[STUFF] Current situation and plans regarding webhosting.

[Glüc da Dhi]

Estimat Mençei, members of the Ziu,*

I'm writing this to inform about a number of issues relating to Talossan website. I will try to get you up to date about the current situation (or as much as I've been able to find out) and present the current plans of the government regarding reimbursements and kingdomoftalossa.net.

Webhosting costs 2017

The following expenses were made by His Majesty in 2017:
26 May (godaddy)
Domain renewal Talossa.com $15.17 for 1 year
9 June (godaddy)
Economy Classic Hosting Linux Renewal (presumably for kingdomoftalossa.net) $95.88 for 1 year
Domain renewal Kingdomoftalossa.com $15.17 for 1 year
Domain renewal Kingdomoftalossa.org $20.17 for 1 year
Domain renewal Kingdomoftalossa.net $18.17 for 1 year
Domain renewal Talossan.com $15.17 for 1 year
Domain renewal Talossa.net $18.17 for 1 year

Hosting of Talossa.com
According to His Majesty he had been paying 29.23 per quarter to Nodewest, a company that was owned by Talossan citizen Danihel Teziun for hosting of talossa.com untill October 2014. After then however, the automatic payments stopped. As it turns out nodewest was sold to a different company around that time. (For some reason s;reu Teziun does not remember exactly to which company he sold it.) Recently His Majesty however found invoices for 29.23 up to January this year from Server Wholesale, Inc. for hosting of Talossa.com According to His Majesty he received no such invoice after that. The invoices apparently were supposed to be paid via paypal, but most likely they weren't paid at all, which is worrying. (The Seneschal recently made backups of the entire website just to be sure for now). If anyone happens to know more about this, please let me know.

Intention regarding reimbursements of His Majesty
A bill has been proposed requiring reimbursements for webhosting in the future. Upon passage and signing of that bill the government will start reimbursing His Majesty for costs made towards domain renewal and hosting of Kingdomoftalossa.net and talossa.com during this term (total: $129.22). Additionally, the government believes it would be fair considering the long time in which citizens actively used kotnet and talossa.com without paying to also reimburse the King for costs made during the previous term. However, as of yet, we have not received receipts for this, so I cannot tell yet how much this will be or if we will be in time to do so. If not the next government will have to make a decision on this. It is likely that the costs for the 49th and 50th term are more than the budget allows. In that case the costs for the 50th will only be partially reimbursed after passage of the lannister act and the remainder will have to be reimbursed from the next budget.
I have also considered paying for one or more additional domains, but considering we might already not have enough budget and considering the questions that remain unresolved, I believe it is best if the next government makes a decision on that. (That government should then probably also talk to S;reu Anglatzara, who has been paying for Talossa.org as he pointed out in the discussion thread on the Lannister Act, and to S;reu Furxheir who is hosting the Talossan database, which was supposed to be nationalised but wasn't)

Closing Kingdomoftalossa.net
Hosting Kingdomoftalossa.net costs money. The site is heavily outdated and most of the information on it can be found on Talossa.com. Therefore it seems wise to pick a date in the future on which kotnet will be taken off the air (and the domain redirected to Talossa.com). This will hopefully be an incentive for Talossans who still have something stored on Kingdomoftalossa.net to store this information somewhere else. Future governments can also look at archiving the site. Therefore MinSTUFF wishes to announce that KingdomofTalossa.net will be closed on 1 January 2020. (Of course the government at the time can reverse this decision.)

*I would have mentioned the Tuischac'h here, but it appears we don't have one after last clark.

[Danihel Txechescu]

First of all, we should move all domains to Namesilo.com, which offer much more reasonable prices. Secondly, what's included in the hosting of KOT.net and Talossa.com? Is it something simple that could be hosted on, say, DigitalOcean, which costs about US$5 per month?

[Eðo Grischun]

Yeah, those hosting costs are a bit high. Again, we would be best with an unlimited domain plan where everything is held under one roof for a fixed, low cost. (one which would also allow for us to resell domains and hosting to citizens for additional income would be awesome).

[Glüc da Dhi]

Before anyone else points it out: It appears kingdomoftalossa.net is currently down. Its not 2020 yet. I've contacted His Majesty and Baron Hooligan to figure out what's going on.

[Glüc da Dhi]

I have some news. It turns out that in addition to the yearly cost for hosting, the King has also been paying a monthly fee of $2.99 to godaddy for something called "Dedicated Hosting IP" relating to kingdomoftalossa.net. Most likely the government will not be reimbursing this for the 49th and 50th Cosa terms, but this does add to the future cost of this bill. I had really hoped to find this out before the voting started on this bill. My apologies for the delay.

[Glüc da Dhi]

As Sir Cresti pointed out in the shoutbox, Baron Hooligan has fixed Kingdomoftalossa.net. The problem was with godaddy apparently, but he tells me he found a way around it. We should be very relieved that even in less active times Hool is still here to help out and fix our problems.