@AnthonySmith said: evidence of Chris and Jon literally blackmailing someone into allowing them to pose as someones girlfriend using her ID's without her knowledge
Did this seriously happen? This shit is fucked up, jbiloh should be in jail. Sketchy asshole.
A powerful "speech" right there, Anth! Need to probably come back after Christmas days to actually find the time to read the story the way it deserves to be read.
One thing I can say right off the bat: Thank you for your dedication and countless hours of sweat & tears brining us to the stage we are today.
I ask everyone: ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED? This is a legend right there and a new one in the making. Stay tuned everyone, for this shall determine our future heroic end
It has been a long and bumpy road during all these years with WHT, LEB/T, VPSBoard, Hostballs and now LES.
Not to forget all the tries from different persons to create an alternative forum to replace/get users from the OGF.
My introduction to hosting and *nix, in particular, was back in 2000-2003. Memory is a bit blurry about the exact date/year.
My memories from that time was from a forum called filejunkies, where I meet Steven (back then known as steveswaldo), who sadly passed away this year.
Steven triggered and fueled my new-born interest which led to file/Webhosting on a dual ISDN line. Later it escalated to cPanel reseller hosting from different providers, some of who are still active today.
Back then I was a Software Developer (Pascal, for those who remember), and responsible for the IT-environment in a smaller company.
As the years went by, I left software development after 9 years and 11 months, to become a full-time Windows consultant.
Around this time, (2008-2010) I was a vivid reader of WHT and "discovered" LET/LEB around 2010.
A new world opened up, a site dedicated to people who, instead of throwing more hardware on a problem, tried to optimize the running-config and/or finding alternative options to solve their situation.
In 2012, when Joel had taken over from LEA, I had a brief career as a writer on LEB. Together with @Kujoe and @Asim we were the writing team. Starting with no instructions or guidelines at all, we did our best.
Later that year I quit writing offers on LEB and started my own site: lowendguide.com
which haven't got the love it deserves the last couple of years.
At the same time, in 2012 I bought my first VPS from InceptionHosting, which I kept for 4 years
Can't remember when @AnthonySmith and I began speaking on another level then as Provider/client, but I've always recommended his services and enjoy his company.
It was no surprise that I blindly followed when he started the project LowEndSpirit and began offering free (and paid) cPanel accounts as a complement to the LowEndSpirit NAT offers.
This year has been busier than ever, my middle kid was diagnosed with ADHD & Autism, I suffered from a minor depression (managed to see the warning signs in time), the job I started in June last year has made three major reorganizations.
I worked almost day and night to change the lack of trust between my customer and my company/colleagues.
I also managed to change the direction of MRVM, my own business, from running at a loss to almost break even
Due to the amount of time I put into being a good employee, I didn't have the energy to really work on the projects that I had in mind for MRVM.
some of my goals for 2021:
MRVM will expand in the hosting business and become a trusted partner to its clients.
Part of it is adding 3 new locations in January/February,
automation will be done to keep things better for the clients.
More time spent on this forum, allowing to help in places where help is needed.
Go 100% into being self-employed
Bring lowendguide.com back to life.
With this, I wish you all a nice ending of 2020 where you all keep safe and a bigger and better 2021.
That was an interesting read. Thanks for everything Ant. You keep things running smoothly around here and you can find an admin if you need but don't wander off anywhere old man. Merry Christmas.
@mikho said: Can't remember when @AnthonySmith and I began speaking on another level then as Provider/client, but I've always recommended his services and enjoy his company.
I don't even remember ever thinking of you as a client, just a friend.
@mikho said: Can't remember when @AnthonySmith and I began speaking on another level then as Provider/client, but I've always recommended his services and enjoy his company.
I don't even remember ever thinking of you as a client, just a friend.
allow me reply without reading all the replies. first post is 50k words and the second, well @AnthonySmith you should put a word count for the second too.
i am new to the scene but my business instinct should work regardless. making LES sustainable on its own is the RIGHT thing to do. Telegram announce their plan to monetizing the app days ago. in fact, to have anything meaningful lasts, it should be PROFITABLE.
parents and children? money, husband and wife? money. Money is the lubricant that makes thing works.
therefore, i am afraid having community to administrate the forum would not work in the long run. start looking this forum as a Business, and find those who you think can be your partners in the endeavor, and form a business entity running this forum.
yes, you are wearing multiple hats in this forum, and having this turn into a business makes more people having conflicting roles. but every single person are having conflicting roles in life. i believe being a business owner knows what to do, what should be done, and what can be done. and if the ideal and vision is to have a best marketplace for anything hosting related, it can be profitable and long lasting.
you had seems lots of failure, and lucky enough to experience some of those, so dont waste these gifts and make something really great out of it.
