Website

I'm starting to look at what we're going to want/need out of a
website, where we are now and where we're going to want to go with it.
I'm looking for suggestions of things we'd want it to do for us. I
have a list to start:

1. Simple front page to promote who we are and what we're doing,
preferably driven by WordPress or a similar CMS so we can all post
update "articles" about the cool stuff we're doing so people will want
to come join us.

2. Wiki to store hackerspace project data and other editable
information.

3. Unified communications medium of some kind. Having a separate forum
and a mailing list is in my opinion untenable in the long run for
keeping smooth communications - this is a separate discussion but
still under the website umbrella. Nabble does exactly what I think our
goal is, but we'll need to test it a bit before we can make a
determination. People who prefer forums can use it as a forum, and
people who prefer mailing lists can treat it like a mailing list.

4. Hosted on space controlled by us - hosting by a reliable local
company would be ideal, cohosting with a member's existing space
(Dreamhost accounts, etc) would be ok. Having the site live on a
server hosted inside the space would be ideal but that will need to
wait until we have hardware, a reliable net connection, etc.

5. Private file storage would be awfully nice for collaboration -
simple FTP would suffice for this.

Thoughts?

- Vendy

I took a look at the NYC Resistor group’s webpage (http://www.nycresistor.com/) and I like their layout, they have a blog like structure for their main page where members can post interesting newsish items they find or they can post group announcements, and it has the google calendar built into the side along with contact information.

In IRC today people were tossing around the idea of using Drupal for a CMS.

Just got back from my first Drupal Users Group meeting, and I like he
Drupal idea. Not that I'm actually a user yet, but very much looking
forward to becoming one and pronouncing the word properly.

Foxydot, Just so your clear, it’s “Drew-Paul”. :wink:

I think that I agree. Drupal may work quite well for everything that we want to accomplish with the interwebz space.

i agree that someone should have shell access to the host so the cms/template can be modified as needed. also, it would be nice to host some other services, like ventrillo or some other voice thing (cough SIP URI cough) for those who want to dial in to meetings.

i have been running various servers from my house/apartment for years and while it is super cheap and super convenient, it can be slow, especially with more than one user. home hosting is great for a proof of concept, but “production” use calls for dedicated hosting.

most residential/small business broadband connections have less than 1mbit uplink, which is fine for occasional remote access by a couple of people, but if we want to run a moderately busy message board with consistent hits, we will feel the pain rather quickly. not to mention, opening the wrong port can get your plug pulled by your ISP fairly quickly and always without warning.

i like karl’s idea of linode or some other VPS server, or hositng a box with speedspan per craig’s suggestion at least for the “forward facing” applications like the website, blogs, wiki and forums.

i would also like to suggest a box/boxes running internally on the LAN for intranet type applications where bandwidth isn’t so much of an issue. here are a couple of suggested apps:
dedicated game server (CSS/TF2/tribes*)
virus aquarium**
streaming media server (howto vidz, member generated content)
DEMOSCENE!
fortune cookie/sci fi quotes/uncomfortable truth LED board

  • i think a fun event would be a retro-lan party: we play an old FPS like tribes 1 or quake 3 and try to run it on old hardware/OSes, or on new hardware/non-windows OSes via emulators and award points for ingenuity.

** how about a separate, dedicated network for the aquarium? not connected to the internet and with some sort of warning that it is infected, say a wireless network with an SSID like “infested-wit-virii” or “malware-research-network”

Don’t forget Left 4 Dead.

FYI, several Hive13 members are active members of the gaming community I already run at http://arsclan.net - we already run L4D and TF2 servers (as well as others) where the Hive is welcome to congregate. You get the benefit of active, experienced admins and well I kinda run the joint so I can always hook it up.

Plus, gameservers need a lot of bandwidth and good peering to get steady pings, which is $$$. Not knocking or judging Speedspan, but I’m doubting that’s the level of service we want to pay for…

Jason

I’m bringing a bunch of switches, maybe I’ll throw in some old school hubs so we can monitor the network traffic of the virus aquarium without having to poison the switch or have a fancy switch w/ spanning etc. Can somebody acquire some biohazard stickers? I would like to attach that to anything that is going to live on the virii network.

I have a HUGE streaming music video collection I’ll upload once we get local servers setup. It would be nice to have a separate gig network for high speed data transfers (non-internet) as well.

The retro lan party sounds fun too but I assumed you were talking about Rise of the Triad or something :slight_smile:

Craig

i was thinking more a box in the corner of the LAN at the space. nothing fancy or requiring much in the way of costs, just a convenient way to have a pickup game/test member created maps if there are folks present and interested.

we could go even olderschool, like duke nukem or whatever :slight_smile: (DN3D should get points for not supporting TCP/IP, just IPX/SPX)

if you aren’t into FPSes there is always diablo/diablo2 :slight_smile:

I think what makes the most sense is three separately managed networks active at the space. One “stable” infrastructure which provides connectivity to shared hackerspace PC’s, the media servers, IP phones/cameras, and so on. One “unstable” which is what people will use for sporadic projects, playing with IOS/switches/etc, and is fed by one managed connection from the “stable” infrastructure so changes downstream can’t affect “stable” services, and the aquarium which will be completely separate and distinctly labeled.

From the sounds of it, we’ll have enough network hardware on hand to be able to do this pretty easily, and be able to have it physically separate hardware instead of just VLANs and such.

I’m bringing around 10 switches today. Two of them support vlans. Some are crappy little hubs but could be good for testing/virus networks. But I definitely think we can make as many networks as needed. I may bring a spool of cable too…or at least what’s left of ti :slight_smile:

I have 24 port hub I can drop off along with a couple other items, I will be bringing them up on friday.

ROTT is totally older than DN3D.

Besides, StarCraft is the ultimate LAN game.

ROTT is also open source now…I would totally bring down some God/Dog mode on somebody via my linux console… I have the original floppies/wad files so we could play that. I need to check to see if they yanked the IPX/SPX protocol and replaced it with IP in src yet.

Starcraft is pretty great. The kids and I still play Freecraft. Although they finanlly finished the sounds. I miss the days when you would launch a fireball and instead of a fireball sound you hear a guys voice literally say the word “FIREBALL” each time. Epic.

–Craig

I’ll see about getting some biohazard stickers… I work at a hospital, they’re used on a lot of stuff here!

Vendy

That would be awesome! :smiley: