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Hi Guys, Wow … the year flew by! The time has come to transition the hosting account and site management. The hard deadline is Feb 11th, 2020. That is when the current plan runs out and need to be renewed for another year. The existing plan costs $178.99 for the whole year. You guys could possibly pare that back down a little bit because you wouldn’t have to host the FacesEast forums. InMotion hosting has taken good care of our site, and been very stable and reliable, for the past 10 years. But you guys could possibly change to another host too. As a reminder, John Dehlin owns the domain name. Open Stories Foundation stopped reimbursing me for those hosting last year too, so that just came out of my pocket. No big deal, but you guys will have to figure out how you want to cover the costs rolling forward. The first couple years, I asked for donations and received enough from the users to cover the costs.
Two main issues to resolve:
1. I need to give someone the passwords and access to the hosting account. You guys will need to find someone with enough tech experience to manage the hosting: phpBB forums, WordPress, etc. It’s not super hard. I’ve been doing this myself, and I’m just a self-taught computer nerd.
2. Someone will have to take over the billing account by giving InMotion Hosting a payment card to charge for the renewal. I will have my card info removed beforehand. Then the new person can take over the account, change the access password, and take care of the payment. At that point, I won’t have access anymore (for privacy and security).
The billing account and the hosting CPanel access are independent logins, by the way, if you guys want to keep that separate.
I will try to check in here regularly to participate in the discussion. If anyone needs to reach me quicker:
brianj.roaming@protonmail.com is an email account I check multiple times per day.Ok, just to restate: We need to raise $178.99 by Feb 11, 2020 (a month and a half away).
We need to make payment via credit card.
We need someone to take over account hosting duties.
Is that correct?
That sums it up. Yup. 🙂 Correction: It’s only $131.88. And the renewal deadline is February 6th, 2020.
Sorry, I mixed up my info with a different hosting account I have there that costs $178.99. That doesn’t have anything to do with StayLDS.com, isn’t connected at all, but happens to have a renewal near the same time.
:think: If we got in a bind (can’t find someone that enthusiastically wants to take over) I could probably do it.
I’ve been out of the web server/php business for a little over 15 years now and even then I only had a few toes in the water. I’m sure the tech side of things has changed a lot in that amount of time, but I could probably get back into it.
If I were to do it I’d need a little help:
1) I’d need the mod team (roy, DJ, mom3, Ray, Heber13, etc.) to maintain the spirit of the site.
I’m coming out of a nearly one year long “battle for boundaries” with local leaders. I haven’t talked about that here (or anywhere) but it’s been a super irritating experience that has sapped my desire to remain actively engaged with the church. I’m not the best ambassador for StayLDS right now. I’ve lost a great deal of trust in my own judgment when it comes to church culture, so I’d have to take a more hands off approach and let the mod team be the voice.
2) Finances. Not to be stingy, but things are tight right now. My wife is back in school and we have a kid in band and braces – we’ve operated in the red the last several months.
That said, I could set aside $11/month. It’s just bad timing this year.
Was that $131.88 to host both StayLDS and FacesEast or was the $179 amount for both?.I appreciate your willingness to help out Nibbler. I didn’t want to spotlight anyone but you are someone that I thought of as perhaps having the right set of skills. I suppose we should do a post about donations. I can help contribute, but it would be nice to also ask the broader participants if they could help.
I feel that we have a strong Moderator team. I do not see that changing anytime soon.
I can’t deal with the tech side. I thought of you, nibbler, immediately. If you can do that, it would be a major contribution – and one that wouldn’t require any particular level or kind of involvement in the Church itself. I say we ask for donations again this year. If we can cover the costs that way, great; if not, we can regroup quickly before the contract expires.
Can one of you write the post – perhaps finding Brian’s old post and essentially copying it?
