[Indianlc] Re: Linux chix india Website

[VaibhaV Sharma]

Ahhm!

I should respond to these questions about hosting and the website as I 
am the one who finally services these requests for the linuxchix.org.in 
website. In short, I maintain the server that it (and a lot of other 
community related websites) runs on including the software and any 
backend configuration, security, etc.

Diya Saxena wrote:
> 
> Well first thing, I am a total novice when it comes to web designing
> or web hosting. 

I understand that and a lot of community based websites that I have been 
associated with have had similar users.

Apart from the contributors, even most of the readers are not very well 
versed with the technology part of it. If we ask people to go through a 
fat login screen with 10 menus and 20 sub menus, it is not going to 
work. We will see how we can make this as easy as possible for both 
parties (and me too :-) ).

> But still I have a doubt. How come other sites such as
> tldp allow users to upload file. here upload means i have a copy of
> the file, from the website i can browse and point to my document and
> it gets uploaded and a link is created in the documents section. 


Most of those pages are behind authenticated sessions, a lot of them are 
not and those get spammed every now and then. As for sites like tldp, 
there are dedicated teams working behind the whole "thing" taking care 
of various pieces of the system. None of us work on this full time and I 
am sure we wont do that in the near future. So lets try and keep things 
at a level that can be handled without trouble to anyone.


> Is that not possible to get done without security problem?

Well, I earn the major portion of my daily dal-chawal by handling such 
issues and let me tell you, the world is not nice out there. 
Administrators have a tough job of maintaining the sanity levels on 
popoular websites.

Still, there are ways of keeping things in control. I think the existing 
system of using wordpress will suffice for basic content, but I am sure 
we are going to grow out of it very soon. We would need to come up with 
something based on a combination of multiple tools. e.g. wordpress and a 
wiki maybe.

We'll discuss and put those pieces together as and when needed.

--
VaibhaV
http://vsharma.net