediawiki based wiki farms.

Isn't there an easier way to import and export wikis? It'd be nice if there was just a link somewhere that contained a zipped copy of the entire roguebasin. Don't admins have more import and export options for mediawikis? Perhaps if someone (say for instance PaulBlay) was given admin at roguebasin, they might be able to export the wiki say once a month, and post a link to a copy of it on roguebasin as a backup/mirror copy of the archive. Then, other people could download the entire archive if they wanted, or easily mirror the archive on other mediawikis.

Definitely, these mirrors would need to be read only, unfortunately. It would simply be too difficult to constantly merge different versions of the same wiki.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: PaulBlay on July 01, 2009, 08:20:45 PM
Isn't there an easier way to import and export wikis?
I'm sure there is, but I daresay it requires admin rights and possibly a bit of technical expertise.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Slash on July 02, 2009, 05:16:16 AM
I understand everybody's concern. The history loops again (see http://angband.oook.cz/rgrd.php?showpost=79040 (http://angband.oook.cz/rgrd.php?showpost=79040)), and most facts remain true from back then.

Björn has been away from the scene from a while, which is understandable. I noticed he put some google ads and a paypal donate option into the page, which I guess were being used to upkeep the hosting costs, (although I wonder how profitable those has been :P)

I currently own the roguebasin.com domain (currently pointing to roguelikedevelopment.org), but I dont have a hosting plan big enough for roguebasin; it would also be probably be a BIG work to import all existing content.

I hope we can reach Björn so he can consider handing over the mantainance of roguebasin to a new admin staff, I volunteer again for any tech work needed.

I agree it is not cool to feel nobody is minding the store, after all work invested there :)

I am not too keen on using a wiki farm, as that's what we had first, and we discovered it was best to have full control over the content..
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: PaulBlay on July 02, 2009, 05:32:24 AM
I am not too keen on using a wiki farm, as that's what we had first, and we discovered it was best to have full control over the content..

Yarr*, I know what you mean, but frankly I can't afford a decent internet connection nevermind proper hosting.  Perhaps a wiki farm might make a good temporary backup spot and test ground.

* Feeling a little pirate-y today.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Ex on July 02, 2009, 05:36:20 AM
For anyone who hasn't seen yet, Duerig has created a set of scripts to automate the process of exporting roguebasin. He's also included a tutorial describing exactly how to use it, and it comes with a current backup copy of roguebasin. Get it here: http://www.xmission.com/~tyrecius/roguebasin-backup-2009-07-02.zip (http://www.xmission.com/~tyrecius/roguebasin-backup-2009-07-02.zip)

Post:
http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=RogueBasin_talk:Community_Portal#Wiki_backup_.2F_duplicate.3F (http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=RogueBasin_talk:Community_Portal#Wiki_backup_.2F_duplicate.3F)

Edit; I absolutely agree that the wikifarm isn't an ideal solution, but I think that this backup script could be put to some very good use. We could maintain a torrent of the most recent backup of Roguebasin, for instance. The backup would only need to be updated every so often, maybe every other month or less, and then as long as the torrent had sufficient seeds, it'd stay alive :D
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: PaulBlay on July 02, 2009, 07:49:58 AM
Edit; I absolutely agree that the wikifarm isn't an ideal solution, but I think that this backup script could be put to some very good use. We could maintain a torrent of the most recent backup of Roguebasin, for instance. The backup would only need to be updated every so often, maybe every other month or less, and then as long as the torrent had sufficient seeds, it'd stay alive :D

I'm going to try to import the backup into a temporary second home at a MediaWiki GNU FDL wiki farm.  If nothing else it will be a good "restore check".  I'll edit in progress notes here.

RogueBasin            | MediaWiki 1.6.10 | GNU FDL          |              |
======================+==================+==================+==============+
BusinessWiki          | MediaWiki        | GPL              | Free(3 user) |
EditThis.info         | MediaWiki 1.5.5  |                  | Free         |
Referata              | MediaWiki 1.14.0 | User choice      | Free/paid    |
Russian wiki community| MediaWiki 1.5.8  | Negotiable       | Negotiable   |
Wikia                 | MediaWiki 1.14   | Creative Commons | Free         |
Wiki-site.com         | MediaWiki 1.11.0 | User choice      | Free/paid    |
Wikkii.com            | MediaWiki        |                  | Free         |
YourWiki              | MediaWiki 1.15   | User choice      | Free         |


Any other suggestions?
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Scautura on July 02, 2009, 08:17:46 AM
If it's any help, I could provide hosting for a fully owned wiki on my own server, with full access accounts. I'd even buy a domain name if required, and could ensure the software remains up-to-date - however, if other people are provided with access to the server, then it wouldn't have to be left down to one person.

