Switching to the new server - when?

Hello everyone,

It's been hard to watch the server outages recently. As I've mentioned elsewhere, this website has been struggling recently because it's software very much needs to be updated.

I'm in the process of building a new system with new versions of the same software. It will fundamentally be the same site, with the same people and the same content (discussions, etc), but the software itself will be much more modern.

If people would like to see the current draft of the new site, I'm hoping to start teaching people how to view it relatively soon.

Building the new site is taking time because there are so many different software programs that need to work together to make a site like this. Figuring out which programs to use, how to configure the programs to make them work together, and how to import our existing data is extremely time-consuming. In some cases, I'm going to have to hire consultants, which adds a whole new layer of complexity.

An important question is when to switch over to the new software. As a TMSer myself, my inclination is to wait until everything is absolutely perfect. However, with all of the problems we are having with the current server, I'm beginning to think that it would be better to do it sooner rather than later. I don't like the idea of so many people coming to our site and not being able to access it.

Concretely, the core of the wiki software has already been converted once and is running on my other server. Many of the things that are missing from it are relatively minor.

Three of the big things that are still missing are:

1. Forum thread tags (click here to learn about these)
2. Linkified keywords (automatic links that appear in posts)
3. Bookmarks (the forum has software to help you bookmark your favorite threads)

Our core forum software doesn't have those three functionalities. They only appear on our site because a long time ago I downloaded add-ons and applied them to our site. To get them on the new site, I will have to download and configure new add-ons as well as figuring out how to get all of our old data onto the new server. This will be very time-consuming and may involve custom programming and hiring someone to custom program it.

My inclination right now is to not worry about those three add-ons until after we've switched the forum over. The outages are bad for our community, and so I think it's best to just do the switch first and then worry about the custom programming and the new add-ons later.

I wanted to get some feedback from everyone on this, though I know how important this site is to you. I also thought it was important to let you know about how the changeover will happen.

What do you think?

 

I just pay the bills myself. I don't get a tax writeoff for it because we let our 501c3IRS paperwork lapse, but I don't itemize taxes anyway. My TMS was the biggest thing to happen to me in my entire life, so I remember what it was like and keeping the server going seems like the least I can do. I'm tremendously grateful to the people who keep coming back to keep the discussion and support going. That's the real heart of this community. (and to Jan, who manages all of the spam)

I think the "quick conversion" is the right thing to do - I'm glad the community seems to agree. Knowing this will help me allocate my time more effectively.

 

Sounds good. This will likely take a week off of the process of building the server.

With that said, my best estimate is still early/mid February. Having decided not to worry about those challenging addons, I can move on from the forum and focus on the other half of the website - the actual wiki:
http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/forum-faqs-frequently-asked-questions.1618/#whatiswiki (Forum FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions))

Unfortunately, I can't only switch over to the new server for the forum software. I also have to switch over for the wiki software all at the same time. Transitioning over the wiki software will also be a major project.

I'll start focusing on the wiki software today, seeing if I can get that up and running on the new server. Hopefully things will go smoothly, but we can't know until we try it. Not having to worry about those three forum addons will be a big help, though, because of the program selectin/configuration/data importation/contractor selection/project management/custom code issues I mentioned above.

 

Hey @Ellen, I'm going to offer my two cents here, although Forest may have different thoughts which he'll share when he has time. I don't mean to call you out, because I've had quite a few private messages in the last year, with the same or very similar suggestion. My response is more comprehensive than I know you need to know, because it's really aimed at everyone reading this who might have the same thought, which I'm sure encompasses many more of our community members.

As a CPA, I definitely have strong opinions about this. Surprisingly, it's easiest to start with the question of whether GoFundMe funds are taxable. If the answer is Yes, then you've immediately got a whole range of complications and compliance to worry about. And then you're back to the #1 issue which is at the heart of this project (and has been all along) which is TIME. Money can buy time, but it takes a LOT of time just to get to the point where the benefits finally exceed the costs.

To start with: "donations" to a GFM campaign are never tax-deductible to the donor/giver. NEVER. This is because a GFM is not a qualified tax-exempt charitable entity. Qualifed tax-exempt charities have a TON of compliance requirements they have to regularly meet on local and federal levels. It's not easy to keep up, and many small charities are unable to do so. We've been there, tried that.

GFM funds are not taxable to the recipient ONLY IF the funds are strictly for personal needs like disaster losses or medical costs. Even more importantly, there must be absolutely no strings attached. The funds are truly a personal gift with no expectations on how they are to be spent. There is no accountability required.

If the GFM funds are for any kind of business or creative venture (such as tmswiki.org), especially any venture in which donors expect to receive any kind of benefits at all, then the funds are 100% taxable to the recipient (unless it's a fully-qualified tax-exempt entity and again - been there, tried that, no one has the time).

And, to repeat myself, once you're receiving taxable income rather than gifts, you're looking at a whole lot of valuable time which has to be wasted on compliance. You've got business licenses and state/local taxes, federal income AND self-employment taxes, AND all of the bookkeeping required to keep track of income and expenses in order to minize all of those taxes. If you hire people to help, you've got additional reporting requirements, even for independent contractors.

I'm one of those people who was paid to spend my time on just one limited area of compliance so my clients didn't have to. Paying taxes is a loss of funds. Paying accountants and consultants is a loss of funds. Then those funds have to be made up with even more fundraising. Pretty soon you need to hire a fundraiser. Every individual you hire takes time find and hire them - never mind replacing them when they inevitably move on or can't do the job.

And this is how an economy grows - which is fine if your goal is to grow an enterprise and create jobs and enhance the economy at large. The trade-off for investing time and funds in the economic growth model is accepting the reality that searching for, vetting, hiring, managing, and paying a workforce takes an enormous amount of time and energy.

But that's not the model we have here.

That's the practical response. But there's also an unfortunate and more cynical response, which is the issue of answering to the people who give money with expectations of how it will be used. IMO, I think it would be very risky for a recipient to accept donations from anyone not personally known to them, for a project as opposed to personal need - the risk being unexpected behavior from someone who feels that their personal expectations have not been met. It only takes one.

Bottom line: at some point, the realistic question is: "what is the best use of my limited and valuable time?"

Looks like a bit more than two cents... as per usual