I has been suggested that we move the mailing list off of Google Groups and onto a hosted forum solution that also provides optional email updates.
Were we to do this we would need to determine whether to host it ourselves or use a third party (free?) service. If we were to host it ourselves, on a server located in the space, we might run into bandwidth issues or “hosting vs. ISP domination” issues.
I have offered to spin up another virtual machine on my Linode account. The cost would be ~$20/mo. I would pay for/donate this myself but the node would be small and would only really be useful for hosting the website and mailing list / forum. The IT guy(s) would have root access to this box.
I have a good contact at Speed Span ISP (http://www.speedpsan.com). that would let us either lease a box or put our own machine in his datacenter. It’s a full data center with lots of bandwidth etc plus we would have a real box we could co-lo. It would probably be more that $20/mo but I’m sure we could get a good deal if that was the route we wanted to go. The facility is local and is over in the Newport KY area.
If we are interested in having our own machine co-lo locally then let me know and I’ll find out pricing.
I talked about it very briefly in IRC this morning, but for the benefit of those who don’t yet lurk on freenode, I have a line on a 1U dual xeon (2.4ghz or so) server for free. I’m guessing our bandwidth requirements are going to be pretty light. Craig is working on getting a quote from his guy at Speedspan.