I realise I'm probably not the most well known member of the rogue community, and I haven't really been an active member until recently (last couple of years), but I do feel it would be sad to see a well known and respected community resource disappear or die to to lack of support.

Because I feel a free community project should remain free, I'm not the sort of person to ask for donations or place adverts - I'm well enough off I can provide more than enough for the community without it.

Edit: (placing adverts) - link exchange like RogueTemple's "adverts" do not count as adverts in my eyes - no money changes hands - but still, I would leave that down to admin.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: PaulBlay on July 02, 2009, 08:29:59 AM
If it's any help, I could provide hosting for a fully owned wiki on my own server, with full access accounts. I'd even buy a domain name if required, and could ensure the software remains up-to-date - however, if other people are provided with access to the server, then it wouldn't have to be left down to one person.

I realise I'm probably not the most well known member of the rogue community, and I haven't really been an active member until recently (last couple of years), but I do feel it would be sad to see a well known and respected community resource disappear or die to to lack of support.

Because I feel a free community project should remain free, I'm not the sort of person to ask for donations - I'm well enough off I can provide more than enough for the community without it.

That is a very generous offer, and you're at least a well enough known member of the community that I recognized your name.  So you're 'fame' is greater than you think ;-).  I think it would be great if more than one person could have access as it is entirely understandable that somebody may have unexpected pressure on their time and not be able to keep up with things.

I don't have any real experience with *nix, but I'm willing to help as much as I can bearing that in mind.

[EDIT] If we don't go with Scautura then YourWiki looks like one of the better options for Wiki Farms.  Triangle Wizard has a wiki there (http://trianglewizard.yourwiki.net/wiki/Main_Page) and it seems to do alright (including personalized wiki logo).
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: britzl on July 02, 2009, 12:01:46 PM
Wow! I thought it was common knowledge that I was the one hosting RogueBasin. Yes, I changed my surname to Ritzl due to marriage, but here I am :-)

First of all: I have no intention of shutting down RogueBasin (or the underlying roguelikedevelopment.org). I can say this with 100% certainty because:

a) It costs me next to nothing to host it.
b) I have a couple of other sites at the same hosting provider
c) People are still downloading and e-mailing me about my now abandoned mobile RL Dweller, hosted at roguelikedevelopment.org
d) Sentimental reasons. I still read r.g.r.dev. I occasionally play RLs. I have very fond memories of all my attempts at coding RLs.

I started roguelikedevelopment.org 7 or 8 years ago, when the previous Roguelike Dev Articles site (forgot the name) closed down. I personally e-mailed each and every article author and got their permission to move the acrticles to the new site. A few years ago roguebasin was set up (by Slashie I think) and I moved the articles to it's new home. Since then Roguebasin has evolved into a really extensive information site about Roguelikes, and I'm very proud of the result. An amazing result of which I take no credit since I haven't contributed more than an article. and as many of you are pointing out, I'm not actively administering the site either.

Anyway, let's move on. What can I do to assist you? Dumping all wiki contents can be done via shell scripts:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki#Database_dump

Wikipedia (running on MediaWiki takes this a step further):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download

It should be possible to get access to a shell using the subdomain credentials. I'll investigate more. In the meantime I'm willing to help out with more or less anything. I'm on prental leave now and have a reasonable amount of time to spend to help you guys out.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: PaulBlay on July 02, 2009, 12:30:00 PM
It should be possible to get access to a shell using the subdomain credentials. I'll investigate more. In the meantime I'm willing to help out with more or less anything. I'm on prental leave now and have a reasonable amount of time to spend to help you guys out.
Well it's great to hear from you.  I hope you don't feel I was out of line with my concerns. I did email the email address given with the paypal donate button, but possibly you don't check that anymore (as it's under your old name).

There are some minor annoyances that you might be able to help with, but if a couple or so RogueBasin members were given the access needed to fix it themselves that might be better?

Slash, Duerig, Scautura or one of the other more technically minded people would probably be able to give a better idea but here is a quick breakdown of them.

- Two pages cannot be displayed, and cause searches to fail when they are included in the result.  Search on 'Malthener' or 'Bergstrom' to see this.

