lua-users.org status

["John Belmonte" <jvb@...>]

Hello,

The http://lua-users.org/ site is up, featuring a wiki.

For the time being the hosting is provided by SourceForge.net.  As far as
what the site is now (serving web pages, files and a wiki) SourceForge is
sufficient and I'm not anxious to move.  There are a couple of issues
however:

    * The project accounts have a security issue that makes site data
vulnerable to users of other SourceForge projects.  However as long as the
data is backed up properly as suggested in the charter, I don't see this
being a big issue.  Several large wiki's seem run from SourceForge without
incident and furthermore I don't suspect the SourceForge admins look kindly
on members who try to hack other project sites.

    * The SourceForge virtual hosting does not accept DNS MX entries,
meaning that we cannot use the lua-users.org domain with the mailing list
service provided by the account.

Regarding the mailing list issue, I'm wondering if someone wouldn't provide
a mailing list server so that we may use the lua-users.org domain.  Ideally
the hosting would include searchable archives.  I'd like to set up a list
soon for discussion of lua-users.org issues, so as not to pollute lua-l with
it.

Thanks go out to Philippe Lhost and Nick Trout for helping me work out the
problems in my wiki customization, and especially Nick for setting up quite
a few pages to get things started.  (An aside: As he did on the old wiki,
Nick has occasionally copied some writing from lua-l verbatim.  I'm not sure
if this will be an issue with anyone.  If it is, please don't hesitate to
delete your quoted material from the wiki.  I hope in the future this issue
fades away as lua-l posters decide to summarize their own content on the
wiki, or that 3rd parties find the time to write about what they've learned
from lua-l instead of copying verbatim.)

I'd like to thank once again the people that offered to donate should we use
commercial hosting.  If the needs of the site should outgrow SourceForge's
policies, I hope you will consider it again.

Some people (including lhf I think) perhaps expected that I'd be setting up
something to host lua projects or a library repository.  Unfortunately
that's beyond the scope of what I have time for.  Others are welcome, and
it's possible to use the SourceForge hosting for such things to a limited
extent, but I would discourage it.  I think if that's what people are really
looking for, the thing to do is set up a dedicated server and run the
SourceForge application on it and offer free hosting for Lua-related
projects.  As a start all the Lua projects currently at SourceForge.net
could move there.  It would also be a convenient way to post news and
happenings (perhaps when the community grows a bit more in the next few
years).

Lastly, to those secretive game developers out there lurking in the
shadows-- with the wiki, you now have a way to contribute to the community
anonymously and in very small units.  Please consider it.

Regards,
-John