Time to say thanks to ChessUSA for all the good years and move

[scchess]

We can find a new sponsor but we need to know approximately how much money is required.

[smatovic]

Beside the issue with the IP blocking I think that ChessUSA is a good hosting sponsor for such a thing like TalkChess, there is no conflict of interest when it comes to the topics of the posts in here. I don't think the forum provider Rebel proposed suits the needs of TC. If the service is for free or too cheap, then there is advertisement, then there is the question who owns the data, we have no control of the software and database, we might run into the same or a worse situation than now. I am not aware of the current numbers, database size, page visits per day, traffic, CPU load, but I guess a own server for ~100 Euros per month could do the job, additionally maybe >100 Euros for a managed server, the system-administraton. Dunno about the initial costs to install the forum and setup the database. Hack and DDOS attacks are a complex issue, I am not in the current practices here, but you can harden a Linux web-server to a certain degree, for example I saw several times the SQL error "too many connections" on TC, that might have several reasons, one could be simply web-crawlers scanning all posts on TC, this can be prevented by different configurations with an iptables firewall or Apache modules, to limit the connections from an single IP, or by user agent. If the hardening of the web-server isn't enough, then you might go for a DDOS protection by CDNs like Cloudflare and alike, have no clue what the costs for these are. Beside the technical questions there are organisational ones, who owns the forum/domain, who is responsible for the content. In Germany/Europe there are several laws applying for communities with a certain amount of members, so you might want to setup a registered society, which is legally responsible, instead of a private person who runs the show.

--
Srdja

[Rebel]

A couple of points.

a. I can access chessusa.com with any browser
b. I can only access talkchess.com with a VPN connection.

Both run on the same server, godaddy.com

Code: Select all

Domain Name: CHESSUSA.COM
   Registry Domain ID: 13335913_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
   Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.godaddy.com

Code: Select all

Domain Name: TALKCHESS.COM
   Registry Domain ID: 84191878_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
   Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.godaddy.com

The question of intent arises, if Talkchess is under attack (while chessusa is not) does the hacker hold grudges against the forum? Does Quentin Turner has any idea who is behind or does he know the reason of the attacks? Surely people will remember the hacker was able to turn down the whole forum for a couple of weeks and even managed to put the talkchess account for sale some 3-5 months ago.

[smatovic]

GoDaddy is just the domain (url) registrar, not the server hoster or IP block owner, you might want to check netcraft for this, or do an traceroute from your machine:

https://sitereport.netcraft.com/?url=ht ... kchess.com

https://sitereport.netcraft.com/?url=ht ... essusa.com

According to my traceroute TC and ChessUSA have meanwhile different IPs and direct to different server, I still wait for a statement from the mods or admin on this.

--
Srdja

[ydebilloez]

I have installed phpBB before. e.g. http://forum.internetcontact.be/

What are the storage requirements for running this forum? If we only support text messages and no heavy attachments, it should be feasible to run it for less than 150$/year. If needing Gbytes of storage, it would mean something like 300$/year.

[JohnWoe]

Anything is better than reddit.

TC has lots of good stuff for beginners and not-beginner chess programmers.
Signal-noise ratio is manageable.

To me it seems TC is hosted on Bulgaria/Sofia? Cloudware?
Analyzed the problems a bit and got really good latencies.

Code: Select all

rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 53.671/65.036/122.498/18.475 ms

[towforce]

Why don't we do the calculations and work out how much to run the servers? And then find a new sponsor or do fundraising? We don't need ChessUSA, surely we can move the service out. Who can do the finance calculations?

Ed runs his ProDeo forum for free.

[Harvey Williamson]

Why don't we do the calculations and work out how much to run the servers? And then find a new sponsor or do fundraising? We don't need ChessUSA, surely we can move the service out. Who can do the finance calculations?

Ed runs his ProDeo forum for free.

One issue some would have with that is the cost of running it for free is the adverts on the forum. Is there the ability to customise it with FEN diagrams, pgn viewers etc....? Can the talkchess.com domain be ported there? Will they allow us to transfer the huge database of posts?

[Guenther]

Why don't we do the calculations and work out how much to run the servers? And then find a new sponsor or do fundraising? We don't need ChessUSA, surely we can move the service out. Who can do the finance calculations?

Ed runs his ProDeo forum for free.

It seems you don't realize the huge difference in size and traffic?

TalkChess Forum
---------------

Computer Chess Club: General Topics
23217 Topics
322201 Posts

Computer Chess Club: Tournaments and Matches
13020 Topics
102272 Posts

Computer Chess Club: Programming and Technical Discussions
7301 Topics
115180 Posts

Computer Chess Club: Engine Origins
412 Topics
15277 Posts

Chess Players Forum
446 Topics
2847 Posts

Forum Help and Suggestions
516 Topics
6442 Posts


ProDeo Forum
---------------

Welcome, read first
3 Topics
32 Posts

Computer Chess
189 Topics
1683 Posts

Dedicated Chess Computers
12 Topics
87 Posts

Programmer Corner
9 Topics
37 Posts

Science
37 Topics
407 Posts

YouTube (Music only)
26 Topics
107 Posts

Humor
17 Topics
38 Posts

Everything else
73 Topics
557 Posts

Over 560.000 posts to save for talkchess (in around 14 years - subtracted some time, because of complete data loss between spring 2006 and summer 2007)

...around 3000 for Prodeos forum (in 9 months

[Rebel]

This is NOT about the ProDeo forum.

You can install a new TALKCHESS forum for free, no ads once you registered, pgn and epd support (I have it installed), polls, likes, youtube support, more modern than current. Independent. No IP blocking.