@mikho said: Can't remember when @AnthonySmith and I began speaking on another level then as Provider/client, but I've always recommended his services and enjoy his company.
I don't even remember ever thinking of you as a client, just a friend.
@mikho said: Can't remember when @AnthonySmith and I began speaking on another level then as Provider/client, but I've always recommended his services and enjoy his company.
I don't even remember ever thinking of you as a client, just a friend.
@mikho said: Can't remember when @AnthonySmith and I began speaking on another level then as Provider/client, but I've always recommended his services and enjoy his company.
I don't even remember ever thinking of you as a client, just a friend.
@mikho said: Can't remember when @AnthonySmith and I began speaking on another level then as Provider/client, but I've always recommended his services and enjoy his company.
I don't even remember ever thinking of you as a client, just a friend.
A fur coat would be pretty warm this time of year .
@jarland has left the building, I am not 100% sure what it was that made him step down as the LET admin but I do know it was by choice and I do not 100% remember if I asked or he offered to put me forward as the new admin at lowendtalk but some events happened and I took over at lowendtalk as a volunteer admin, the site at that point still being owned by coloncrossing.
I have this strong feeling that I've given a different answer for it every time it was brought up too. This made me wonder if I could remember what the actual events were that started it. The toxic environment and the constant hatred were things I was glad to get away from and probably stated as reasons at some point. But what I think it really was: Thomas didn't want to make me a manager and that was the future of the job I had originally created, "shift lead" which later became "team lead." At that same time the job "social media manager" opened up and I knew that was where I belonged, on the front lines speaking for the company in public, dealing with customers in open and public spaces. I think it was some of my best work, and dropping LET from my list of jobs was key to me throwing myself into it.
Maybe that wasn't it and it was just increased stress of rising to the growing job of team lead, and wanting to clear my head for more focus on it. It was definitely one of those.
I had a read at the entire OP, but as others have said - I really do not support your decision of leaving/retiring. After all, in my opinion a community just looses its "vibe" when the guy who literally started it leaves. It would be a sad day for LES.
Overall, interesting read on Christmas and a really nice to see your view of the things.
You are an inspiration, keep it up.
@AnthonySmith, having read what you wrote a few times now, including the clear passion exuded between the lines, I truly believe this model can offer you and the community some real value. Looks like I can't edit the original to provide more detail so adding one more comment. I apologize in advance if it appears spammy but wanted to provide links addressing some of your more pertinent thoughts. I hope you will seriously consider valME's platform and happy to discuss converting the existing Vanilla database if you'd like.
@AnthonySmith said:
Well, I hear you, the truth is though that the forum needs a revenue stream of its own to continue to exist, I considered going down the Patreon route but something did not feel right about that, I believe that as much as the commercial element of the forum (the hosts) needs the community, the wider community also needs the commercial element in order to exist, it is a symbiotic relationship.
I am not a financially motivated person but I do understand money is required to make other things happen
I should also say I am wide open to other suggestions on improving the platform.
If you really are wide open to other suggestions, these are some of the exact use cases valME was built for. What you refer to as a symbiotic relationship is what I refer to as value for value.
@AnthonySmith said:
The best way to do that is banner adverts, at least that is my thinking and no one has come up with a viable alternative with wider buy-in yet.
I have now hired a freelance dev, he has already started work and his priority is fixing my shitting advert rotation script and better integrating it into the backend for me.
The other reason is that I think the idea of having free/unpaid community managers is a bad model
neither of them would take any money for the work they were doing on the backend meaning that I ultimately had to stop accepting that help
I don't want to encourage or invite too much free help, I have had a fair amount in the first few months, I had > to knock that on the head though as people literally would not let me pay them for work they were doing
There is too often a belief that someone should get something for nothing; get something without effort; get something without paying for it; get something without trading for it. People forget that there is always a price for value. They forget that someone, eventually, has to pay. The Internet is a hotbed for reinforcing the idea of something for nothing. I'd like to help change that philosophy. I think the world would be a much better place if more people remembered that successful relationships come from exchanging values, and that values take effort to earn.
