Web Presence

Social Media

• tbd: link to FB
• tbd: link to Twitter
• tbd: link to ...

Real-Time Chat

Slack (current solution)

• For us limiting the slack to 250/under overall users would be against our mission.
• Slack has been a great tool for us, and pretty dang reliable
• It's not a replacement for Google Groups
• I don't know if Discord would be a replacement for Slack
• If we had to pay for Slack it would not be worth it to our organization
• The more social platforms we have the more fractured the memberbase becomes

Drawbacks

• 3 months of slack history (regardless of the 10,000 message count)

Pricing

• if we have less then 250 members, the slack instance would be free
• “weekly active members” seems to be around the 40-55 range
• Looks like slack doesn’t charge for “inactive” members. https://slack.com/help/articles/218915077-Slacks-Fair-Billing-Policy
• their regular price after the increase would be around $4350 per year, or $652.50 ... $55 a month basically ... (for 50 users)
• “Pro Plan: We offer workspaces with 250 or fewer members a free upgrade, and an 85% discount for workspaces above that size.” [ed: for non-profits]

Element.io

• Jitsi Integration
• End-to-End Encryption

Discord

• "I will say Discord's own tos and coc is kind of a dumpster fire..." (seen on our Slack)

Discussion Forum

Google Groups (current solution)

Big Features

• Bi-Directional Email Sync

Drawbacks

• Q: Do we have limited retention on Google Groups, like Slack?
• A: No. (to the best of my knowledge. -Jot)

Wiki

Current

MediaWiki 1.19 (ca 2012)

Coming Soon

"I've threatened to upgrade before, but this time I mean it!" - Bob Bushman, Summer 2022

• Bob's first pass, from long ago: MediaWiki_On_Lightsail
• More recent pass by Bob, on his own stuff: MediaWiki Install
• Bob's current attempt: MediaWiki on Namecheap
• Bob's current current attempt: MediaWiki Install
  • It is getting better and better. I believe the delays are worth the improvement.

Office Suite

Current

Google Docs

Big Features

• Integration with Google Groups and Google Calendar.

Cloud Hosting Provider

"I suggest that anything hosted in the cloud NOT be created/hosted under an individual’s account. A HSL owned account should be created and everything placed under that." - Jeff Sittler

"I prefer not to run images. If we use our own deploy process we are free to lift and shift to another provider." - Bob Bushman

Big 3

Google

I think that's the right link. I couldn't find bare Linux servers.

"We can get $400 of free credit (for 90 days I think) to play with it if people are interested. I could create the VMs and then setup access so configuration/installation could be." - Jot Powers

• Pre-built versions can be deployed. Estimated cost is <$5/month. Bitnami Mediawiki bundle on Ubuntu

Microsoft

"I don't know how many Azure folks we have but the lab has $2,500 / year free there too. I can certainly get anyone started but we would need more than one person for the reasons already mentioned" - Eric W

I can't figure out how to get a straight price or HDD size for bare Linux instances from their interface. - Bob Bushman

Provider Comparison Table

To try to get comparables, I picked the least expensive 2 GB instance. I run 1 GB instances for my wikis, but I figure HSL will have more load.

Prices are based on month-to-month pricing.

"To me, Namecheap is the right choice because they are local, use RAID 10, and because of their principles. I already use them for DNS, and as a result of this dive into their principles, I'm going to start shifting my personal hosting there." - Bob Bushman - turns out their VPS is a pass-through to AWS.

Provider	VPS Plan	Monthly Price	vCPU Cores	RAM	HDD	Data Xfer per Month	Notes
Aquatis	KVM - 2G	$5.00	2 Cores	2 GB	10 GB SSD	1 TB	Small Storage, Out of Stock, could not confirm price is month-to-month
Interserver	VPS 1	$6.00	1 Core	2 GB	30 GB SSD	2 TB	Offers 1-click MediaWiki (though having our own deploy process makes lift & shift easier)
Namecheap	Pulsar	$9.88	2 Cores	2 GB	40 GB SSD RAID 10	1 TB	Phoenix Local, RAID 10, Supports Net Neutrality, Fought Facebook (and settled), Opposes Invasion of Ukraine, Supports Solo Entrepreneurs and Women Entrepreneurs Supports EFF, Supports Privacy Turns out their VPS hosting is backed by Amazon AWS. That pretty much breaks the "do business with small local businesses" argument.
Amazon Lightsail	Virtual Server 3	$10.00	1 Core	2 GB	60 GB SSD	3 TB
NDCHost	Cloud Server #2	$10.00	1 Cores	2 GB	50 GB SSD	2 TB	Listed on EFF as having full support for CertBot.
Google Cloud	LAMP Stack	$12.70	1 Core	2 GB	10 GB	??	Small Storage, offers 1-click Bitnami Mediawiki, price is for LAMP - bare Linux instances are $25.95
Hostinger	VPS2	$12.99	2 Cores	2 GB	40 GB SSD	2 TB	Europe-based (Lithuania)
Microsoft	Linux VM B1ms	$15.11	1 Core	2 GB	??	??	I cannot find what 4 GiB of "Temporary Storage" is, how much HDD space it comes with, nor how much data transfer is included. But supposedly we get $2500/year for free (since we're a 501c3? ref: Jot Powers)
Spry	SSD KVM Milli	$20.00	2 Cores	2 GB	40 GB SSD	??

Versus On-Prem

Hosting our own machine means care and feeding of the box. We have some machines in house, but what matters is total cost of ownership.

Network Reliability: On-site we do not have multiple redundant high availability lines.

Hardware Failure: Hardware failure is a bit more likely with our own gear, and with a cloud provider it *may* magically get fixed for us.

Hardware Obsolescence: When the hardware can no longer keep up with the latest version of the server daemon, it has to be replaced. This is the same with on-prem or cloud.

OS Updates: Patching the same version of the OS may come in three flavors: On-Prem and Cloud VPS work the same; sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y. A third option is SaaS or containerized, there may be a hosted wiki option where we don't have to maintain the OS.

OS Upgrades: Again, this works the same for On-Prem or Cloud VPS, but may be easier with SaaS or containerized. For Debian; change the apt sources, sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade -y, then pray the machine boots as far as SSH so you can fix anything that went sideways during the upgrade. SaaS / containerized may let you get off easier.

Open question: In which, if any, of these cases would we not have to:

1. Install the latest version of MediaWiki
2. Apply our MediaWiki configuration
3. Pull the latest database dump
4. Load the dump into the new database
5. Set up nightly backup