- Non Ascii characters turn into gibberish (See here (http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Talk:Main_Page#More_bug-ish_behaviour_-_support_for_unicode.2Fmulti-byte_characters) for an example).  Possibly this would require a MediaWiki version update?

- Just in the last few days spam has been getting a bit annoying.  On a related note the number of pages in the Delete category has been building up (http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Category:Delete).

Quote
I'm on prental leave now and have a reasonable amount of time to spend to help you guys out.

Congratulations, and take good care of yourself.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Scautura on July 02, 2009, 12:51:42 PM
Also, a search for "bjorn" will fail (same error as "malthener" and "bergstrom").

Congratulations on becoming a parent!

Edit: Gurf, I can talk English, me...
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: britzl on July 02, 2009, 05:52:27 PM
Ok, I have no problem helping out and giving out super user access to roguebasin. It is after all on it's own subdomain so the person(s) given access can't mess other things up :-)

I have all the credentials ready for shell script access and admin access to MediaWiki as well. I trust Santiago as he's been at r.g.r.dev for a long time (no offence to the rest of you guys :-). Decide among yourself what person(s) should have access and let Santiago send me an e-mail with your contact details. You can best reach me at bjorn.ritzl@<that email service google has>.com

About the non-ascii thing. Isn't that a MySQL setting?
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: PaulBlay on July 02, 2009, 06:13:03 PM
You can best reach me at bjorn.ritzl@<that email service google has>.com

Does the paypal donate button still work?  That seems to be on an older email.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Slash on July 02, 2009, 06:18:08 PM
Hi Björn, nice to see you around!

I have sent my contact info to Björn, and I have also set up the "Roguebasin Mantainance" project at slashie.net's mantis repository. All bugs and things to fix or enhance would be handled there (http://slashie.net/mantis/) so feel free to go there and report :)

Once I have the access we can start planning how to bash all pending things.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: PaulBlay on July 02, 2009, 06:54:16 PM
I have sent my contact info to Björn, and I have also set up the "Roguebasin Mantainance" project at slashie.net's mantis repository. All bugs and things to fix or enhance would be handled there (http://slashie.net/mantis/) so feel free to go there and report :)

Cheers.  I have reported the issues mentioned earlier in this thread.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: britzl on July 02, 2009, 09:31:48 PM
I have sent Santiago the account details. E-mail me with updates of the progress or if you run into any kind of problem.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Ex on July 02, 2009, 11:12:59 PM
Wow! I thought it was common knowledge that I was the one hosting RogueBasin. Yes, I changed my surname to Ritzl due to marriage, but here I am :-)

First of all: I have no intention of shutting down RogueBasin (or the underlying roguelikedevelopment.org). I can say this with 100% certainty because:

a) It costs me next to nothing to host it.
b) I have a couple of other sites at the same hosting provider
c) People are still downloading and e-mailing me about my now abandoned mobile RL Dweller, hosted at roguelikedevelopment.org
d) Sentimental reasons. I still read r.g.r.dev. I occasionally play RLs. I have very fond memories of all my attempts at coding RLs.
Hey Bjorn! This is fantastic to hear, and you've done a great job with Roguebasin so far! I hope we didn't seem out of line by suggesting all these mirrors and things without your input. We're just trying to preserve for as long as possible your amazing site :)
Quote

Anyway, let's move on. What can I do to assist you? Dumping all wiki contents can be done via shell scripts:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki#Database_dump

Wikipedia (running on MediaWiki takes this a step further):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download

It should be possible to get access to a shell using the subdomain credentials. I'll investigate more. In the meantime I'm willing to help out with more or less anything. I'm on prental leave now and have a reasonable amount of time to spend to help you guys out.
First, PaulBlay should definitely also receive admin. Slashie goes without saying :D Slashie should of course have admin, but PaulBlay does an enormous amount of editing and work on Roguebasin, and with admin he'd surely help out even more. So I'd definitely nominate him.

I believe Roguebasin should have (if possible) an automatic backup that is created every so often. An up to date link to a backup copy of Roguebasin would have a number of advantages:

- Easy backup, anyone who wanted to could keep a backup copy of the Roguebasin "just in case"
- Easy mirroring, anyone who wanted to could create a mirror of the Roguebasin, which may help with bandwidth costs, though they don't sound too bad as is.

And most importantly, I'd like to start a torrent of the most recent backup of the Roguebasin. I feel a torrent of the backup of Roguebasin would greatly help with the long term preservation of the archive. It might not be needed, since bandwidth costs are low and all involved are very interested in keeping Roguebasin going.

