from NovaChild in Bureaucracy:

But a dedicated server is pretty much a one-time investment, right? Or am i just totally confused on the way things work? Can you not provide your own server to whatever ISP is giving you access, with your own hard drive and CPU and whatnot? Why would CPU cycles provide a continuous expense?

No, we're renting someone else's hardware. There's a point at which buying our own would be cheaper, but with a managed dedicated server they do take some care of us. Most of the strict co-location agreements I've seen, where you provide the hardware, they don't touch the box beside making sure it's cool and has power. Meaning no backup, no reboots, no upgrades, nothing. We'd need to have someone who could go in and physically touch it, or pay through the nose for someone unfamiliar with how we decided to set up the OS and utilities to poke at it.

Ah. I guess that makes sense. I'm looking at this thing from a rather naive micro-management standpoint, I guess. I can see the benefits of having them do backups, reboots, et cetera for us. Guess it's a matter of whether we have somebody dedicated and interested enough that they'd be a good Sysadmin for a buffista-built-boxen with little or no pay, if we wanted to make it cheaper. Might be a rather time-consuming and thankless job.

Okay. Gotcha. Understood. I can see how this board would be big enough of a deal to require a dedicated server, too.

MySQL stuff

Would switching to Postgres help at all, or is it more difficult to interface with PHP, or is the stuff you're running into unrelated to the stuff that Postgres does better than MySQL? I only have rudimentary knowledge of these things, admittedly, but I've heard that Postgres is more professionally respected for some things than MySQL, if somewhat more difficult to use.

This is why I don't come to BaBB. All I hear is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But when I don't come where, I miss exciting things like maps!

Buffistas in the Cradles Of Civilisation

Buffistas Downunder

Are up. No plans for South America or elsewhere, for now, unless requested.

Next up: zooming

Would switching to Postgres help at all, or is it more difficult to interface with PHP, or is the stuff you're running into unrelated to the stuff that Postgres does better than MySQL?

That's being investigated right now -- tommyrot's been working on it.

iStrata charges $400/month for a co-located box, vs. $99/month for the dedicated server we're using.

Finding a place that offers cheaper virtual dedicated servers might be another alternative. Board users might not like the slower board performance, but we wouldn't have to worry about getting booted again for using too much server horsepower and it should be a lot cheaper.

iStrata isn't offering those right now, but I think I've seen places that are.

It might be an idea to investigate that, but since tommyrot's getting along in the Postgres investigation, plus it has other benefits, I don't think we're in an either-or situation.

The USA map will be broken for a few minutes, while I install zoom. Please don't create or move pins until we're clear...

... and we're clear. The USA map is only one that zooms.

Now I want to move all the Chicago area pins to the right spots, but I realize that would be, well... crazy and obsessive, so I'm refraining.

Awww, now we know where Seamus is.

Would switching to Postgres help at all, or is it more difficult to interface with PHP, or is the stuff you're running into unrelated to the stuff that Postgres does better than MySQL?

NovaChild, if you read back in this thread you'll probably get a pretty good idea of what technical issues have been and how they are being addressed. I'd try to nilly the specifics for you but I don't really know what most of this stuff means.

When I zoom the US map, it goes black, except for the midwest, where I get the counties. All the pins are still there, even in the black part.

Also, is there any way to make the control/submit box smaller? We're losing the lower part of Texas.