Need a New Technical Admin for the Wiktenauer*

[Michael Chidester]

Hi guys. It's an unfortunate fact that as the Wiktenauer has grown, the amount of time needed for upkeep and adding new features has increased while the amount of free time that I as the lead content designer and Ben Michels as the technical wizard can devote to it has actually decreased. (Michael-Forest Meservy is, of course, our third admin but he's buried in graduate work somewhere in... Europe, I guess.) This has become even more of a problem since the host move, as the site seems to have developed a lot of technical problems that Ben simply hasn't had time to investigate and correct (on my side, I've got a backlog of content that needs to be added, but that's less pressing since we don't exactly have deadlines to meet).

So we've talked it over and we really need to add a fourth admin to the team. The role would primarily be on the technical side, since those issues tend to be far more time sensitive than the content side. Ideally, we'd like someone with experience with MediaWiki, MySQL, and WordPress. However, Ben didn't have those skills when we started out (and I still don't), so really any "technical" person with the ability to go online and read documentation ought to be able to figure out the rest.

Any interested parties should send me or Ben a note. Thanks!

[KeithFarrell]

Does this person have to be a HEMA Alliance member, or could it be anyone with the appropriate skills? I know a lot of IT-people who are involved in historical fencing in Scotland so I could spread the word if you like and if HEMA Alliance membership is not necessary.

[Michael Chidester]

HEMA Alliance membership is not required; while Wiktenauer is sponsored by the HEMA Alliance, from the beginning we've tried to include people of all group affiliations.

[RJ McKeehan]

I have limited experience in MySQL and I'm pretty comfortable in Wordpress. I'd be possibly willing to help out, but I'd like to know what kind of time commitments we're talking about since I've got a lot of college work going on sometimes.

[T. Arndt]

RJ, I could potentially give you mySQL support where/when needed. I have worked with mySQL is the past from both a development and sysadim perspective in past jobs.

(If Wiktenauer is slow, I also wouldn't mind taking a look at Wiktenauer's my.cnf as there can be a lot to do with it there)

[Christian Trosclair]

So, the Problem with Wiktenauer is that the hosting company apparently can't/won't restart the software. That means the settings changes will not be recognized. I'm in the middle of a massive series of deployments for my company, so I can't give this issue my full attention this very second. Starting next week, I can address some possibe workarounds.
-xn

[T. Arndt]

So, the Problem with Wiktenauer is that the hosting company apparently can't/won't restart the software. That means the settings changes will not be recognized. I'm in the middle of a massive series of deployments for my company, so I can't give this issue my full attention this very second. Starting next week, I can address some possibe workarounds.
-xn

I know no details about the hostiing situation, but it sounds like it would be ideal to move the Wiktenauer hosting to a VMware/Xen/KVM VPS instance where the VM, the OS and the appliaction stack are under the complete control of Wiktenauer.

I would be more than happy to act as a VM/OS/Appliaction stack admin of a VPS instance and allow the existing admin's to continue to work at their higher level of the stack. This is something I can help with if desired, feel free to PM me.

[Christian Trosclair]

I had spoken with Ben Michaels about getting a VPS on Linode setup. If you've got the time to get that going this week, by all means go ahead. My feelings will not be hurt. Otherwise, I'll get to it after I'm done 65+ hr work weeks on the 9th.

-xn

[Michael Chidester]

Unfortunately, Wiktenauer development has more or less ground to a halt at the moment. None of the projects I have queued at the moment can be started until the images are working again and the pages are rendering properly.