This is why valME does not have an advertising rotation script. Advertisements (hosted elsewhere) can be added via Javascript if you're a sponsored account but I'm not interested in making this more robust because advertising as a primary source of revenue goes against the ideas I'm trying to promote.
@AnthonySmith said:
This forum all-in costs me personally around $70 / month
Transaction costs are here. Needless to say, for lowendspirit.com, they will be significantly less (and can be paid for with earned karma). Just as an example, it's 1,000 karma ($10) to own a community for the first year and 6,500 karma ($65) each additional year.
@AnthonySmith said:
Get rid of Google Analytics and replace with whatever the hell piwik is called now.
I always had an issue at LET in that any random volunteer admin who's real name was not even known by the forum operator had access to everyone's email addresses, IP addresses and even PM's at the click of a button, that never did sit right with me
One of the main reasons I don't have other admins/mods here is because I don't believe in simply handing access to peoples data to others without any pre-qualification or built-in accountability for the person with the access
@AnthonySmith said:
Split over 2 posts because apparently vanilla has a 50,000 character limit
valME uses LONGBLOB that will allow you more verbose posts... for the next time you intend to write "a fairly detailed but significantly shorter post."
Thanks, Ant, for the memoir. Except for the idea to expand NAT LES to help third-world users (which would have been really interesting!), everything else was not a surprise to those of us who've been around LEB/LET for a while.
I'd be in favour of allowing volunteer mods for day-to-day policing, while keeping a core of paid staff, including an admin / supermod with oversight responsibility over the mods.
@AnthonySmith Thanks very much for starting this forum and all that you do to keep LES running!
The opening posts were interesting and relevant background reading to get a sense of why the forum is set up the way it is, no need to apologise for their length. Glad to hear your lifestyle choice and decision to go all in with project SmitHost worked out fantastically.
My foray into the LE* realm began with LEA's inspiring 128 MB tutorials and an EDIS VPS. This was well after the first episode of the LEB/T CC ownership debacle, a few years before the GVH implosion. EDIS had a number of relatively less common locations to try out. They later quietly dropped its smallest plans, by then I had moved to other providers and also came upon LowEndSpirit. (That was a pretty little green circle next to Tokyo on the dashboard ...)
These days I pared back on the idle boxes with the aim of Ansible-ing all the things sometime. Although I seldom post, I still watch this space for solid new providers, a tempting deal for that next project and catch up a bit on LE news.
Happy Holidays and a prosperous New Year to all LES members!
Comments on specific items:
Thanks for putting replacement of Google Analytics with another self-hosted open source application on the roadmap.
The current "way too green" light theme looks good and I would like to see it remain an option, although I understand if it won't be available given the extra work to maintain another theme as new forum features are rolled out.
Is there any interest in n-year terms for admins elected by community members, with a number of people taking turns to run the ship? The term length can be e.g. 2-4 years, or some amount of time enough to see some bigger features to implementation, but not very long that potential admins worry about having to abandon a commitment running far into the future.
The LES team have done great work getting the forum off the ground, and it would be a pity to see AnthonySmith leave the post. Maybe some sort of rotational administration will offset the burden a little? One where leaving is taking an extended break rather than a permanent exit from leadership.
Well it was a good break over Christmas and new year I got to properly relax and for the first year ever without any sort of incident, it is the time of year I look forward too not because I am an elf or anything but because it is the only time of the year I get to semi switch off, being a small company owner and operator you never really switch off it occupies your mind during every waking hour so to be able to just go to critical support only is a real chance to relax, there are no 20 days annual leave or term holidays like the day jobbers and students get
I deliberately did not keep much of an eye on this post after posting it/after Christmas day so I will go through now and read responses and answer any questions and or respond to any posts.
@benj0x said: But I wouldn't support your point, which states that you need to "retire" your position as administrator, to avoid this place to develop to a new LET - however I'm open for new things.
Yes perhaps a better way to put it would be that I don't feel I am the best person to lead or direct the community, sounds a bit authoritarian but not intended too, I will likely keep a hand in administering things from the back as a fail-safe.
@terrorgen said:
May I suggest incorporating LES into a non-profit organization (the UK equivalent of the US 501(c)3) so that taxes are not deducted for the operation of the forum?
May be possible, I did discuss it with my accountant and due costs involved in doing that and the accounting fees at the current level that actually makes things worse but at some point, if it is necessary it will be done (whatever official organisation fits best e.g. CIC/None profit etc etc yes.