However, a torrent would allow a community effort to keep an up to date backup of Roguebasin permanently. No matter what happens to any website or individual member of the community, the torrent could keep going indefinitely. And it wouldn't be that hard to keep a torrent around. I'd be more than happy to seed it at 50 kb/s indefinitely. The torrent would also remove the cost of hosting a backup copy of the Roguebasin, since the torrent would be the backup. And this torrent backup would provide all the advantages of backups in general listed above. Thoughts?
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: PaulBlay on July 03, 2009, 07:52:26 AM
First, PaulBlay should definitely also receive admin. Slashie goes without saying :D Slashie should of course have admin, but PaulBlay does an enormous amount of editing and work on Roguebasin, and with admin he'd surely help out even more. So I'd definitely nominate him.

I'm grateful for your vote of confidence.  I should note that I don't have any *nix or MySQL experience (although I am familiar with some other database systems).  If the others still feel I am a suitable candidate I promise to do my best.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Slash on July 03, 2009, 11:43:04 AM
Thank you Björn and be patient gentleman, I will start fixing stuff tonight.

I agree Paul should be apointed as a sysop.

FYI, this is Roguebasin current "staff"

Bureaucrats: Björn, Sheep, Jeff Lait
Sysops: Kisielewicz, Slash
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Slash on July 04, 2009, 01:53:43 PM
I am fixing some details on the server access, I plan to do the update tonight
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Slash on July 13, 2009, 02:37:20 AM
Roguebasin backup complete, proceeding to upgrade to v1.15.0
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Slash on July 13, 2009, 03:01:53 AM
Failure... there was a problem with the PHP version. Roguebasin restored. Already contacted Björn and hoping to retry tomorrow..
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Slash on July 13, 2009, 10:35:59 PM
Upgraded.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: PaulBlay on July 28, 2009, 09:52:58 AM
I agree Paul should be apointed as a sysop.

I haven't followed up on this before, because it hasn't been urgent (and I've been busy elsewhere).  However there's currently a very persistent spammer and I could really do with being able to delete user accounts / block IPs.

So, "Moar sysops plz".
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Slash on July 28, 2009, 12:19:40 PM
I just deleted about 330 spam user accounts.

Also, Paul Blay is a Sysop now
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Slash on July 28, 2009, 12:28:51 PM
Also, can you please post your RFE's on mantis? that makes the easier to track :)
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: george on July 29, 2009, 07:07:02 AM
just want to give a thumbs up to you guys, nice work.  :)
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: stu on July 29, 2009, 12:25:03 PM
yeah paul, thanks for all the hard work and stepping up!
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: jaydg on August 26, 2009, 06:50:31 AM
It would be very nice if uploading images was possible.

Is there a reason why this is disabled? Ererybody likes screenshots and the main page looked much more interesting while Wayfarer was the featured roguelike.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: corremn on August 26, 2009, 10:26:17 AM
You can link to screen shots though.  I agree that the featured games should always have  a screen shot.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: jaydg on August 26, 2009, 09:43:08 PM
Another idea: enable mod_rewrite and have sexy urls.

If there is any help required regarding the web server I'd be glad to help. I've worked two and a half year as a full-time PHP & MySQL developer and web server administrator.   
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Slash on August 29, 2009, 08:18:07 PM
I think I could set up mod_rewrite... any suggestions for URL styles??
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: jaydg on August 30, 2009, 07:54:54 PM
I do like the style that Wikipedia uses: example.com/wiki/Page_title (http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Short_URL#URL_like_-_example.com.2Fwiki.2FPage_title).
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: ido on September 02, 2009, 01:12:00 PM
Talking about featured roguelikes, I try to change it every couple of weeks when I notice the previous one was up there for a while.

If you notice the same game has been 'featured' for more than a few days feel free to change it.

-Ido.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Omnivorous on October 01, 2009, 11:31:37 PM
http://www.archive.org/web/web.php The wayback machine :P ..worst case scenario
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: george on December 07, 2009, 07:44:07 AM
Not sure, but it seems like this might be the best way to catch a Roguebasin admin's attention, let me know if there's something better...

A few of us at the Doryen forums are working on a libtcod + Python tutorial at Roguebasin, and we'd really like the code colorizer GeSHi extension added if that's possible:

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Slash on December 07, 2009, 11:56:27 AM
I will install it next weekend..
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: george on January 04, 2010, 02:26:22 AM
Just checking in since we noticed it wasn't up -- any problems with installation?
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: jaydg on January 15, 2010, 05:02:23 PM
If your free time is limited, Slash, my offer to aid you on maintaining RogueBasin is still valid.

