DAG IT/Web funding via quarterly site subscription

Update 2/11/09

I still have no firm plan as to how ksfiomdepositors.org sites will continue.

• Some (many?) members are now using the ksfiomdag.com forum area as well as or instead of this area.
• A significant proportion of members will be paid out via DCS.
• Polls here and related discussions indicate that a significant number of members want this forum site to continue.

So, no conclusion really, but just to confirm that for now at least everything continues as before. Site access is free although donations are encouraged. In practise I think we need a third party provider to perform ongoing management and support.

If anyone is willing to take on the task of finding and negotiating with a suitable provider, please join and post in this group.

Update 13/7/09

To summarise, a quarterly subscription fee in now in place. In practice, payment is currently voluntary, as free access may be requested.

• If you have not already made a donation to IT/web funding, please consider doing so - see the Donate button below. (more information). Record the resulting subscription expiry date here.

• Bona fide depositors now have the option to formally request free access, via a check-box in the Contributions section of their account profile page.Click here to edit your contributions section.

• Email notification of posts will be disabled soon for accounts which neither have a paid nor free site subscription in place.

• Subscription payment for non-depositors will have a different fee structure. The email notification system is no doubt very convenient for those wanting to spy on us, it will no longer be available for free to non-depositors. I have better things to do with my time than provide such a service!

• No checking is currently performed of a user's reported account expiry date against subscription payments/donations received - that feature will be added in due course, and will initially focus on non-depositors.

• To date, no members have had access restricted as a result of not having made a voluntary contribution. Hopefully it will stay that way (for bona fide depositors).

• I am hoping to arrange emergency cover for the web-sites and underlying services during August when I will be on holiday.

Background (original post)

For those that don't know, I run the DAG web-sites from a technical perspective, and provide a level of IT support to the Strategy Team and other members. You can find some information about me on my business site: www.netgenius.co.uk.

I'll skip formality - the situation is I cannot afford to spend time working on the DAG sites, and I believe that time needs to be spent. Right now, for example, a security upgrade to the underlying Drupal CMS needs to be installed, but it won't get done as I am too busy with other work. That is just one example.

IT is my profession - this is NOT a hobby for me! When I originally got involved, back when this all started (doesn't that seem like a long time ago!?) it hadn't even occurred to me to charge for my involvement - I just wanted to help us all get our deposits back. I dumbly assumed that the whole thing would be over (money back!) in a couple of months. Unfortunately, as we all know, that assumption was completely wrong - I am sorry, but I now have to start treating the DAG IT/web function as a professional project, I have put that off too long already. It looks KSFIOM DAG we will be around for a long time to come, and as the DAG continues to evolve so too must the web-sites.

So, the idea of a subscription for membership to the sites has already been presented and discussed - see the survey. It is going ahead, I'm planning to activate it as of June-1. What this means is, as of June 1:

• If you have not paid the subscription, your site membership will be placed on hold.
• Those who have already contributed a sufficient amount to the IT/web fund will get an automatic subscription.

Subscribers will:

• Have full access to the site, be able to make posts and comments, and access technical support.
• Be able to use the "subscription" feature and join "newslists" (to be implemented).

Non-Subscribers will:

• Have limited access to the site (same as for "public" access). This may be further restricted as time goes on.
• Not be able to make posts nor support requests (they will be ignored, sorry.)
• Not be able to use subscription features, i.e. will not be notified when new content is posted.

The subscription fee for depositors will be 15 pounds per quarter. Currently, I can offer no alternative other than payment via PayPal. Once I can justify spending more time, I will look into providing alternatives (cheque, etc.)

Exceptions

• If you literally cannot afford to pay the subscription fee, please contact me and give brief details. In genuine cases the subscription fee will of course be waived.

• Journalists and other parties supportive of our cause will be given free access. Please contact me with brief details.

Really, I am sorry, but this is the route I must take. I find that knowing I have responsibility for keeping everything running very stressful considering that actually I can't really justify spending the time to do so.

Process

• Within the next few days, all registered users will have subscription status information added to their account data.
• From June-1 or shortly thereafter, the subscription status information will be used to control/limit access to site functionality.

In the short term, it would save me time if you use the existing donation facility here - http://www.ksfiomdepositors.org/public-page/website-and-it-services-funding to pay an initial subscription (three months, 15 pounds). There is no need to do this if you have already donated an equivalent or higher amount. Setting up the subscription system itself represents a considerable level of work for me, and the time would be better spent on providing more useful services to members.

• I don't know how many people will subscribe. In practice, I will adjust the amount of time I spend dependent on the number of subscriptions received.

Well, that's it. Sorry folks.

Background

The following is a copy of the loose proposal I made some time ago to the Strategy Team. The proposal was not rejected, but basically they're too busy to deal with it. The "DAG legal entity" hasn't happened and it doesn't look like it will, at least in the short to medium term. However, I do think it's potentially an advantage to depositors that control of the web sites remain independent of DST.

WORK INVOLVED

Site maintenance

Installation of regular updates and security updates for both the OS elements (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Postfix) and Drupal Security updates are potentially very urgent, other updates could be done once a week or even once a month without detriment.

There is always a risk that installing an update may break something. In the worst case, the site, or perhaps even the entire server would needed to be restored from backup (many hours, potentially days of work.) In lesser cases, an update might needed to be rolled back. One way to reduce the risk would be to install updates on a development (test) server before installing on the live server. Another approach would be to maintain a "warm" backup site, and not re-mirror until the main site had been verified.