@Mason said: I'd ask you to reconsider the possibility of bringing on some volunteer mods. Low end world is purely a hobby to a lot of us (myself included) and many people would be stoked to aide the community in whatever capacity their time/expertise/sanity allows. Just look at FAT32 -- dude has a heart of gold and is literally the only thing keeping LET from collapsing in on itself because he enjoys doing it.
Well, I might consider it but it under the right circumstances, I have to be honest, it really does not sit well with me, it makes me feel I am taking advantage of people and I really hate feeling like that, maybe it is just something I need to get over when @FAT32 indeed has a heart of gold, he has helped me with some other bits and pieces none forum-related maybe when he realises Jon is laughing his way to the bank at his expense I will reconsider my own position here
Might start a separate topic about mods etc as it could be a lengthy discussion potentially.
@seriesn said: About that LEB post, man, when LEA or even Joel ran LEB, the traffic you would get by getting featured was unbelievable. Not to mention, getting DDOS every time someone used to get posted on LEB. Getting featured was LEB as a host meant, you are on your way to become "someone". Gone are the days.
Yep, I don't think those days can ever come back, to be honest, I think those days could have been kept forever but CC (Jon) destroyed them and now it's $1 / year and must be in LA or gtfo
@FAT32 said: But I am also kinda tired with some of the shit, I might possibly quit the hosting community in general but haven't decided yet.
You might be surprised (really) how much you feel better about things when you simply stop visiting LET/B, I mean if you stand it shit every day without fail, sooner or later you are going to associate walking with a bad time, sometimes you just need to take a different path and stop walking in the shit.
As one of my favourite comedians said (paraphrasing):
It haunts me how much of a dick I was about it simply because I did not know what I did not know, good lesson though.
@lentro said: Did this seriously happen? This shit is fucked up, jbiloh should be in jail. Sketchy asshole.
110% it happened which is why I and others that know about it don't buy the "uncle Jon" persona going on atm.
@Radi said: I had a read at the entire OP, but as others have said - I really do not support your decision of leaving/retiring. After all, in my opinion a community just looses its "vibe" when the guy who literally started it leaves. It would be a sad day for LES.
I did not mean to make it sound as if I was just going to vanish, I just honestly feel other people would genuinely be better at taking it to the next level, think of it like a bar tender that would rather drink with the customers so puts someone else behind the bar because he was always slow as shit at making drinks anyway
@souen said: EDIS had a number of relatively less common locations to try out.
I reached out to EDIS a while ago to see if they were interested in having representation here, they did not even respond haha, I guess the LE* world is not one they want to be involved in any more.
@souen said: The current "way too green" light theme looks good and I would like to see it remain an option, although I understand if it won't be available given the extra work to maintain another theme as new forum features are rolled out.
vanilla does not change THAT significantly THAT often so maintaining a few would not be a big problem as well as maintaining the current one.
@souen said: Is there any interest in n-year terms for admins elected by community members, with a number of people taking turns to run the ship?
Yes absolutely, I think it is important just as it is with politics.
Now, I think it is time to whip out MS Project and start building a plan.
@AnthonySmith said: I reached out to EDIS a while ago to see if they were interested in having representation here, they did not even respond haha, I guess the LE* world is not one they want to be involved in any more.
Yeah, my impression was there had been a major change in leadership direction around the time william left. Raspberry Pi colo got the axe sometime after.
@AnthonySmith said: vanilla does not change THAT significantly THAT often so maintaining a few would not be a big problem as well as maintaining the current one.
@AnthonySmith said: I found that coloncrossing under the leadership of Jon had been dishing out old abandoned accounts with post history with updated usernames and email addresses to hosts that had servers with coloncrossing to make them look more legitimate to potential buyers.
Wtf this is fucked up. damn did they still do this until now?
And also does anyone use Grammarly?
Grammarly seems to broke the text form in dark mode ( normal/light mode is fine), any ideas to fix it? I don't want to disabled Grammarly
Thanks for this informative post and thread, Ant and everyone. Can I ask why this site's hosting costs $70/month? It's a small to medium web forum, right? I would have hoped it would fit in the low end vision, if not in one of the old tiny NAT vps, then in the proverbial $7/month. Is it the software being slow? DDOS protection? CDN being really important for an international site? Wonder whether a few small VPS replicating the board could do it. This is also something I've thought of using Cloudflare Workers for.
