I’ve been having a lot of problems with my previous hosting provider ChunkHost – after many years with them. I am sad that they seem to have gone downhill so much. Problems with their name severs, unresponsive to requests for support, and so on… I have since moved everything to Digital Ocean and while their site is extremely heavy on the “hey you can buy these services” from us all over the place, I cannot blame them for that too much. We live in a capitalistic hell-scape and they need to make money. Still, the server is now working very nicely and more responsive than it was previously at ChunkHost.
This move has necessitated the shutting down of my private email server. This is a blessing and a curse. Running an email sever on my own was extremely problematic, thanks to spammers mostly. The server was under constant attack from people trying to break into the system to send out spam email. Since it was a VPS (Virtual Private Server) there were reputation problems with the IP address as well. The email server software (postfix and dovecot) were also extremely problematic to run. Both requiring digging deep into configuration files with somewhat confusing help documentation among other issues. I am not sad to see those responsibilities go! Since I actually use my cyclops@moltenaether.com email address and our web services need a method to send emails, I have signed up for Google Workspace. While it does cost money for every user on the system every month, it is also secure and I don’t have to deal with any of those issues.
I am taking this as a new opportunity! Since I started the Patreon account, I have struggled with what kind of perks to offer. Since I usually operate on the basis that anyone who wants to participate can participate. That kind of means (usually) that anything is just up freely for anyone to do with as they please. A Discord role is worth very little and early access doesn’t always work very well. Now since I have access to Google’s services as part of the domain, those who donate $10 or more will gain access to their very own Google account at moltenaether.com with 30 Gigs of Google Drive storage as well as access to Gmail @moltenaether.com, Google Calendar, and other Google services.
The support of our players has actually meant a great deal to me over the years, not only in seeing how much people value what we do but also financially. Running a web server is not always cheap and the costs for me have just gone up as Digital Ocean is more expensive and there are the additional costs of Google. I don’t expect anyone to pay for these for me, though I believe we all get value from the forum and the wiki being online (and this WordPress). If anyone wishes to support these services, I will gladly accept. Otherwise, I just wanted to give a primer on what had gone on recently and the changes that have happened.