Crowd funding initiative to get our hands on the talkchess domain name

[Rebel]

And time has passed, I assume the shop deal is satisfied.
So what is the next blocker that I have to login 3~4 times to post a message or view inbox? The bot check is also not gone.

We are in the process to look for a new reliable, stable and non commercial host first.

[flok]

And time has passed, I assume the shop deal is satisfied.
So what is the next blocker that I have to login 3~4 times to post a message or view inbox? The bot check is also not gone.

We are in the process to look for a new reliable, stable and non commercial host first.

https://soleus.nu/ is very cheap, non commercial and reliable. existing for years already.

[mvanthoor]

I don't want to sound rude. But hosting a PHP forum with such a small number of users is so little. It will cost less than 1-2 cups of coffee per month.

Even if you were to get a ridiculous high-end bare-metal server, it shouldn't cost more than 20-30 USD per month (Hetzner/OVH/Digital Ocean).
- Move/migrate to the better forum software. (I personally like Flarum)
- Add a global free CDN like Cloudflare for some ridiculous speed improvement + lower bandwidth usage (At this price point it shouldn't even be a problem).

The domain itself doesn't have any value. It's the archived discussion of many years that's worth anything. Even that can be scraped and archived if needed. Esp if the current owners starts being difficult.

On a related note. Does anyone know if the original CCC Archive has a download zipped dump, or do I need to run a scrapper on it?
https://www.stmintz.com/ccc/index.php

The ongoing issue users from specific countries not being able to access the site is also so annoying. Esp its such a simple fixable issue.

I completely agree with this. I've hosted a photography forum in the past, which was MUCH bigger than talkchess (a few thousand active users at its high-point). A €15 / month shared web hosting account (with daily backups) was more than enough to host it.

Also, talkchess.com doesn't have any value. When the users know the new URL, they'll migrate. It's 25 years of discussions that's worth something, because there's LOTS of information that can be found here about the old-school of alpha/beta chess engines. Even though neural networks are the new thing and the way forward, there will always be people that want to write an old-school engine, or start with one to learn the ropes.

[smatovic]

One thing is a server host for an virtual private server with root access, $10 to $20 monthly should do the job, + Cloudflare CDN in front for ~$20/month.
I did suggest several local ISP from the Netherlands to the 2nd Founders group, point is that hosting of forum and jurisdiction of forum should be in the same region.

Another thing is to find a legal entity as host for TC, FIDE, ICGA, CSVN, etc., either come up with own legal entity for running TC, or find an existing one as host/mother.

--
Srdja

[mclane]

Important is IMO that never ever a person or organisation or company CONTROLS Talkchess without the members or the moderator board having the power to stop it.

We learned out of talkchess history that a company took over, an admin took over.

The next restart should be demcratical. As you can see dictatorship can come to power in a democracy.

Although we had a Charta that excluded this option, the "dictators" took over.

It makes no sense that we shift from one dictatorship into the next. We have to make sure the admin or the next implementation is not destructing our platform.

[carldaman]

I agree with the above post!