I've been looking at the codebase for Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com). It's tiny compared with something like Vanilla, yet it handles a heck of a lot of traffic, way more than a board like this does. I don't know what kind of hw they host it on though. I'm sure it is expensive since the YC world likes to use AWS for everything, but we here know better .
You can host such forum on a 1-2GB KVM for 15€/y + get a backup server for like 10€/y profit.
For the Billing just get a VPS with license included likely cheaper.
@Neoon said:
You can host such forum on a 1-2GB KVM for 15€/y + get a backup server for like 10€/y profit.
For the Billing just get a VPS with license included likely cheaper.
So you end up with 10€ per month.
questions/observations:
Show me a good quality 2GB VPS for €15/ year
Show me a backup server that is €10 /year that also includes hourly snapshots and individual file management/restores as well as full webstack+site migration/restore.
Show me a VPS that comes with a FREE WHMCS license.
You forget the staging server
I know how you feel about cloudflare, it is what it is I do plan to remove that cost though.
I know you 'can' do it the way you are saying but you get significantly less resilience and quality while significantly increasing the potential for data loss and increasing management time.
You can get to work on a push bike, even if it is 20 miles away, just because it is cheaper does not make it a better solution, I dont want to spend just as much time getting to and from work as I do at work, especially when it is not even my real job
@Neoon said:
You can host such forum on a 1-2GB KVM for 15€/y + get a backup server for like 10€/y profit.
For the Billing just get a VPS with license included likely cheaper.
So you end up with 10€ per month.
questions/observations:
Show me a good quality 2GB VPS for €15/ year
BF has delivered 9€/y 1GB KVM's which can easy run a LEMP stack.
2GB ones dropped from around 15€/y.
Show me a backup server that is €10 /year that also includes hourly snapshots and individual file management/restores as well as full webstack+site migration/restore.
You throw money at your laziness, a backup vps for that price with rsync does that job.
Can easily do hourly database snapshots, incremental backups etc.
Just pull the backups, instead of pushing them, afterwards you can still push the files to another storage for archive or whatsoever. Maybe a version control system would be interesting for you?
Show me a VPS that comes with a FREE WHMCS license.
I said billing not WHCMS, Blesta is included on a BuyVM VPS.
Do you really need WHCMS for that?
You forget the staging server
Local? I do lots of testing Local, before I update my stuff, its just a ADDON but not lowend.
I know how you feel about cloudflare, it is what it is I do plan to remove that cost though.
I know you 'can' do it the way you are saying but you get significantly less resilience and quality while significantly increasing the potential for data loss and increasing management time.
You can get to work on a push bike, even if it is 20 miles away, just because it is cheaper does not make it a better solution, I dont want to spend just as much time getting to and from work as I do at work, especially when it is not even my real job
Another money drain, not really needed, LES is not that popular yet.
Comments
F*ckoff. This Dino stays.
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Oh God, you still remember that
Did this seriously happen? This shit is fucked up, jbiloh should be in jail. Sketchy asshole.
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A powerful "speech" right there, Anth! Need to probably come back after Christmas days to actually find the time to read the story the way it deserves to be read.
One thing I can say right off the bat: Thank you for your dedication and countless hours of sweat & tears brining us to the stage we are today.
I ask everyone: ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED? This is a legend right there and a new one in the making. Stay tuned everyone, for this shall determine our future heroic end
Merry Christmas everyone and be safe ??
Ympker's Shared/Reseller Hosting Comparison Chart, Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
A Hiatus would be the better decision from community's point of view.
It has been a long and bumpy road during all these years with WHT, LEB/T, VPSBoard, Hostballs and now LES.
Not to forget all the tries from different persons to create an alternative forum to replace/get users from the OGF.
My introduction to hosting and *nix, in particular, was back in 2000-2003. Memory is a bit blurry about the exact date/year.
My memories from that time was from a forum called filejunkies, where I meet Steven (back then known as steveswaldo), who sadly passed away this year.
Steven triggered and fueled my new-born interest which led to file/Webhosting on a dual ISDN line. Later it escalated to cPanel reseller hosting from different providers, some of who are still active today.
Back then I was a Software Developer (Pascal, for those who remember), and responsible for the IT-environment in a smaller company.
As the years went by, I left software development after 9 years and 11 months, to become a full-time Windows consultant.
Around this time, (2008-2010) I was a vivid reader of WHT and "discovered" LET/LEB around 2010.
A new world opened up, a site dedicated to people who, instead of throwing more hardware on a problem, tried to optimize the running-config and/or finding alternative options to solve their situation.
