It appears the ETS server is dying. One drive is dead, and another is flaky and if it goes we are down. The server is 5 years old anyway. We are looking at our options. The server not only hosts ETS, it also hosts Knife Rights and all our email as well. Since the beginning this has been provided gratis by Dave Pulver who is no longer really in that business and it is probably time to move on.

I am open to suggestions from those here who know about such stuff, just to add to our options we are considering.

Cost is a key factor. Remember, we've never paid a penny for our hosting or email, there's not much in the miniscule budget we operate on for that.

ETS is on Windows (under UNIX) while Knife Rights is on straight UNIX.

I'll thank everyone who posts suggestions or offers in advance and I'll hand this thread to Dave for consideration along with his own ideas and some from a few other sources.

TIA,

P.S. Simply suggesting we "go to the cloud" is not helpful. <~>

A pretty common strategy these days is to keep the forums free-of-charge but also offer a 'premium membership' with some simple perks to generate extra funding. This setup seems to yield more cash than just appealing to plain generosity. Even cheerful contributors like to get a little something special in return.

I would certainly be happy to join up with that. ETS has been an extremely important asset to me over the years. I'm sure we have plenty of folks here who feel the same way.

The impending demise of the ETS server may be a blessing in disguise, providing an opportunity to streamline and refocus the site, a topic that came up in this thread.

What sort of processing power and storage capacity is needed?

Doug,

Could you provide the technical characteristics of your failing hardware and the software that you are using?

Thanks,

Paul

Afternoon Doug,

The security now podcast (Steve Gibson) advertises squarespace.com for web hosting.

Pricing structure is $20/month for one year with unlimited storage and bandwidth.

Yes/no?

Does it need to reside in any particular location? (non-computer geek speaking)

Not sure. about 3 GB data and such. Waiting for some bandwidth numbers. It's a UNIX box with Windwoes running under it, or something like that, for ETS. KR site is UNIX. Dave is supposed to be putting that info together. We definitely are not going to replace the server with a new one, Dave wants out of the server business, so to speak.

A physical location is not really a concern.

Sorry, forgot to mention that if the existing html code is still viable the worst part of the excercise is in the transfer to the new domain.

Many of the webhosting clients already provide the front end. The building of the website is mostly labour.

Doug,

I've been using - and highly recommend - Pair Networks - a hosting company based in Pittsburgh, PA. As far as I can tell, I've never had downtime, in about 10 years of use. they must have had some downtime, but I never saw it. They are professional, crisp and efficient.

For $30 a month - and I'd be happy to personally sponsor a month of service - you get quite a bit. During the month of September 2011 only, they are offering a 24% discount when prepaying for 12 months on a new Webmaster hosting account. The discount is normally only 8%.They offer a "no setup fee" transfer.

http://www.pair.com/services/web_hosting/webmaster.html

Be forewarned - I've never had a server transition that was smooth, no matter how hard you try.