[Balug-admin] balug.org. web site, talked with Michael Hubbard, etc.

[Michael Paoli]

I did have a nice little chat with Michael Hubbard earlier this
afternoon (and dropped him a follow-up e-mail regarding our
conversation and Cced Jim Stockford).  Anyway, understandably, he
doesn't have time to do routine updates to web pages on the
www.balug.org. host, but is willing to provide the access necessary
so that we should be able to manage things there for ourselves
(and/or fix things and transition off of there - as is our general
slightly longer term plan ... a plan which is already fairly well
underway).

He may not be able to get to it "immediately", but hopefully by about
middle of next week or so, I should have the necessary access on the
existing www.balug.org. host to be able to fix the stuff on the web
site that's broken, and likely also be able to fix and/or
backup/retrieve other web pages and data from there that's of
interest to us (e.g. about 3 years of BALUG wiki pages (such as
meeting presentation notes, and other miscellaneous useful stuff)).
Anyway, I'm at least rather optimistic that within about a week's
time or less, we'll at least be able to make some critically overdue
updates on the existing main BALUG web page, and I'm also rather
optimistic that, moving forward, we'll be able to reasonably smoothly
fix and/or transition, as appropriate, existing balug.org. stuff to
location(s) and setup(s) where we'll be better situated to manage
that going forward (e.g. higher availability location(s) and
configuration(s), better and more regular backups, more feasible
physical access if/when needed, etc.)

In the meantime, work continues to progress on the "new"
(forthcoming) www.balug.org. site.  For now, one can preview it at:
http://208.96.15.254/
... but no guarantees yet that it, or the content of the pages, are
particularly stable yet - it *is* a work-in-progress at this point
(and at the moment I'm still testing two quite different formats for
the main page at http://208.96.15.254/).  The 208.96.15.254 IP is on
box in colo, courtesy of Jim Stockford (having provided the box) and
the colo that's donated the space, power, bandwidth, and 3 useable
IPv4 addresses.  The box is primarily used by SF-LUG
http://www.sf-lug.org/ http://www.sf-lug.com/ (sf-lug.com. and
www.sf-lug.com. being hosted on that box), but is also shared for
BALUG use (and BALUG is allowed exclusive use of the 208.96.15.254
IP).