In 2012, when Joel had taken over from LEA, I had a brief career as a writer on LEB. Together with @Kujoe and @Asim we were the writing team. Starting with no instructions or guidelines at all, we did our best.
Later that year I quit writing offers on LEB and started my own site: lowendguide.com
which haven't got the love it deserves the last couple of years.
At the same time, in 2012 I bought my first VPS from InceptionHosting, which I kept for 4 years
Can't remember when @AnthonySmith and I began speaking on another level then as Provider/client, but I've always recommended his services and enjoy his company.
It was no surprise that I blindly followed when he started the project LowEndSpirit and began offering free (and paid) cPanel accounts as a complement to the LowEndSpirit NAT offers.
This year has been busier than ever, my middle kid was diagnosed with ADHD & Autism, I suffered from a minor depression (managed to see the warning signs in time), the job I started in June last year has made three major reorganizations.
I worked almost day and night to change the lack of trust between my customer and my company/colleagues.
I also managed to change the direction of MRVM, my own business, from running at a loss to almost break even
Due to the amount of time I put into being a good employee, I didn't have the energy to really work on the projects that I had in mind for MRVM.
some of my goals for 2021:
With this, I wish you all a nice ending of 2020 where you all keep safe and a bigger and better 2021.
https://clients.mrvm.net
Thanks for sharing it . Merry xmas @mikho and your family
Dentistry is my passion
That was an interesting read. Thanks for everything Ant. You keep things running smoothly around here and you can find an admin if you need but don't wander off anywhere old man. Merry Christmas.
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I don't even remember ever thinking of you as a client, just a friend.
https://inceptionhosting.com
Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
allow me reply without reading all the replies. first post is 50k words and the second, well @AnthonySmith you should put a word count for the second too.
i am new to the scene but my business instinct should work regardless. making LES sustainable on its own is the RIGHT thing to do. Telegram announce their plan to monetizing the app days ago. in fact, to have anything meaningful lasts, it should be PROFITABLE.
parents and children? money, husband and wife? money. Money is the lubricant that makes thing works.
therefore, i am afraid having community to administrate the forum would not work in the long run. start looking this forum as a Business, and find those who you think can be your partners in the endeavor, and form a business entity running this forum.
yes, you are wearing multiple hats in this forum, and having this turn into a business makes more people having conflicting roles. but every single person are having conflicting roles in life. i believe being a business owner knows what to do, what should be done, and what can be done. and if the ideal and vision is to have a best marketplace for anything hosting related, it can be profitable and long lasting.
you had seems lots of failure, and lucky enough to experience some of those, so dont waste these gifts and make something really great out of it.
https://clients.mrvm.net
A fur coat would be pretty warm this time of year
.
I have this strong feeling that I've given a different answer for it every time it was brought up too. This made me wonder if I could remember what the actual events were that started it. The toxic environment and the constant hatred were things I was glad to get away from and probably stated as reasons at some point. But what I think it really was: Thomas didn't want to make me a manager and that was the future of the job I had originally created, "shift lead" which later became "team lead." At that same time the job "social media manager" opened up and I knew that was where I belonged, on the front lines speaking for the company in public, dealing with customers in open and public spaces. I think it was some of my best work, and dropping LET from my list of jobs was key to me throwing myself into it.
Maybe that wasn't it and it was just increased stress of rising to the growing job of team lead, and wanting to clear my head for more focus on it. It was definitely one of those.
Hate radiates from the source. If you look around and see it everywhere, it's coming from you.
I had a read at the entire OP, but as others have said - I really do not support your decision of leaving/retiring. After all, in my opinion a community just looses its "vibe" when the guy who literally started it leaves. It would be a sad day for LES.
Overall, interesting read on Christmas and a really nice to see your view of the things.
You are an inspiration, keep it up.
Get some hosting at https://drserver.net .
@AnthonySmith, having read what you wrote a few times now, including the clear passion exuded between the lines, I truly believe this model can offer you and the community some real value. Looks like I can't edit the original to provide more detail so adding one more comment. I apologize in advance if it appears spammy but wanted to provide links addressing some of your more pertinent thoughts. I hope you will seriously consider valME's platform and happy to discuss converting the existing Vanilla database if you'd like.
If you really are wide open to other suggestions, these are some of the exact use cases valME was built for. What you refer to as a symbiotic relationship is what I refer to as value for value.