Backups, checking backups.

Backups are currently automatic, but basic. No detailed checking of backup validity is done. Validity checking requires that at least one development/mirror site be built. A development/test site is important anyway so that changes can be tested before being implemented on the live site.

Data security

We currently have no secure (https) connection set up. This ideally requires a dedicated SSL certificate (identifying ksfiomdepositors.org) but could be done using a self-generated certificate. With this in place, we can provide secure connections to the web-site, so that capturing data such as names and passwords becomes less risky. On a related topic, the DAG entity should register under DPA.

Shared data

We can provide central data (contact list, address books) and file storage on the server, or via a third party (probably Google.) This would also imply the need for an https connection (though a dedicated certificate would be less important since only DAG Team members would have access they could ignore identity warnings.)

Resource control

The server currently has around 9 GB of free disk space. This is currently plenty, but will of course gradually get used up as more an more info is posted. File attachments are an issue - if 1000 people all uploaded a 10 MB file, all disk space would be used up. So, file attachments in particular need to be monitored.

Other resources (CPU and bandwidth) are adequate with the current server configuration, and needs are not likely to change - needs monitoring on a regular but not very frequent basis. Increased memory would help the site to run faster, but is adequate.

User support

Most support issues tend to be "lost password", "can't login" and similar. These could be handled by volunteers, but we need some kind of tracking system. Other common issues are how to upload documents - this could be handled by better documentation and a well organised FAQ.

Case Tracking

Case tracking / issue tracking needs to be implemented for various reasons. Right now it's too easy for issues to fall into a black hole (IT and non-IT) or for people to think that "somebody else" is dealing with them. Members ideally need to be able to log issues themselves (otherwise they would come in via email, less efficient.) Apart from the need to track issues, such a system would provide historic information for anyone else who might take over the IT role in the future, making such a task considerably easier and less prone to problems.

Site functionality and bug fixes

• Need some kind of case tracking system in place so that issues can be prioritised and tracked.

• Case tracking should be used for any significant implementation, such as implementing a warm site or implementing major Drupal upgrades.

• Bug fixes and functionality improvements need input from the team as to whether they are worth doing or not.

User and Admin Documentation

There is no documentation as to how the site is set up. This could be a problem if anybody else ever had to take over, or solve some emergency. User documentation could reduce the support load and help users get more out of the sites.

Email services

Right now, @ksfiomdepositors.org email is routed through my development server (since that has the necessary email and anti-spam services already in place.) Ideally, email should be moved to the DAG server or other server - apart from anything else, that would potentially allow a third party to maintain that part of the system.

Need to consider using gmail to provide @ksfiomdepositors.org email functionality. Would need some time to set up, but thereafter could be managed by third party more easily (since no low-level access to our server would be needed, only gmail passwords.)

Member contact

We have the existing notification and "mass contact" facilities. However, they have limitations - I think we should consider a full-blown mailing-list system, "Mailman", to provide better mailing list functionality. This could hook into existing "Groups" structure, but could also be independent of the web-sites if required (people would not need to register on the site, they could "sign-up" for newsletters via email.)

PROJECTS

Out of the above come at least the following projects:

• Research and implement an issue tracking system - could be used for all DAG issues, not just IT/web related.
• Set up a development (test) site and test all changes and upgrades there to avoid risk of breaking the live site.
• Design and implement improved backup and at least a test server to establish backup validity. Consider implementation of a warm site.
• Set up automated monitors (e.g. to send email warnings if disk space falls below some threshold, or is being used up at a higher than normal rate.)
• Consider moving to a dedicated server (non-VPS) to handle additional services (email etc.)
• Set up SSL (requires finalised server location for IP address.)
• Move email services away from my development server, to gmail, main DAG server or some other.
• Investigate and implement Mailman.
• Register under DPA
• Write at least basic system documentation - sufficient to allow an qualified third party to take over. Consider writing user documentation.

The combined total would be many hundred hours of work. Of course, not all these things need to be done, but I do think the backup, test site and issue tracking elements are priorities - beyond those there are useful things which can be done. On top of all this, there is the ongoing site maintenance, user support, and fire-fighting if anything goes wrong, plus new requirements that may arise to support DAG activities. There's certainly enough to keep me busy.

FEES AND FEE BASIS

Rates and charging basis

What are the "going rates" ? One provider - http://www.ctisn.com/ - who replied to my "job" advert said: "Our usual rates are £400 per day so we are extremely competitive in our pricing." Assuming a working day 9 till 5 with 1 hour for lunch (7 hours worked) then that's 57 pounds/hour. They also said "Based on having a guaranteed development of 8 days a month we would reduce the rate down to £300 per day to work out the maintenance fee." - that's 60 hours per month at 43 pounds/hour. I would agree that this is "extremely competitive" for what seems to be a well established UK supplier. I assume it's limited to Mon-Fri standard office hours, and that they would schedule the time around their quiet periods, so any rapid response to urgent issues may be unlikely.

Other guidelines:

formal@face2interface.com (US Based individual) quoted US$ 75 per hour (51 GBP)
jmary@progression-asia.com (French, based in China) quoted €50/hour during the week, €90 for weekends (45/81 GBP)