website OS

[gowrann]

How come you guys haven't got this site running on OS X?

BTW I like this Geeklog engine....where can i get more info on it

[Craig R. Arko]

Hopefully griffman can elaborate when he gets back, but we toyed momentarily with the notion of hosting the forums on my Mac OS X Server. Then we got real about the bandwidth requirements and Rob found Amigo-3, to host both sites.

Performance has been outstanding, so we don't complain no matter what OS is used (Linux, I believe). :D

Geeklog (the main site s/w) is at <www.geeklog.org>.
vBulletin (the forum s/w) is at <www.vbulletin.com/>.

[griffman]

First, the URL for geeklog is actually:

http://geeklog.sourceforge.net/

They moved a while back; I'm not sure if the old URL still forwards or not.

Second, while running on an OS X based machine would certainly be very nice, there are very few OS X based hosting providers. When I was looking for a site to host macosxhints recently (having decided to move off my previous ISP), I went looking and didn't find any that offered the combination of features, price, and services that the Linux-based ISPs provide.

Part of this has to do with the relative newness of OS X, and that should change over time. However, another much bigger issue is the great cost of an OS X Server box running a $1,000 software package as compared to a very cheap PC running a free software package. An ISP running OS X boxes must decide to either have lower profit margins (which aren't great to begin with) or put more sites per server to recoup the investment cost. Unless Apple comes out with a cheap server box, I don't see this side of the equation changing anytime soon.

And while it's nice to think about just pulling a T1 to my house and hosting the system locally, the realities of backup, power failures, UNIX technical support, and monthly cost quickly bring the reality of using an ISP back into the picture.

The in-between step would be a "colocated" server, where I put my own OS X box into a managed environment which provides backup, security, bandwidth, etc. Unfortunately, these aren't cheap either, and as a no-ads site, the reality of this option is also not too great.

I'm hoping to convince Amigo-3 to buy an OS X Server box on my behalf, but I wouldn't hold your breath for that to happen :-).

-rob.