Because of the holidays, family, vacation, etc., I have been a little out of the loop here for the past couple week. It’s back to work this coming week, so things should get back to normal. I would bumble through the tech part and probably mess it up. I can contribute some money and continue to support the moderation team. Just getting back into town today. Let me see if I can find Brian’s fundraising post or create a new one. On the tech side – I am no help. My job is to be a shoulder to cry on. If we left the tech to me, the site would be down. I have noon church – ick – I will look for Brian’s previous stuff when I get home. Thanks Brian for years of effort.
Thank you Mom, I will look for your post. 
Here’s the post: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=8789&p=123159viewtopic.php?f=9&t=8789&p=123159” class=”bbcode_url”> It directs people to contribute to open stories foundation.
Thanks Nibbler – I just copied and pasted it. I set it in the general discussion area. That may get people to contribute to open stories foundation, which is fine, but I I don’t know whether OSF will continue to reimburse us so we may need to come up with an alternate strategy. Temporarily moved the post to the parking lot until we figure things out.
That was going to be my question: How do we have people contribute?
Hi all. Checking back in again. I would strongly recommend against having people donate through the Open Stories Foundation. John Dehlin never responded at all to my emails last year asking about reimbursement. I sent two to him directly, if I remember correctly. And he isn’t using the same bookkeeper anymore. That is who I first contacted before trying to reach John. I really don’t think he cares about this project anymore, and it no longer really fits into his “brand” image. I haven’t followed what he’s up to for a couple years, but that’s my impression.
As far as doing the technical work of maintaining the hosting account, it really doesn’t take much time. It’s a very mature and stable set of software packages on the server. The hosting company takes care of all the infrastructure. The biggest headaches I ran into was when it came time to do major required software upgrades. That sometimes breaks a part of the site, and then you have to research solutions to fix it. That maybe happened 4 or 5 times in the past 10 years. I just let the hosting company do automated minor security upgrades. I haven’t had to tinker with anything in probably 2+ years. The more common task is to answer to occasional Admin emails from a users that are having trouble logging into the forums. They forgot their password or username. That’s 95% of the work. I think the activity level has dropped. I only see an email like that once ever month or two.
And nobody outside of StayLDS really has to know who is doing the maintenance/site admin work. You can use the StayLDS email system addresses to correspond with people asking questions and keep your name and personal info private. I bounced those messages to my personal email for convenience because I didn’t really care.
Doing the technical work on the hosting account can be totally separate from the mission of providing emotional and spiritual support to Mormons in faith transition. I stopped participating in the forum conversations several years ago when I realized I was no longer the right person to give support. I am not Mormon at all anymore, not in practice nor in my heart. FWIW, I’m an atheist (“apatheist” more specifically) that practices Core Shamanism and am currently in a training program to become a druid in an organization called Ár nDraíocht Féin (A Druid Fellowship).
Anyways … I’m the crackpot who has been running your hosting account. I still think it’s a moral “good” to give service helping people through the pain of a faith transition, regardless of which direction they end up going. If people want help staying in the LDS Church on some level, that’s the path and experience they need to explore. I wish them well.
For raising contributions: It’s probably easiest to designate one person to act as a treasurer. That’s what I did for the first 2 or 3 years before we ran finances through the Open Stories Foundation. People sent me money: checks in the mail or PayPal transfers, etc. There are so many ways now to transfer money easily. It’s probably too late to setup a GoFundMe campaign. I’ve never done that, but it’s maybe a possibility for next year?
If you wanted a simple form of internal controls for the fundraising, you can ask donors to private message one or two other forum or staylds email accounts. That way there’s a record of the donations observable by more than one person. That’s my accountant brain thinking.
I had InMotion Hosting remove my card info from the hosting account. So that is all taken care of. The account will go inactive on or after Feb 6th without a renewal payment. I will give the login info for the billing account to whoever you guys decide. It’s probably best if more than one person has the login info, just in case.
I will try to make time and be available to answer questions when the new system admin takes over. I can explain the setup and some of the quirks as best I can–like the custom code I created for that LDS-oriented registration question. That’s the thing that usually breaks during a major version upgrade of phpBB forum software. Stuff like that.
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