There is too often a belief that someone should get something for nothing; get something without effort; get something without paying for it; get something without trading for it. People forget that there is always a price for value. They forget that someone, eventually, has to pay. The Internet is a hotbed for reinforcing the idea of something for nothing. I'd like to help change that philosophy. I think the world would be a much better place if more people remembered that successful relationships come from exchanging values, and that values take effort to earn.
This is why valME does not have an advertising rotation script. Advertisements (hosted elsewhere) can be added via Javascript if you're a sponsored account but I'm not interested in making this more robust because advertising as a primary source of revenue goes against the ideas I'm trying to promote.
Transaction costs are here. Needless to say, for lowendspirit.com, they will be significantly less (and can be paid for with earned karma). Just as an example, it's 1,000 karma ($10) to own a community for the first year and 6,500 karma ($65) each additional year.
valME has Matomo (the old Piwik) integrated. However, to enhance privacy, community owners and moderators cannot see IP addresses, location information, or user names/emails of visits.
valME allows custom domains for communities and sub-community posts can "rollup" into other communities if you choose.
valME's downvoting functionality would be perfect for this as it works much differently than typical downvotes. valME has other techniques for addressing unwanted behaviors (you didn't think you're the only one who is verbose, did ya'?).
valME allows for private and restricted communities that are invite-only.
valME uses LONGBLOB that will allow you more verbose posts... for the next time you intend to write "a fairly detailed but significantly shorter post."
Thanks @c_prompt i saved the link to do some research and reading after Christmas
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Thanks, Ant, for the memoir. Except for the idea to expand NAT LES to help third-world users (which would have been really interesting!), everything else was not a surprise to those of us who've been around LEB/LET for a while.
I'd be in favour of allowing volunteer mods for day-to-day policing, while keeping a core of paid staff, including an admin / supermod with oversight responsibility over the mods.
Truly an inspiring story. Going to add this thread in my Wallabag, so I can read it later.
@AnthonySmith Thanks very much for starting this forum and all that you do to keep LES running!
The opening posts were interesting and relevant background reading to get a sense of why the forum is set up the way it is, no need to apologise for their length.
Glad to hear your lifestyle choice and decision to go all in with project SmitHost worked out fantastically.
My foray into the LE* realm began with LEA's inspiring 128 MB tutorials and an EDIS VPS. This was well after the first episode of the LEB/T CC ownership debacle, a few years before the GVH implosion. EDIS had a number of relatively less common locations to try out. They later quietly dropped its smallest plans, by then I had moved to other providers and also came upon LowEndSpirit. (That was a pretty little green circle next to Tokyo on the dashboard ...)
These days I pared back on the idle boxes with the aim of Ansible-ing all the things sometime. Although I seldom post, I still watch this space for solid new providers, a tempting deal for that next project and catch up a bit on LE news.
Happy Holidays and a prosperous New Year to all LES members!
Comments on specific items:
Thanks for putting replacement of Google Analytics with another self-hosted open source application on the roadmap.
The current "way too green" light theme looks good and I would like to see it remain an option, although I understand if it won't be available given the extra work to maintain another theme as new forum features are rolled out.
Is there any interest in n-year terms for admins elected by community members, with a number of people taking turns to run the ship? The term length can be e.g. 2-4 years, or some amount of time enough to see some bigger features to implementation, but not very long that potential admins worry about having to abandon a commitment running far into the future.
The LES team have done great work getting the forum off the ground, and it would be a pity to see AnthonySmith leave the post. Maybe some sort of rotational administration will offset the burden a little? One where leaving is taking an extended break rather than a permanent exit from leadership.
Well it was a good break over Christmas and new year I got to properly relax and for the first year ever without any sort of incident, it is the time of year I look forward too not because I am an elf or anything but because it is the only time of the year I get to semi switch off, being a small company owner and operator you never really switch off it occupies your mind during every waking hour so to be able to just go to critical support only is a real chance to relax, there are no 20 days annual leave or term holidays like the day jobbers and students get
I deliberately did not keep much of an eye on this post after posting it/after Christmas day so I will go through now and read responses and answer any questions and or respond to any posts.
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Yes perhaps a better way to put it would be that I don't feel I am the best person to lead or direct the community, sounds a bit authoritarian but not intended too, I will likely keep a hand in administering things from the back as a fail-safe.
Sure I can do that.
May be possible, I did discuss it with my accountant and due costs involved in doing that and the accounting fees at the current level that actually makes things worse
but at some point, if it is necessary it will be done (whatever official organisation fits best e.g. CIC/None profit etc etc yes.