The performance of the site has become very bad recently. Sometimes it refuses to answer.. Perhaps Björn should give the hoster a call?
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: george on January 16, 2010, 02:47:38 AM
Agreed -- Slash, you've been busy lately with dev work, maybe others could help with Roguebasin? We'd still like that code highlighter extension.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Slash on January 16, 2010, 05:47:19 AM
This (http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=977) is done (http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Libjcsi).

Thanks for the offer, I will have it in mind!

For now, these are the pending issues (from http://slashie.net/mantis/ )

          0000685Two pages cannot be displayed and searching on them causes a crash.
          0000686 Non Ascii characters turn into gibberish
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: george on January 16, 2010, 07:48:55 PM
thanks!
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Slash on January 16, 2010, 07:49:56 PM
np, sorry for the time it took ;)

I also contacted Björn about the performance problem, but he seems to be away... let's wait for his reply.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: jaydg on January 17, 2010, 06:32:51 PM
Another issue with the hosting shows up from time to time recently:

Quote
RogueBasin has a problem

Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties.
Try waiting a few minutes and reloading.

(Can't contact the database server: User rogueliked_db3 already has more than 'max_user_connections' active connections (mysql1.scorpionshops.com))
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: jaydg on January 20, 2010, 12:13:06 PM
Yet another issue - the infamous error 500:

Quote
Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@roguelikedevelopment.org and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Apache/2.2.9 (Debian) DAV/2 mod_ssl/2.2.9 OpenSSL/0.9.8g Server at roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org Port 80
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Slash on January 20, 2010, 12:21:17 PM
I will let Björn know about it... I can't contact the hosting crew :(
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Ex on January 20, 2010, 06:08:49 PM
Roguebasin has been slow for a while now for me, almost like it's undergoing a DDoS attack. Hasn't affected me much though, I'll just wait a half an hour for pages to load :D
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Z on January 20, 2010, 06:40:38 PM
I also could not reach Roguebasin recently... good that IRLDb survived :)
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Slash on January 20, 2010, 06:50:11 PM
I also could not reach Roguebasin recently... good that IRLDb survived :)

We should really automatize a backup process, since it gets overwritten everytime...

Probably something that sends an email with the DB once a week to us both, or posts it somewhere...
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Z on January 21, 2010, 12:15:09 AM
I think we could make a copy of the result HTML file sometimes (e.g. each week). And even make these backup files available, e.g. at http://www.roguetemple.com/irldb/backup/2010-01-21.html

I think this would be safe (and possibly also have other uses?) unless the entire Roguetemple breaks down.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: britzl on January 24, 2010, 11:31:32 AM
Hey guys. I got an e-mail from Slash mentioning poor performance. I'll reproduce my response here and add some more thoughts:

"I have been away on a two week vacation. Sorry for the late response. As far as I know the only planned downtime was on december 19th between 09.00 and 12.00 CET.

A moment ago when I tried to access Roguebasin I couldn't get through. My thought was that it was the DB server that was down at the moment. www.roguelikedevelopment.org was working so the webserver is running. Now that I access the DB using phpMyAdmin it responds and Roguebasin is accessible again. Must have been a temporary glitch.

And now that I try again it responds slowly... weird.

I'm no DB expert but perhaps we should try and optimize some of the tables or something? You can access phpMyAdmin here:

http://www.scorpionshops.com/phpMyAdmin

and use the normal DB user and pass. Remember to pick Server 1 as that is the one used. The DB server responds fast when clicking around in phpMyAdmin, so maybe it is something else? The new extension you installed?"


On a side note: I play World of Warcraft and host our guild site and forums using the same provider (altough on one of the other DB servers). We had some issues with site performance, but that proved to be an incorrectly configured phpBB. The site also had some performance issues during the fall, but all of that have been ssolved for a few months now (new hardware installed by the hosting provider). So all in all, things are working well, without any latency, 500 errors or similar. Could it be something with the mediawiki setup?
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: britzl on January 30, 2010, 12:44:57 PM
I assume this has sorted itself out? Otherwise Slashie knows how to contact me.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: britzl on March 27, 2010, 12:47:26 PM
The webhost used for hosting Roguebasin went down today. They are working on the issue and I hope roguebasin will be up in a couple of hours.
Title: Re: Future of RogueBasin
Post by: Hi on March 27, 2010, 06:02:56 PM
It looks like it's up for me.