How many people here have a website? ::waits for hands:: How many people think they know everything involved in the backend for how it all works? ::waits for hands::

When I started playing minecraft, it was always IP-based servers. What a PAIN. "43.23.23.123:25565" or some garbage, and if the host dies and a transfer needs to happen, how do you find out where the server moved to. It's annoying. The same problem exits for websites though...I own www.surfrock66.com and when you type that into a web browser, a lot of stuff happens behind the scenes. You could do full research on how DNS works, but here's my 10 second version: No website really exists behind a URL like www.whatever.com, it's actually an IP address which is like a phone number for the computer. Website names get associated with IP's through DNS, or Domain Name System. DNS is like a phone book for IP addresses based on the URL. There are TLD's (top level domains) like .com and .net, or international ones like .ca and .co.uk, and each TLD has its own directory scheme.

Many of you know, I use linux full-time and fully embrace the "open source" philosophy. The best thing, in my opinion, about that philosophy is that if something changes or if you begin to disagree with how something is going, you can take that and run with it in your own version. I believe that philosophy applies to things like this server; if I were to get hit by a bus or something, everything should be available for someone else to take the publicly shared info and re-create the server with minimal interruptions. It's much like the service model of software, the entire software and map library should be available to anyone...what I (and all the owners that have participated over the years) do that's special is run and host it, make sure it's up, etc.

From the time that I joined the server until now, I think we've done a pretty good job making things available, but I think we can do a lot better. As many of you know, we're getting ready to deploy some donation-funded hardware to get the server in a more stable place. With this move, I'm gonna be cleaning up some pluginconfigs, some of the backend scripts and such, and changing some big-level configuration. I am gonna start a blog series to document some of the things I'm doing. Now that this blog isn't making us any ad money, this is just me dicking around, but my hope is that all the Owner's Corner posts will basically be come a guide for how to run a server from actual hardware, to maintaining the website, etc. All of these skills should be able to be translated to other type of server hosting; for example, some of the BASH scripts we use for backup management could EASILY be used to automatically backup projects on a linux box.

Feel free to submit questions for future topics in the comments, but I probably have about 5 ideas to get started.

If you had an area you were working on, and you came back to find it like this....what would you assume happened?

Isn't there a word for doing stuff like this? Here's my burned down forest.

Guess someone thinks my project is a...

Reeling from my bandwidth overload last week, I've been doing some behind the scenes maintenance. (Off topic, one of the projects I host was a digg-style suggestion engine for a university activities office, and they didn't actually go with the site I designed. I did a lot of work reworking an early version of Pligg to work with facebook connect and such, so I kept it running as part of my portfolio. I haven't looked at it in like 2 years...but the version of Pligg was outdated, got hacked, and was sending facebook spam, and using 6GB of bandwidth A DAY...I have 100 GB/month, I exceeded it, hence why we were down a few days. I've since removed that service. The more you know.)

I decided to create some subdomains for us:

• http://irc.teh3l3m3nts.com - IRC Client
• http://workirc.teh3l3m3nts.com - At Work IRC Client
• http://dynmap.teh3l3m3nts.com - Dynmap
• http://stats.teh3l3m3nts.com - Server Stats
• http://forum.teh3l3m3nts.com - Forum
• http://noob.teh3l3m3nts.com - Noob Guide
• http://commands.teh3l3m3nts.com - Commands and Priviliges

I can add more if people have more ideas :D

I think this is a pretty good summary of my mindset. I would appreciate comments on this idea.

2012-09-27 18:50:49 <StealthSurf2> I have to fart but I'm in a little cubicle in a big office.
50:59 VelvetWinterPirate06: :o
51:03 <StealthSurf2> I can LIKELY stealth the sound, but the smell will be out in the wild.
51:04 VelvetWinterPirate06: be discreet lol
51:06 <StealthSurf2> do I risk it?
51:12 <StealthSurf2> or do i run to the copy room
51:14 VelvetWinterPirate06: into a bag into a bag!
51:26 VelvetWinterPirate06: then tie it and throw it like a smell grenade
51:33 <StealthSurf2> haha
51:35 VelvetWinterPirate06: :D
51:38 <StealthSurf2> mythbusters showed how to do that
51:40 <StealthSurf2> for real
51:47 VelvetWinterPirate06: nice :D
51:55 <StealthSurf2> you sit in a bathtub full o fwater
52:04 VelvetWinterPirate06: oh yeah seen that one :D
52:07 <StealthSurf2> then there's like an upside down jar, with a tube, with a funnel
52:08 <StealthSurf2> YA
52:08 VelvetWinterPirate06: he took forever to fart lol
52:16 <StealthSurf2> and it's full of water, then the farts go up and fill it
52:20 <StealthSurf2> so it's 100% fart.
52:34 <StealthSurf2> I hope this doesn't sound sick...
52:42 VelvetWinterPirate06: im sure it wont
52:54 <StealthSurf2> if they made a VERY narrow tube that could like go in your butt, then attach to like a pager-sized thing in your pocket.
53:01 VelvetWinterPirate06: lol
53:05 <StealthSurf2> and it could like extract and neutralize farts before they have to come out...
53:07 <StealthSurf2> I'd buy that.
53:17 VelvetWinterPirate06: that sounds epic :D
53:31 <StealthSurf2> it's be silent and purify the air
53:34 <StealthSurf2> in fact
53:40 VelvetWinterPirate06: purification ftw
53:52 <StealthSurf2> it could have a thing, if it detects any air flow...it triggers like a subtle pine spray or vanilla spray
54:08 <StealthSurf2> so all the fart air is just purified, and separately it smells nice
54:19 <StealthSurf2> then you would like appreciate burritos for lunch
54:28 <StealthSurf2> "Gonna be a pine-full afternoon!"
54:31 VelvetWinterPirate06: :D
54:59 <StealthSurf2> all the co-workers chuckle about how much they'll all be farting as they go to mexican food for lunch
55:08 <StealthSurf2> except for charlie...who doesn't have the SFPD
55:13 VelvetWinterPirate06: lol
55:16 <StealthSurf2> (Surf Fart Purification Device)
55:23 <StealthSurf2> he can't go to lunch.
55:27 <StealthSurf2> because he'll stink up the office.
55:34 VelvetWinterPirate06: naughty charlie
55:59 <StealthSurf2> And that, kids, is how daddy surf invented the device that made us millionaires.