Well, I might consider it but it under the right circumstances, I have to be honest, it really does not sit well with me, it makes me feel I am taking advantage of people and I really hate feeling like that, maybe it is just something I need to get over when @FAT32 indeed has a heart of gold, he has helped me with some other bits and pieces none forum-related maybe when he realises Jon is laughing his way to the bank at his expense I will reconsider my own position here
Might start a separate topic about mods etc as it could be a lengthy discussion potentially.
Yep, I don't think those days can ever come back, to be honest, I think those days could have been kept forever but CC (Jon) destroyed them and now it's $1 / year and must be in LA or gtfo
You might be surprised (really) how much you feel better about things when you simply stop visiting LET/B, I mean if you stand it shit every day without fail, sooner or later you are going to associate walking with a bad time, sometimes you just need to take a different path and stop walking in the shit.
As one of my favourite comedians said (paraphrasing):
It haunts me how much of a dick I was about it simply because I did not know what I did not know, good lesson though.
110% it happened which is why I and others that know about it don't buy the "uncle Jon" persona going on atm.
I did not mean to make it sound as if I was just going to vanish, I just honestly feel other people would genuinely be better at taking it to the next level, think of it like a bar tender that would rather drink with the customers so puts someone else behind the bar because he was always slow as shit at making drinks anyway
Starting my reading on this today.
I reached out to EDIS a while ago to see if they were interested in having representation here, they did not even respond haha, I guess the LE* world is not one they want to be involved in any more.
vanilla does not change THAT significantly THAT often so maintaining a few would not be a big problem as well as maintaining the current one.
Yes absolutely, I think it is important just as it is with politics.
Now, I think it is time to whip out MS Project and start building a plan.
Happy New Year everyone!
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Yeah, my impression was there had been a major change in leadership direction around the time william left. Raspberry Pi colo got the axe sometime after.
Great, thanks.
Wtf this is fucked up. damn did they still do this until now?
And also does anyone use Grammarly?
Grammarly seems to broke the text form in dark mode ( normal/light mode is fine), any ideas to fix it? I don't want to disabled Grammarly
Freelance Web Developer & Web Designer - Available for hire!
Thanks for this informative post and thread, Ant and everyone. Can I ask why this site's hosting costs $70/month? It's a small to medium web forum, right? I would have hoped it would fit in the low end vision, if not in one of the old tiny NAT vps, then in the proverbial $7/month. Is it the software being slow? DDOS protection? CDN being really important for an international site? Wonder whether a few small VPS replicating the board could do it. This is also something I've thought of using Cloudflare Workers for.
I've been looking at the codebase for Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com). It's tiny compared with something like Vanilla, yet it handles a heck of a lot of traffic, way more than a board like this does. I don't know what kind of hw they host it on though. I'm sure it is expensive since the YC world likes to use AWS for everything, but we here know better
.
You can ask
Runcloud Pro
Runcloud backups Paid
Cloudflare (paid)
Proportional VPS cost
WHMCS license for the advertising system.
Staging VPS with another host
Might actually be closer to $80
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^ Yikes! Not lowend then.
lowendinfo.com had no interest.
You can host such forum on a 1-2GB KVM for 15€/y + get a backup server for like 10€/y profit.
For the Billing just get a VPS with license included likely cheaper.
So you end up with 10€ per month.
Free NAT KVM | Free NAT LXC
questions/observations:
I know you 'can' do it the way you are saying but you get significantly less resilience and quality while significantly increasing the potential for data loss and increasing management time.
You can get to work on a push bike, even if it is 20 miles away, just because it is cheaper does not make it a better solution, I dont want to spend just as much time getting to and from work as I do at work, especially when it is not even my real job
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BF has delivered 9€/y 1GB KVM's which can easy run a LEMP stack.
2GB ones dropped from around 15€/y.
You throw money at your laziness, a backup vps for that price with rsync does that job.
Can easily do hourly database snapshots, incremental backups etc.
Just pull the backups, instead of pushing them, afterwards you can still push the files to another storage for archive or whatsoever. Maybe a version control system would be interesting for you?
I said billing not WHCMS, Blesta is included on a BuyVM VPS.
Do you really need WHCMS for that?
Local? I do lots of testing Local, before I update my stuff, its just a ADDON but not lowend.
Another money drain, not really needed, LES is not that popular yet.
Free NAT KVM | Free NAT LXC