Sysadmin Load Reduction: Project Specific Sites

[Ben Cooksley]

On Sat, Nov 9, 2019 at 12:50 PM Ben Cooksley <bcooksley at kde.org> wrote:
>
> Hi all,

Hi all,

>
> In terms of project specific sites, we are in a reasonably good state
> here, with most sites being based off either a standard CMS or static
> site generator (which are relatively easy to maintain in bulk with the
> incremental effort being much lower).
>
> There are some exceptions though, and in the case where the service no
> longer appears to be in use, or the project in question now inactive,
> it makes more sense for us to render the sites into either static
> copies, or to discontinue the service.
>
> I'd therefore like to propose that the following websites be converted
> into static copies:

As we've not received any commentary on the below, with the exception
of RKWard, I have now gone ahead and started the process of actioning
this.

>
> - Commit Digest (commit-digest.org): The last time this was updated
> was back in 2014, with the most recent issue there being nearly 5
> years old.
>

The process of converting this to a static site is now underway.

> - RKWard (rkward.kde.org): This site is currently based on Mediawiki,
> which is substantially more difficult to maintain and keep updated
> compared to a site built using Hugo, Jekyll, Wordpress or Drupal.
>
> Given that the site was last updated back in early 2018, i'd like to
> make this static, and should updates need to be made in the future the
> content can then be converted at that time into something more easy to
> maintain.
>

Following discussion with the RKWard developers and thanks to the help
of Carl, this has now been converted to a Jekyll site.

> - Simon (simon.kde.org): While this site is based on Drupal, the
> project itself hasn't seen a release now since 2013, more than 5 years
> ago. Given that this seems to be unlikely to change soon, it makes
> more sense at this stage to remove even the incremental cost of
> maintaining it's Drupal instance, and convert it to a static site.
>

This has now been made static, and the Drupal instance archived.

> - Marble (marble.kde.org): Whilst this site is for the most part a
> minimally dynamic site, it has a component to it which essentially
> replicates Planet, just having Marble only postings. This necessitates
> custom logic on the server side, which is something no other site
> (including www.kde.org) has.
>
> I'd therefore like to eliminate this logic (leaving the rest of the
> site as it is)
>

This is in the process of being scheduled currently.

> - Vvave Stream (vvave-stream.kde.org): This site was originally
> created as an "online platform for the Babe music player" (which was
> subsequently renamed to Vvave).
>
> Based on server logs however it appears to be essentially unused, and
> given that it is Python based (which is one of the more maintenance
> intensive forms of hosting we provide) i'd like to shut this down.
>

This has now been archived and shutdown.

> Any comments regarding the above?
>
> Cheers,
> Ben

Thanks,
Ben