Major changes coming (downtime warning)

[Moonchild]

Unfortunately, our steadfast VPS provider Afterburst will be shuttering over the coming two months (end-of-business at the close of May).
One major reason for this is the current AI bubble induced hardware prices. Servers do need replacement parts after all, and it would seriously impact server lease pricing. It's likely that many smaller or niche server providers will be similarly impacted and potentially having to shut down.

This means all of our currently hosted server instances with them (which is the majority of our project servers) will have to be migrated to a different provider. I'll be working on this to make this happen as smooth as possible with as little down-time as possible, but some downtime will be inevitable and may be completely unscheduled. I'm making EU-owned and EU location a hard requirement for this due to the continued instability in the USA and the ever more likely prospect of a break in relations.

The forum will be one of the first things to be transitioned, and I'm planning to do that after the weekend, 16-17 March. The AMA questions will be answered after completion of the move.

Necessarily, I'll have to consolidate a few services, and I may change over the developer documentation site to something other than Selene because it's fairly unwieldy and relies on a few assumptions for system software that are simply no longer a good idea in 2026. Considering the slow turnover rate for content there, I may actually just make it a static website, with git control to be maintained on the repo.

[Michaell]

Whatever you need to do to keep it going is appreciated. But I just want to mention what you see in the news is not typical of what is happening in the USA. Everything is normal and peaceful for most of us. Stores and banks are open, gas is a bit high but no shortage. The isolated nutcase attacks aren't likely to cause any major issues. And personally I doubt if things did get really bad here that Europe would fare much better. I can't predict what might happen, but so far we're doing fine (just stay out of cities and avoid crowds).

[Moonchild]

This EU focus is about data security, service reliability, privacy and regulation. This is about international relationships as much as continued instability.
I don't just draw on the news for this decision. I also draw on personal accounts of friends and acquaintances living in the USA and what they have seen and experienced.
I can't predict the future, but at least I can make some educated decisions about this from what I do know. I'll end up paying more for EU hosting, no doubt, but such is the price for a bit more peace of mind.

[fretless]

I'd say that's probably a smart move. We have at least two and a half more years of 'stupid' to get through, no telling how much worse it will get..

[BenFenner]

Not trying to turn this into a USA-or-not hosting debate, but as a born and bred US citizen I do not blame you one bit for wanting to stay as far away from this dumpster fire as possible.

It's a shame, because one day I hope the Pale Moon ecosystem could land at the NearlyFreeSpeech host which has to easily be the host most aligned with the PM project goals and ethos (and it would be dirt cheap). Sadly, it is US-based so not today, and of course maybe never. I know Tobin poo-poo'd the idea when I brought it up many years ago, but I still think it is the perfect host for this project. (I've hosted with them for 9 years and am happy to answer questions pertaining to that.)

[Moonchild]

Appreciate the suggestion but web hosting isn't the end-all of what is needed here. A shared hosting setup likely won't allow for the specific requirements necessary for all the services that are being run here, as they will have varying needs in terms of database access and tuning, php versions, etc. and if at all possible I'd prefer not to scale back in what's offered at this time.

[BenFenner]

Of course. As you were.

This is my first post since the forum move. All looks good so far. This is no small feat!

[BenFenner]

On the topic of quality VPS solutions, here is a timely post from the intelligent and like-minded leader over at NearlyFreeSpeech.
Maybe something to keep in mind for the future, either for the Pale Moon project, or others in a similar boat.

And for ease of searching:
Linode (now owned by Akamai)
1984 Hosting (based in Iceland)
AxcelX

[Moonchild]

Note that there was one issue with the forum having moved to the new host, and that is that periodic cron jobs for maintenance tasks did not run. This should now be fixed -- and may result in queued up notification e-mails being sent out in bulk for old notifications. Sorry about that.

[Moonchild]

FTP and mail have been moved. Due to budget restrictions, I've had to shop around and these services are hosted State-side as an exception, since Windows Server licensing was too expensive for non VL in the EU.

[Bilbo47]

FTP and mail have been moved ... hosted State-side ... Windows Server licensing

Huh. I would have thought staying only in EU would be reason enough to put these services on a unix-type web host, and skip hosted-Windows altogether.

[Moonchild]

My mail setup is complex, and I've not found reasonable ways to do it on *nix. Postfix is terribly inadequate, not to mention hard to maintain and configure in comparison to what I've used for many years on Windows.

[Bilbo47]

Ah yes. Running yer own MTA or "mail server" is a different beast from stashing a bunch of IMAP accounts on a webhost. Is there something better for Windows than hmailserver? Also AlternativeTo