A name! And next steps.

[alexbayleaf]

I posted yesterday in a members-locked post looking for suggestions/ideas for a name for this site. One that I'd found that was available was growstuff.org, and after some discussion with shadowspar and thisone on IRC, I'm convinced it's the best name available, and that it has a lot going for it, so I've registered it.

Points in its favour:

* It's informal and friendly-sounding, and we can extend that into our other messaging. "Skud is growing stuff!" etc.
* It's general, and not specific to eg. organic, seed sharing, urban harvesting, etc., so it won't turn people away by thinking it's not for them
* It's easy to say and spell, which makes it easy to tell people about offline.
* It's not directly related to any other site -- there were suggestions of "harvestry" by analogy with "ravelry" but I don't think it's a good idea to tie ourselves that closely; inspiration is one thing but too-close imitation is perhaps not the best path.
* It doesn't have the religious connotations that "harvest" has for some people/in some contexts.

Points against:

* It's a bit boring, perhaps?
* We don't look like the cool kids, who leave out vowels and stuff
* ???

Anyway, I think I can deal with those negatives, and as I said, I've registered it! So now we need to actually get cracking on this thing.

Renaming this comm: does anyone have some spare DW points they can throw my way for a rename token? I need 150 points.

Hosting: We need some simple hosting to set up an initial website and the tools we need to get started. I'm going to be looking for green/carbon neutral Linux VPS hosting, preferably ones that run on renewable energy rather than using carbon credits. Anyone got any recommendations or preferences? AISO is one that showed up earlier in my search; does anyone know anything good/bad/indifferent of them?

Sysadmin tasks: Need one or more someones to step up to help us set up mailman (first priority), simple web hosting (just a static page for now I think), and eventually all our other stuff. Mailman's the biggie right now. Volunteers? japester?

Website: I'd like a simple placeholder webpage, something that looks nice and just says what we're doing and where to find us (links to this comm, to our mailing list, etc.) Anyone interested in putting something together? aquaprofunda?

ETA: Github: need to set up an "organization" on github, which needs an organizational contact address, and therefore is dependent on having hosting/email set up. Just a note to do that once we have those things, I guess.

Hmmm, what else? I think that's all for right now.

Comments

[pozorvlak]

GreenQloud are probably worth looking at for hosting, but I have no personal experience with them.

[alexbayleaf]

I looked at them, and was confused by the difference between their "cloud compute" offering and what I think of as a traditional linux VPS. But after a bit more investigation, it seems that this "cloud" stuff is the way things are charged now.

So the ones I've looked at:

Rackspace: carbon neutral via tree-planting, inexpensive, lowest-end VPS around $10/month, 4GB server from $175/month plus bandwidth.

Greenqloud: carbon neutral; uses 100% renewable energy (geothermal and hydro). Pricing almost identical to Rackspace.

AISO: carbon neutral, solar powered; pricing is about 3x Rackspace or Greenqloud.

Greenqloud is looking pretty good.

[pozorvlak]

AIUI, using renewable energy is preferable to tree-planting as a way of saving carbon emissions.

[alexbayleaf]

Yup, that's why I mentioned it... sorry I wasn't clear. Rackspace was seeming like an ok-but-not-great solution because of that; I definitely prefer the ones that are using real renewable energy.

[juliet]

I might be up for helping with SA, depending on my thinking s bit about time. I'd certainly like to!

[alexbayleaf]

Ooh, wonderful! Let me know. Most urgent at the moment, as I said, is email and mailman. And I'm kind of crap at email stuff so would definitely like help with it. Apache and web stuff I'm more competent to do by myself, especially at this stage.

[juliet]

OK, so, I'd be v happy to help, but realistically I can only do very much Thu-Sun (Mon-Wed I'm home alone with the baby & for now don't get much else done around that). If that's OK, I'd love to help out! It's a while since I've done email stuff but I reckon I'm likely still competent :) & definitely happy to get mailman up & running.

[japester]

Coolness!
I guess I'll be on as (one of) the primary SAs. Always good to have more around for lad balancing and availability.

[juliet]

see reply to Skud above; can do some stuff but not Mon-Wed. Hope that'll be OK!

[japester]

We do what we can, when we can.

In other words, just fine :)

Once we've got a VM, we can get started!

[juliet]

cool :) ping me once you have any details? email is on profile page, public key available from my website. I'll have a more detailed read of what's been going on here so far once I have a moment -- been a hectic few days.

[alexbayleaf]

Err, your GPG key's on your webpage, but I need your ssh key! Email to skud@infotrope.net, for preference.

[alexbayleaf]

Excellent! I'm out and about all day today (tourist!) but will try and get the server in a state where you can at least ssh in this evening. Can you please email your public key to skud@infotrope.net? Thanks!

[jmink]

It might be possible to set up github right away and then change the email address once email is set up.

[alexbayleaf]

Well, it needs an email address that's not already used for a github account, so I'd need to set *something* up because I can't reuse my normal one. I could create a plain old github repo under my own account in the meantime, I guess; I don't think people can join it like they can with an organizational account, but they can follow it, or something. *handwaves*

[jmink]

Fair enough. You might be able to get around that by adding a +growstuff to your email address, but I wouldn't be surprised if github doesn't allow that.

[alexbayleaf]

Huh. It worked fine. I assumed they wouldn't, but obviously I shouldn't make assumptions!

https://github.com/Growstuff

[jmink]

Yay!

[japester]

Linode have cheqp VPS too, no idea about the green-ness though :/

Can certainly do email, mailman apache stuff. 'tis on my list of Easy Things.

Having a second SA around is good news too.