Firing up amigamirror.com in the shadow of GeoCities' death

[LoadWB]

For the past few years I have been planning on a web site for the Amiga community, amigamirror.com.  The idea was that I would set up a mirror site for Amiga-oriented web sites offering downloads and what-not.

I noticed that there are a lot of Amiga and Commodore on GeoCities, which will be allowed to die very very soon.  It would be a shame to lose that information, even though it might be able to find that stuff in the way-back machine.

My idea was to run the site on an 68060-powered Amiga 2000 running NetBSD, with an Apache proxy in front to reduce the load on the machine.  Unfortunately, time constraints and lack of hardware funds left me holding just a plan.  With GeoCities running aground for the last time, it occurred to me that it might be time to go ahead and move forward without my 2000/060 back-end.

Along the way I decided that I would not just offer a mirror, but a free hosting site for Amiga enthusiasts.  I have not ironed out the final details just yet, and with finals next week I will not be doing so right away, but by mid-May I will be ready to roll.  I considered doing a GeoCities-type approach, such as amigamirror.com/place/site, or site.amigamirror.com, or custom domain hosting.  Ideas on this are welcome, and I can accommodate all of them.

First, I would like to solicit anyone running an Amiga or Commodore-oriented web site on GeoCities.  I have also registered commodoremirror.com to be more appropriate for the Commodore stuff :-)  I will work with priority for those who will be losing their GeoCities presence.  Bear in mind, however, that I will not (at least at first) be offering any kind of development tools or dashboard, and access will be via FTP/SFTP only.

The second phase of my Devilishly Cunning Plan (tm) will launch sometime around June.

I don't have coding talents or time to offer to the Amiga community.  I honestly don't have a lot other than my services as a reliable technologist and hosting provider.

Anyone interested, please PM with your site information.  I will be back with you as quickly as I can.

[adz]

I don't understand why you want to run this site from an 060 powered A2000? Wouldn't it be cheaper, easier and no doubt faster to buy a low end x86 rig?

[bloodline]

adz wrote:
I don't understand why you want to run this site from an 060 powered A2000? Wouldn't it be cheaper, easier and no doubt faster to buy a low end x86 rig?

Not to mention the lower running costs (lower power usage, less heat, lower maintainence) of a cheap modern x86...

[hardlink]

bloodline wrote:

adz wrote:
I don't understand why you want to run this site from an 060 powered A2000? Wouldn't it be cheaper, easier and no doubt faster to buy a low end x86 rig?

Not to mention the lower running costs (lower power usage, less heat, lower maintainence) of a cheap modern x86...

All true. But what of the challenge! :crazy: Remember the A500 running a website? Who cares about a low end x86 rig ...

[persia]

There's still Google sites and Yola.

[brianb]

 :crazy:

So confused...

- What downloads would you offer?  AmiNet is pretty much the source.   Unless your talking illegal software but that doesn't sound like a very good long-term plan especially if hosting out of your house.

- Why wouldn't people just use existing free hosting services available?  Then submit their link to this site in the "Links" section.

- Why host on an old box when x86 hardware is common, cheap, and reliable?

- The only Amiga sites that have any real activity our forum based.  Otherwise must of us are looking at or using software that was written over 15 years ago.  Discussions are the only thing that keep most Amiga sites current.

I can understand your idea though, as I was toying with the idea of running a BBS (telnet) again.   But besides any nostalgia reasons, I realized it would be pointless and never used.   :-(

[LoadWB]

Why old hardware?

As I stated in my original post, the idea was to run the back-end on Amiga hardware, an 060-based Amiga 2000 running NetBSD, for the "authenticity."  It was to be proxied by a front-end server to reduce the load.  But, as already stated, this design will not happen right now, if ever.  I will not discuss this any further than already provided.


What will be offered?

Nothing more than what was being offered by GeoCities, et al.  The idea is not to compete with forums or existing Amiga organizations, but to offer a place to dump static sites which would otherwise be tossed out when the last GeoCities server is dumped unceremoniously like Q-Link was.  In fact, I do not want to run yet another Amiga forum when there are plenty of good ones already out there.  There are a number of sites with historical references and information, tribute pages, etc.  Someone obviously felt the time was worthwhile to put them together, and I do not see any reason to let them just disappear.


Why use this over other free sites?

Why not?  Aside from that, because I give a shyt.  How many big corporate sites have tossed their free projects to the wind?

[Methuselas]

@LoadWB


Man, if I hadn't already registered my site, I'd offer my site up, even though it's not really amiga-related. In fact, I'm pretty much phasing out all the Amiga art I was doing on it, as it was all done in UAE and mostly for nostalgia. It's mostly my CGI portfolio and links to my work-in-progress graphic novel.

Best of luck with this. I hope it takes off.

[Matt_H]

:bump:

I think this is interesting. Geocities is a bit of a time capsule and I'd hate to see chunks of Amiga info lost because of its closure.

Since there's a chance the WayBack machine won't be able to get to everything in time, I hope someone does target the Amiga sites for preservation.

[LoadWB]

ASCII by Jason Scott / Geocities: Lessons So Far

[Tension]

Great Idea!!!  I`d love a bit of space on there.